Trump: I could declare a national emergency to get border wall

[Jarod]

There is no such thing as emergency powers of the president.

I admit I was wrong here, in that Congress has created something called "emergency powers of the president", and in limited circumstances has attempted cede certain powers to the President. If the Supreme Court were to agree that such action is Constitutional, then the president would have Emergency Powers limited to acts that would be Constitutional but only if Congress were to have had the Constitutional power to have done them itself.

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

This is uninformed. The polls were in each state where an election was held, including the ones where Trump gained the electoral votes, and those were wrong. Simply saying that because in California so many people voted for Hillary it means the polls were right just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the other 49 elections that were held that day and how polls are conducted.

Actually, it seems to be you that is showing a misunderstanding of polls. The majority of polls published by media outlets are not per state but are based on national polling.
The state polls occur less often and have a higher margin of error.

That being said let's look at the polling in the battleground states:
The final Pennsylvania poll shows Trump with a 1 point lead. He won by .7
The conglomerate of final Florida polls show Trump with a .2 point lead. He won by 1.2
The final poll in Michigan shows Trump with a 2 point lead. He won by .3
The final poll in Ohio shows Trump with a 7 point lead. He won by 8.1
Wisconsin didn't have any polling in the final week of the election. Earlier polling showed Clinton with a 5 point lead. She lost by .7
The last Iowa poll shows Trump leading by 7. He won by 9.5

The state polls weren't any more wrong than the national polling. What the state polls show is a swing to Trump in the last week. It wasn't that state polls were wrong. It's that no one paid attention to them because the national polling still showed Clinton with a lead.

 

[Jarod]

Actually, it seems to be you that is showing a misunderstanding of polls. The majority of polls published by media outlets are not per state but are based on national polling.
The state polls occur less often and have a higher margin of error.

That being said let's look at the polling in the battleground states:
The final Pennsylvania poll shows Trump with a 1 point lead. He won by .7
The conglomerate of final Florida polls show Trump with a .2 point lead. He won by 1.2
The final poll in Michigan shows Trump with a 2 point lead. He won by .3
The final poll in Ohio shows Trump with a 7 point lead. He won by 8.1
Wisconsin didn't have any polling in the final week of the election. Earlier polling showed Clinton with a 5 point lead. She lost by .7
The last Iowa poll shows Trump leading by 7. He won by 9.5

The state polls weren't any more wrong than the national polling. What the state polls show is a swing to Trump in the last week. It wasn't that state polls were wrong. It's that no one paid attention to them because the national polling still showed Clinton with a lead.

This is absolutely true. The polling was actually VERY accurate, but three things happened. Commentators and public opinion did not keep up with the rapid shift after the Comey "re-opening" of the investigation into HRC's emails during the final week. The Media made assumptions that were not supported based on the Margin of Error in the polls and finally Trump pulled out a 1 out of 10 chance. Just because a 1 out of ten happens, does not mean it was wrong that it was a 1 out of 10.

 

[Oneuli]

https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/trump-i-could-declare-a-national-emergency-to-get-border-wall/


Heads are exploding everywhere in Washington today. Good times.

Even Republicans would be wise to oppose such an unprecedented take on presidential emergency powers. Once you allow the president to pretend a non-emergency is an emergency, in order to embezzle funds from our defense budget for personal pet projects, the precedent has been set that gives us a much more dictatorial presidency, which Republicans aren't going to like when it's a Democrat. For example, what's to prevent, say, President Elizabeth Warren from getting frustrated by a refusal of Republican senators to allow appropriations for a green energy project, and so she just declares Global Warming a national emergency and sets the military to work building solar farms, acting as mass transit services in our cities, sorting recyclables, building high speed rail, and so on? Or maybe it's our growing wealth inequality that's a national emergency, and so she orders the military to provide various welfare services to the poor, like childcare. Or healthcare is the national emergency, and since Congress won't appropriate funding for the new health services she'd like to see, she orders VA facilities and military-base clinics to open their doors to the indigent.

Do conservatives really want to go down this path?

 

[Bourbon]

 

[USFREEDOM911]

You are free to pretend that, or you can engage in an educated discussion of the issue.

And to what end, except to watch you once again do nothing more then try to two step around the FACTS, like you did and are doing with Damo.

 

[Jarod]

And to what end, except to watch you once again do nothing more then try to two step around the FACTS, like you did and are doing with Damo.

Damocles was flat out wrong.

 

[Micawber]

https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/trump-i-could-declare-a-national-emergency-to-get-border-wall/


Heads are exploding everywhere in Washington today. Good times.

It's funny to me that you basically light your own hair on fire and dance around naked here every day and you think it is "good times"

 

[Bourbon]

No he can't but let's see him try ... it's not like the Hole he's already dug can't use some more dirt.

 

[Nordberg]

slowly but surely the entire border will have a barrier nearly impossible to breech, and a lot of that will be a wall.

take your medicine quickly, or the slow death that Queen Nancy is asking you to submit to.

Nope. 90 percent of illegals and drugs come in through the existing entry points by the truckload. You want those closed too, Don't you? Otherwise, you are really not interested in stopping drugs and illegals, but protecting Daffy.

 

[USFREEDOM911]

Damocles was flat out wrong.

Only according to you and you were / are in error.

 

[USFREEDOM911]

Nope. 90 percent of illegals and drugs come in through the existing entry points by the truckload. You want those closed too, Don't you? Otherwise, you are really not interested in stopping drugs and illegals, but protecting Daffy.

I keep telling you, young Padawan, that you must be patient and instead of looking for instant gratification, you should consider one solution (to one problem) and then address the next one in time.

