A Dangerous Farce: Trump’s Emergency Declaration

No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of [the Constitution’s] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government — Ex Parte Milligan, 1866

And so, the farce has inevitably come to this. Stymied by Congressional opposition to funding his beloved wall, President Trump has declared a national emergency, theoretically freeing funds from other, worthier projects. Rather than treat the President’s action for what it is — a bald faced end run around Constitutional government — the same partisans who had reacted to Barack Obama’s “pen and phone” with the fury of the bypassed have instead bowed to Trump’s ham-fisted pronouncement. Senator McConnell, who as Senate Majority Leader would be expected by the dictates of his office to most loudly oppose a declaration so blatantly undermining of Congress’s prerogative to hold the nation’s purse strings, has instead knelt at the altar of partisan indifference and sheepishly shrugged. As reported by the New York Times, he attempted to dissuade Trump from the declaration, then docilely surrendered, snapping at White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who warned of potential illegality of the declaration and court challenge: “Who cares? This is America- everybody sues everybody else.”

There is no emergency, of course. Only in 2019 America would years of declining net illegal immigration across the southern border and proper use of the lawful asylum system trigger a declaration of national…