For Trump, seizing emergency powers has become central to go

[cng]

For Trump, seizing emergency powers has become central to governing

The specter of federally controlled troops in American streets has historically signaled a seismic social crisis, from forcing integration in Arkansas to protecting civil rights marchers in Alabama. But President Donald Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles at a time when state and local officials said they had protests there under control.

The move reflects an increasingly evident pattern of his presidency: Trump declares an emergency or crisis where many others do not see one, enabling him to take sweeping actions, rally supporters and fight on political terrain he finds favorable.

Trump’s declaration of an economic emergency in April enabled sweeping tariffs. His declaration of an invasion on the southern border paved the way for intensified deportations. An energy emergency made it easier for him to ease regulations. His pronouncement that fentanyl entering from Canada was an emergency justified sanctions, as did a similar finding on the International Criminal Court’s approach to Israel.

By many measures, the emergencies were hard to discern. But Trump’s ability to pronounce them via executive order enabled him to instantly deploy the resulting authority.

“It gives him extraordinary powers to not go through the normal machinery and bureaucracy of government,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican strategist who has been critical of Trump. “The goal is to wield extraordinary powers to get rid of government where he wants, get rid of the bureaucracy where he can — and step on the neck of his opponents.”

The stream of emergency declarations has contributed to a sense cultivated by Trump that the country is facing perpetual crisis, under threat from foreign nations and domestic enemies. Trump appears to thrive in this atmosphere, adopting the role of fighter and savior.

If he had not federalized the National Guard, Trump said Monday on Truth Social, “Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.” Late Monday, a senior administration official said the Pentagon was sending 700 Marines to Los Angeles to backstop the National Guard.

Democrats responded that there was no crisis from the protests in Los Angeles of Trump’s immigration policies until he inflamed matters. Trump, some said, was seeking to shift attention from such topics as Republican divisions over his marquee budget bill and onto political turf where he is relatively strong, such as illegal immigration and urban ills.

“I’m not suggesting the yahoos who showed up and threw bottles and lit a fire were okay. They need to be identified and arrested,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-California). “But it was under control until they sent in the Guard. I think this was intended to incite.”

Lofgren, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Trump’s dispatch of the National Guard clearly violated the law, since he was relying on a statute that can only be invoked when there is an invasion or rebellion. The state of California on Monday sued the administration over the move.

“I can’t get into the head of the president, but this is something a dictator would do,” Lofgren said, adding, “If people aren’t concerned about it, they could watch our country’s liberties drip away.”

The White House said Trump is using his rightful powers because Democrats left the country in shambles and strong action is needed.

“For years, Democrats like Gavin Newsom and Joe Biden have done nothing to protect Americans from economic and national security threats,” said spokeswoman Taylor Rogers. “President Trump is rightly using his executive authority as evidence by our many victories in court.”
Trump’s supporters contend that his decisive actions in Los Angeles and elsewhere are welcomed by Americans after decades of frustration at Washington’s inability to solve problems. A recent CBS News-YouGov poll, for example, found that Americans approve of Trump’s deportation policies by 54 to 46 percent.

Trump has been declaring emergencies, invasions and rebellions almost from the moment he took office in January, enabling him to frame not only the political landscape but also establish legal grounds for his unorthodox actions.

He has declared eight separate emergencies since taking office, far more than other recent presidents, according to Elizabeth Goitein, an expert on emergency powers at the Brennan Center for Justice.

On his first day, Trump declared an energy emergency, although the United States has a healthy supply of energy and is hardly facing a crisis in the view of most experts. Blaming the Biden administration for an inadequate energy supply, Trump said the situation would quickly deteriorate without “immediate remedy.”

Also on his first day, Trump declared an emergency regarding drug cartels, enabling him to declare them terrorist organizations more easily. A few weeks later he declared that fentanyl coming over the Canadian border constituted another emergency, though authorities say little of the drug comes from that direction.

In early April, Trump declared an emergency based on the nation’s trade deficit, which has existed for decades, enabling him to impose unprecedented global tariffs, though he has suspended many of them for now. He has used crisis language even for smaller matters, such as his executive order deregulating showerheads, which denounced the “Obama-Biden war on showers.”

“They give him extraordinary powers that he otherwise wouldn’t have and that Congress has determined to be inappropriate in nonemergency situations,” Goitein said. “The actions a president can take during war or a national emergency are and should be very different than he takes in peacetime.”

Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia, said Trump is hardly alone in taking advantage of the emergency powers that Congress has given the president over the years.

