rump says he will use executive powers to bypass Congress

US President Donald Trump declares a national emergency to build the US-Mexico border at the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, US, February 15, 2019

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will declare a national emergency to fulfill his pledge to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border.

Trump said he will use executive powers to bypass Congress, which approved far less money for his proposed wall than he had sought. He plans to siphon billions of dollars from federal military construction and counterdrug efforts for the wall. The move is already drawing bipartisan criticism on Capitol Hill and expected to face rounds of legal challenges.

“I am going to be signing a national emergency,” Trump said from the Rose Garden, as he claimed illegal immigration marked “an invasion of our country.”

In a rare show of bipartisanship, lawmakers voted Thursday to fund large swaths of the government and avoid a repeat of this winter’s debilitating five-week government shutdown. The money in the bill for border barriers, about $1.4 billion, is far below the $5.7 billion Trump insisted he needed and would finance just a quarter of the 322 kilometers he wanted this year.

To bridge the gap, Trump announced that he will be spending roughly $8 billion on border barriers – combining the money approved by Congress with funding he plans to repurpose through executive actions, including the national emergency. The money is expected to come from funds targeted for military construction and counterdrug efforts, but aides could not immediately specify which military projects would be affected.

Despite widespread opposition in Congress to proclaiming an emergency, including by some Republicans, Trump was responding to pressure to act unilaterally to soothe his conservative base and avoid appearing like he’s lost his wall battle.

Word that Trump would declare the emergency prompted condemnations from Democrats and threats of lawsuits from states and others who might lose federal money or said Trump was abusing his authority.

In an unusual joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said such a declaration would be “a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract” from Trump’s failure to force Mexico to pay for the wall, as he’s promised for years.

“Congress will defend our constitutional authorities,” they said. They declined to say whether that meant lawsuits or votes on resolutions to prevent Trump from unilaterally shifting money to wall-building, with aides saying they’d wait to see what he does.

Democratic state attorneys general said they’d consider legal action to block Trump. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello told the president on Twitter “we’ll see you in court” if he makes the declaration.

Even if his emergency declaration withstands challenge, Trump is still billions of dollars short of his overall funding needed to build the wall as he promised in 2016. After two years of effort, Trump has not added any new border mileage” all of the construction so far has gone to replacing and repairing existing structures. Ground is expected to be broken in South Texas soon on the first new mileage.

The White House said Trump would not try to redirect federal disaster aid to the wall, a proposal they had considered but rejected over fears of a political blowback.

How Trump lost the border wall fight

It is obvious that the US president has failed irreversibly on his signature issue

Recently the Washington Post reported: US President Donald Trump said he’s not happy with a bipartisan border deal in Congress aimed at averting another government shutdown, but he suggested he could add to it to build his US-Mexico border wall and predicted there will not be another lapse in government funding.

“Am I happy at first glance? The answer is no, I’m not, I’m not happy,” Trump told reporters at the White House as he met with Cabinet members.

What’s important to understand is that Trump has failed entirely and irreversibly on his signature issue. The border-wall catastrophe is, in many ways, the inevitable result of a campaign and presidency built on demagoguery. Let’s take a look at how America got here. It began with Trump running for president with a white resentment and grievance pitch. As the most dogged megaphone for the canard that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States, Trump figured he could get votes as easily as he got the Trump University tuition cheques: The border was out of control.

Illegal immigrants were flooding into the US, were stealing jobs and reducing wages for native-born, middle-class Americans, and were responsible for a massive crime wave. None of that was true, but neither was the birther story. (More Mexican immigrants were leaving the US than entering; the Obama administration engaged in widespread interdiction, deporting record numbers of immigrants; immigrants didn’t steal jobs — as America’s low unemployment rate proves — and depress wages only by a small amount for those without high school degrees; and crime is still at historic lows.

Then came the next trope, actually a mnemonic device, according to one of his campaign advisers. Trump told crowds during the 2016 election that he’d build a wall to keep out Mexicans — and get Mexico to pay for it. This was never feasible or cost-effective. Mexico was never going to pay for it. Such an undertaking would entail prolonged fights with land owners and require unprecedented exercise of eminent-domain powers. To boot, the wall idea failed to address the real issues — visa overstays and smuggling through ports of entry. Outside of Trump’s narrow base, the idea was never popular.

When he unexpectedly won, Trump had to figure out how to deliver on his promise. For two years, he did nothing. He deployed a canard as the midterm elections approached and then in the context of funding the government: Caravans of criminals, disease-carrying migrants and Middle Eastern terrorists (!) were charging the border. That they were hundreds of miles away and consisted in large part of families fleeing violence in Central America mattered not at all to Trump. After the midterm losses, the fake emergency was a way to rekindle and reinforce his relationship with the base.

Then came a hitch. Trump’s lie about the “emergency” at the border was eagerly consumed by the right-wing news hosts, who used that lie to whip up its audience. They bought it — or pretended they did. Trump was ready to take a deal with no wall to fund the government when Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter freaked out. They squawked about a clean funding bill, so Trump shut down the government, giving the impression that House Democrats would fold and besides, no one likes the government and all the workers are Democrats, right?

Wrong and wrong. Trump capitulated after 35 days and then snowed his base once more. He was “proud” to accept the deal, he said in a Rose Garden gathering set up under the pretence that he hadn’t lost. But he had.

Rather than admit defeat as negotiators neared a deal to avoid another shutdown, Trump trotted out: The wall was already being built, and he could move needed money around without Congress. (If so, why the shutdown? Don’t ask!

In the end, Trump never got his wall. He was never going to get his wall. It was to win and hold onto his low-information voters, the ones convinced that their and the country’s ills were caused by immigrants. It was only a matter of time before the flimsy tower of fibs came tumbling down.

Now Trump’s apologists are left wondering: If he has lied about this, can we count on him for anything else? I hate to break it to them, but no. And, come to think of it, there’s no real accomplishment Trump can claim — other than a trade war and unpopular tax cut plan.