Before declaring a national emergency regarding his border wall, President Trump should have opened a book, something which he apparently has not done for years, in this case the dictionary. Once he opened it, he should have looked up the definition of “emergency.” Merriam-Webster defines “emergency” as:
“1 : an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action
2 : an urgent need for assistance or relief.”
After declaring an “emergency,” Trump then shot himself in the foot by running off at the mouth. He did this by publicly admitting that he didn’t have to build the wall right away; that he could have built the wall over time; but that he didn’t want to wait. That admission totally destroys the argument of the need for immediate or urgent action, a necessary factor for an “emergency” to exist – all because he was too lazy to open a dictionary.
In any event, even without Trump’s admission, the problem at the southern border does not come remotely close to meeting the definition of an “emergency.” Trump should be credited for at least trying to address the illegal-immigration problem, a problem which his predecessors pretty much ignored. Nevertheless, Trump’s defective set of values and his character arising from those defective values, continue to haunt him and prevent him from coming up with nuanced solutions to complex problems. So, instead of devising a well-thought out solution to the illegal-immigration problem and building consensus to get it approved by Congress, he instituted an unconstitutional grab of Congressional authority.
Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution provides: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” When Congress recently addressed the border issue, it enacted what it (with bipartisan support) deemed appropriate legislation– allocating funds and specifying how those funds should be spent. Since Trump has no power under the “Emergency” statute to reallocate such funds, his declaration constitutes an unconstitutional act.
Presumably, the Judiciary (including the strict constructionists that Trump appointed to the Supreme Court, if they are true to their jurisprudential philosophy) will knock Trump’s declaration down and tell him, that, once again, his action was not only “off the wall” but was unconstitutional as well. But that will only happen after Trump wastes millions of dollars of taxpayer money on legal fees and court costs in order to defend the indefensible.
Scott Fenstermaker is a resident of The Villages and a frequent contributor to Villages-News.com
