berg80
Diamond Member
- Oct 28, 2017
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Can Trump Just Do Whatever He Wants by Declaring Emergencies?
The United States is a nation in crisis, President Trump says. The problems are both profound and urgent. He knows how to fix them, but his ideas are hard to implement: They require new legislation or lumbering legal petitions. Luckily, there’s an easier way. The law often gives the president new and broad powers in a state of emergency.
So he has declared nearly a dozen. Trump says he can impose tariffs because he says it’s an emergency to contain trade deficits. He can deport immigrants without due process because it’s an emergency to fight a Venezuelan gang’s invasion. He can dispatch the National Guard to American cities like Los Angeles because it’s an emergency to quell protests and crime. He can ask the Supreme Court for emergency rulings on legal challenges to his authority because we can’t afford to wait for judges to debate his policies.
All this exposes a diabolical problem in our legal order: An emergency is in the eye of the beholder. Do these problems of debatable urgency demand an immediate response? The trade imbalance is generations old. Immigrants — even foreign gangs — are not an invading army. Protesters aren’t rebels. Crime has plunged nationwide, including in all of the cities Trump says need urgent protection. He could wait for courts to decide if he has the power to remake the government, as his predecessors generally have.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/briefing/trump-emergency-presidential-power.html
Towards the end of trump 1.0 I recall posting this article.
Repairing the Rule of Law: An Agenda for Post-Trump Reform
Repairing the Rule of Law: An Agenda for Post-Trump Reform
The author pointed out many ways in which the Founders and our legal system did not anticipate a prez like trump. Someone who sought out ways to take advantage of loopholes in the statutes governing the chief executive.
Of Trump’s many excesses, his assault on legal norms has to rank high in terms of damage to fundamental values that form the fabric of America. His attacks on the free press, the independent judiciary and the independence of the Department of Justice have all created significant damage. His abuse of executive discretionary authority has made a mockery of the concept of checks and balances. His gaming of the judicial system has revealed weaknesses in our legal process.
Now he's taken it a step further having discovered the declaration of emergencies is a door through which he can step so his control over......well.......just about everything, can be expanded. If we've learned anything about trump 2.0 it's that the expansion of power is paramount to implementing his agenda and part of his instinctive impulse to establish an autocracy. Translated to its real world effect the expansion of power has been by means of breaking the law.
Three times this week his actions have been ruled to be illegal, not counting the extrajudicial killing of 11 people off the coast of Venezuela. Trump has used 10 emergency declarations to justify hundreds of actions. He has discovered what he sees as a portal to authoritarian rule. It needs to be closed.
The United States is a nation in crisis, President Trump says. The problems are both profound and urgent. He knows how to fix them, but his ideas are hard to implement: They require new legislation or lumbering legal petitions. Luckily, there’s an easier way. The law often gives the president new and broad powers in a state of emergency.
So he has declared nearly a dozen. Trump says he can impose tariffs because he says it’s an emergency to contain trade deficits. He can deport immigrants without due process because it’s an emergency to fight a Venezuelan gang’s invasion. He can dispatch the National Guard to American cities like Los Angeles because it’s an emergency to quell protests and crime. He can ask the Supreme Court for emergency rulings on legal challenges to his authority because we can’t afford to wait for judges to debate his policies.
All this exposes a diabolical problem in our legal order: An emergency is in the eye of the beholder. Do these problems of debatable urgency demand an immediate response? The trade imbalance is generations old. Immigrants — even foreign gangs — are not an invading army. Protesters aren’t rebels. Crime has plunged nationwide, including in all of the cities Trump says need urgent protection. He could wait for courts to decide if he has the power to remake the government, as his predecessors generally have.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/briefing/trump-emergency-presidential-power.html
Towards the end of trump 1.0 I recall posting this article.
Repairing the Rule of Law: An Agenda for Post-Trump Reform
Repairing the Rule of Law: An Agenda for Post-Trump Reform
The author pointed out many ways in which the Founders and our legal system did not anticipate a prez like trump. Someone who sought out ways to take advantage of loopholes in the statutes governing the chief executive.
Of Trump’s many excesses, his assault on legal norms has to rank high in terms of damage to fundamental values that form the fabric of America. His attacks on the free press, the independent judiciary and the independence of the Department of Justice have all created significant damage. His abuse of executive discretionary authority has made a mockery of the concept of checks and balances. His gaming of the judicial system has revealed weaknesses in our legal process.
Now he's taken it a step further having discovered the declaration of emergencies is a door through which he can step so his control over......well.......just about everything, can be expanded. If we've learned anything about trump 2.0 it's that the expansion of power is paramount to implementing his agenda and part of his instinctive impulse to establish an autocracy. Translated to its real world effect the expansion of power has been by means of breaking the law.
Three times this week his actions have been ruled to be illegal, not counting the extrajudicial killing of 11 people off the coast of Venezuela. Trump has used 10 emergency declarations to justify hundreds of actions. He has discovered what he sees as a portal to authoritarian rule. It needs to be closed.
