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\u003cp style=\u0022color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;\u0022\u003ePresident Trump appears to be testing the American political system\u0026rsquo;s tolerance for soft dictatorship through the cavalier\u0026mdash;and potentially illegal\u0026mdash;use of presidential emergency powers. On February 15, after months of blustery threats, he declared a national emergency on the southern US border and dispatched the Army Corps of Engineers to administer the construction of a wall by private contractors in order to stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the country from Mexico. Trump issued the executive order because after a thirty-five-day government shutdown over funding for the border wall, Congress had just passed a spending bill that included only a fraction\u0026mdash;$1.375 billion\u0026mdash;of the $5.7 billion he wanted for the wall and specified that it be constructed of fencing rather than the steel he had demanded. The House and Senate passed a joint resolution to terminate the national emergency declaration, which Trump vetoed. The House was then unable to muster the two-thirds majority required to override the veto.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\u0022color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; margin: 0px 0px 15px;\u0022\u003eLegislators have good reason to oppose the construction of a border wall. Trump\u0026rsquo;s arguments for building one\u0026mdash;mainly that illegal immigration is rampant, that illegal immigrants commit more crimes than US citizens, and that the bulk of illicit drugs enter the United States through illegal border crossings\u0026mdash;are demonstrably false. Trump himself betrayed his own claims of urgency when he said, in declaring the emergency, \u0026ldquo;I didn\u0026rsquo;t need to do this, but I\u0026rsquo;d rather do it much faster.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\u0022color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; margin: 0px 0px 15px;\u0022\u003eOver strong objections from the House Armed Services Committee, the Defense Department has begun to divert $4.3 billion for the wall from about 150 military construction projects\u0026mdash;many of them urgent and long delayed\u0026mdash;including a new school and a water treatment facility on stateside military bases and a new National Guard fire station. More US troops are likely to join the three thousand active-duty soldiers and two thousand National Guard members currently deployed at the border. And because the Department of Homeland Security does not have enough facilities in which it can house and oversee all the migrants it has detained, it wants the Pentagon to set up additional ones on US military bases, although some senior Pentagon officials reportedly consider it inappropriate to use the military to handle a civilian issue like immigration.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\u0022initial\u0022 style=\u0022color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; margin: 30px 0px 15px;\u0022\u003eCongress has delegated to the president broad authority to invoke a national emergency, presidents have done it dozens of times, and the courts have shown little appetite for questioning the president\u0026rsquo;s emergency powers.\u0026nbsp;But the legal, political, and factual background to Trump\u0026rsquo;s declaration illuminates its egregiousness. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, enacted in 1977, has been the basis for about 80 percent of the emergency powers that presidents have exercised. It was designed specifically to allow the president to take economic measures outside the United States in response to an \u0026ldquo;international emergency.\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;Most cases have involved the imposition of sanctions on foreign individuals or groups for terrorist activity, human rights violations, or drug trafficking, which is widely considered well within the power of the executive branch.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\u0022background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333;\u0022\u003eThe statutory authority that Trump has asserted to build the border wall comes from the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which affords the president considerable leeway in determining what constitutes a national emergency. Even so, no president has ever used his emergency powers to fund a project for which Congress has explicitly refused to appropriate money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi characterized Trump\u0026rsquo;s move as a \u0026ldquo;power grab\u0026rdquo; and an \u0026ldquo;end run\u0026rdquo; around Congress\u0026rsquo;s constitutional authority over federal spending. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called it \u0026ldquo;a gross abuse of power that subverts the key principles laid out in the Constitution.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\u0022color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;\u0022\u003eFurthermore, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits using the US military for domestic law enforcement. It was thus also troubling that in order to justify diverting money for the wall, Trump cited a provision of the 1976 act referencing an emergency \u0026ldquo;that requires the use of the armed forces.\u0026rdquo; Even if there were a genuine national emergency, civilian contractors could build a wall, so the involvement of the armed forces\u0026mdash;in this case, the Army Corps of Engineers\u0026mdash;is not required; but unless Trump can claim it is required, it\u0026rsquo;s harder for him to make the case for declaring the emergency. His use of the Army Corps of Engineers to oversee the construction of the wall would not strain the prohibition on the domestic use of the military as severely as his deployment, just before the 2018 midterms, of over five thousand troops to support law enforcement efforts on the border. (In that instance, the fig leaf of placing the troops under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security fooled no one.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\u0022color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; margin: 0px 0px 15px;\u0022\u003eThe fact remains that, in addition to encroaching on Congress\u0026rsquo;s power over appropriations, Trump is severely straining existing limitations on using the military in a domestic emergency. In effect, he is turning relatively narrow and exceptional emergency powers into broad authority to use the military in domestic situations. By thereby challenging the separation of powers and exceeding his authority as commander in chief, Trump is continuing his derogation of constitutional governance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\u0022background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333;\u0022\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe full piece can be read at\u0026nbsp;\u003ca href=\u0022https://www.nbr.org/publication/where-the-belt-meets-the-road-security-in-a-contested-south-asia/\u0022\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\u0022https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/05/23/trump-different-emergency/\u0022\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","className":"richtext reading--content font-secondary"}), document.getElementById("react_I7k40Tzu5kmDuHlEB3U2Fw"))});
\u003cp style=\"color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px;\"\u003eBy challenging the separation of powers and exceeding his authority as commander in chief, Trump is continuing his derogation of constitutional governance, writes Jonathan Stevenson.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"article-p1\" data-google-query-id=\"CNKYr-6xneICFYNkFQgdt-QCLQ\" style=\"color: #333333; background-color: #ffffff; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: center;\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e
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