Trump’s National Emergency Declaration

On February 15, 2019, Donald Trump declared a national emergency, this will be the 32nd national emergency in the United States. He did this in order to obtain billions of dollars that Congress would not give him to build his border wall. The money he had claimed Mexico would give the United States. Most of this money will come from the Pentagon, money that is typically used on counternarcotics efforts, Trump also plans to allocate military programming money to construct what he claims will be a beautiful and strong wall. Trump believes building this wall will and gangs. The national emergency act empowers the president to take on special power and many stop the invasion of the country with drugs, with human traffickers and with all types of criminals legal limits on his authority will be lifted. For instance, he can assign military forces abroad, seize property, restrict travel and in many ways, he can control the lives of American citizens.  

President Trump has received strong disapproval from Democrats who call his decision an unconstitutional abuse of his authority. Democratic leaders, Nanci Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement, “This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed president, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process”. Trump said in his speech that he already expects to be sued but that he knows he will be successful in the Supreme Court. However, him being successful in court is not guaranteed since in his speech at the Rose Garden he said: “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster I just want to get it done faster, that’s all”.

Cited Wikimedia Commons 2019