“Trump is following in the footsteps of his predecessors in being willing to declare an emergency,” Prakash said. “He is probably doing it more often because he wants to do more things, and obviously the groups who want action in a particular area will welcome the declaration.”

Still, Prakash said presidents too often invoke emergencies simply to justify things they want to do. “Congress has basically given presidents lots of emergency power in various areas; they have used it, and the courts are reluctant to second-guess it,” he said.

The National Emergencies Act of 1976, enacted after the Watergate scandal, sought to put restraints around a president’s ability to declare emergencies, in part by allowing Congress to terminate them. But it did not define an emergency or limit its duration, and in practice it has done little to rein in such declarations.

Trump’s official declarations in some ways match his public rhetoric, which frequently suggests the country is facing an unprecedented crisis that only he can solve. With an ongoing drumbeat of unilateral actions, social media posts and executive orders, Trump has created the constant sense of a nation under siege, requiring strong action by its leader.

“He is not going to view himself as constrained,” said Kristy Parker, special counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that fights authoritarianism. “Emergency powers are like manna from heaven for someone like him. He can just wave a wand in the form of an executive order and absolve himself, as he sees it, from the need to answer to Congress.”

Trump’s willingness to test the bounds of American law and tradition has often thrown Democrats on the defensive. That seems especially true in areas like immigration and crime, where Democrats fear being seen as defending the status quo.

“Immigration remains Donald Trump’s strongest issue,” said Madrid, the political strategist. In Los Angeles, he added, “This issue will change pretty quickly away from immigration and toward law and order, and that is where he has always done well. He will take a tough approach, a militaristic approach, all of it designed to send a message to his enemies domestically.”

Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host, put it more succinctly. “The summer riot season is here,” he posted on X. “It helps Donald Trump and the Democrats know it.”

Democrats, though, contend that if Trump continues to assert extraordinary powers, he will eventually provoke a backlash. Activists are planning major demonstrations this Saturday, as Trump reviews a military parade in Washington, with a theme of “No Kings” to argue that Trump is acting more like an authoritarian than a president.

His decision to deploy the National Guard over the impassioned objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) marks a striking juxtaposition with the way the Guard was used during the civil rights era.

During that turbulent period, presidents on several occasions took over the Guard to enforce the rights of Black Americans facing threats by segregationist state authorities. In this case, Trump is using the Guard to confront a minority group and its supporters who say the administration is violating its rights.

Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday that the administration was reacting to egregious lawlessness that local authorities were ignoring, a claim strongly denied by leaders of California and Los Angeles.

“They should have taken action the last two days while the city burned,” Homan said, adding, “I was there when a thousand protesters were surrounding the federal building, breaching that federal building, putting our officers at risk, putting illegal aliens we arrested or in custody at risk. It was out of control.”

Democrats have also been quick to contrast Trump’s recent actions with his notable passivity during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That constituted a true emergency, they say, as members of Congress certifying a legitimate election faced assault from a destructive mob. Yet Trump did little to call off rioters acting on his behalf and, after gaining office again, pardoned hundreds convicted of crimes in the attack.

Beyond his other declarations, Trump has not ruled out invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the deployment of active-duty U.S. military personnel at home in cases of unrest or rebellion, a prospect that alarms his critics.

Lofgren said Trump’s declarations of various kinds of crisis bear little relation to actual conditions. “He is making it up,” she said. “He has made up these fake emergencies to seize power unconstitutionally.”

[WideAnimals]

真够讽刺，65年的那次是为了保护民权运动抗议的老百姓，60年后的今天是去镇压。

[altopalo]

川普就是畜生

[WideAnimals]

大统领的高参，那个面目可憎的Stephen Miller为了这一天已经预谋已久：除了楼主贴的那篇社论所指出的，选择加州，打击民主党精英的大本营，蓄意制造混乱，乱后借机出台紧急法来动用军队，以此检验其行政命令的权威性和对军队的调配能力，为其进一步扩权制造借口和扫清司法和舆论障碍，另外一个目标，选择庇护移民的天使之城，用枪弹来恐吓洛城民众，针对的是所有移民，当然包括合法的移民和已经归化的移民，逐步恢复和实现白人绝对统治地位的目标。此计之狠毒如蛇蝎，一箭双雕。看到一帮待宰羔羊还在事不关己的看戏吃瓜，甚至在一个帖里煞有介事地讨论“民主党为何支持非移”，和“law and order”，想想真是可笑且可悲啊。