 

[Jarod]

Congress has given the president the authority to declare an emergency and thus suspend any law.

That does not give him the authority to build a wall.

 

[evince]

and congress retains the right to question the validity of a presidents CLAIMED emergency

 

[Damocles]

Since you refuse to identify any particular language that you claim gives the President "Emergency Powers", I will use some portions of your link.

First I will point out that you link is simply someone's article and opinion and that the FACTS presented in your link do not support your claim, only the opinion.

The First Paragraph:

"The President of the United States possesses certain powers to act in emergency situations." (opinion) "Though such “emergency power” is not specifically expressed in the Constitution," (FACT) the Executive Branch is designed to be able to act quickly in times of war or national emergency. Because emergency power is not specifically stated in the Constitution," (FACT) its scope is somewhat limited, typically extending only to situations that compromise or threaten the safety or well-being of the public." (OPINION) "To explore this concept, consider the following emergency power definition."


You see, Damocles has used an age old trick of combining fact with opinion to try to trick the reader into believing the opinion is fact. A true strict constructionist would see that those who have the opinion that the president has special "emergency powers" if he declares an emergency, are STRETCHING the Constitution beyond where the founders intended. Though history despots have used a hyped emergency to claim "emergency powers" and anoint themselves King. The founders knew this and protected us from that by refusing to grant the President of the United States the Constitutional power to grant himself additional authority by declaring an emergency.

I find it funny that, out of love for President Rump, people who consider themselves Strict Constructionists are willing to undermine this philosophy to extend this ideology to the despot Don Trump.

Yes, presidents have usurped "emergency powers" in the past, to do patiently unconstitutional things, like when Roosevelt imprisoned Asian Americans in prison camps. Promoting the idea that the President has this authority is dangerous and WRONG.

He argues that because Congress passed a bill limiting "emergency powers" is evidence that these powers exist, that is putting the cart before the horse. Congress can limit my power to cut myself a huge slice of cheese from the moon, it does not change that I never had that power in the first place.

Now, say I am wrong, for political reasons all you want, I am not wrong here.

The FACT remains that DAMOCLES cannot point to any portion of the CONSTITUTION that grants these mythical powers to the President. This was the intent of the founders for a very specific reason. To pretend otherwise is simply wrong.

But you ignore the first sentence. Which begins with a direct and opposite statement from your original assertion that the President has no emergency powers. The FACT (stress is imitative) remains, Jarod, that the President does indeed have emergency powers. You didn't say, "in the constitution" you said, "There is no such thing as emergency powers of the president." (I've put the quote below so you can find it as you've demonstrated an inability to read, or, in this case, to tell the truth of what you stated.)

There is no such thing as emergency powers of the president.

I then proceeded to tell you how it was used in the past, gave you SCOTUS rulings on it, and noted what specific legislation, when it was passed, why it was passed, and that now defines those powers, their limitations, and the President's ability to use them. I did that to tell you that this blanket statement in this specific quote was flat wrong.

 

[christiefan915]

Trump can do just about anything he wants to do on the issue of National Security, and certainly can divert monies to secure our borders without asking anyone if it is ok.

It's absurd to assert otherwise

Aren't you the nut bag who keeps claiming Mexico already paid for the wall four times over?

If that's the case trump needs to stop yapping and start building.

 

[MAGA MAN]

Where does the Constitution give him that power?

Or do Republicans not care about that anymore?

Since when have you ever?

 

[Jarod]

But you ignore the first sentence. Which begins with a direct and opposite statement from your original assertion that the President has no emergency powers. The FACT (stress is imitative) remains, Jarod, that the President does indeed have emergency powers. You didn't say, "in the constitution" you said, "There is no such thing as emergency powers of the president." (I've put the quote below so you can find it as you've demonstrated an inability to read, or, in this case, to tell the truth of what you stated.)



I then proceeded to tell you how it was used in the past, gave you SCOTUS rulings on it, and noted what specific legislation, when it was passed, why it was passed, and that now defines those powers, their limitations, and the President's ability to use them. I did that to tell you that this blanket statement in this specific quote was flat wrong.

In that sense, you were right and I was wrong. My blanket statement was incorrect.

But it is not what people are claiming, their is no provision that gives the President the absolute power to do anything other than take some of Congresses rights, and only because Congress allows it. If challenged at the S.Ct. I still think their is a very good chance they would declare the entire Act Unconstitutional. I am not sure its constitutional for Congress to cede its rights to the President. So, in this way of looking at it, we don't really know if the President has that power, it has not been reviewed by the Court.

When emergency powers were used by Roosevelt and Lincoln there was no such thing, and it was an unconstitutional act.

 

[Jarod]

But you ignore the first sentence. Which begins with a direct and opposite statement from your original assertion that the President has no emergency powers. The FACT (stress is imitative) remains, Jarod, that the President does indeed have emergency powers. You didn't say, "in the constitution" you said, "There is no such thing as emergency powers of the president." (I've put the quote below so you can find it as you've demonstrated an inability to read, or, in this case, to tell the truth of what you stated.)



I then proceeded to tell you how it was used in the past, gave you SCOTUS rulings on it, and noted what specific legislation, when it was passed, why it was passed, and that now defines those powers, their limitations, and the President's ability to use them. I did that to tell you that this blanket statement in this specific quote was flat wrong.

I did not ignore the first sentence, I pointed out that it is OPINION.,

 

[Damocles]

In that sense, you were right and I was wrong. My blanket statement was incorrect.

Which is all I have been saying.

But it is not what people are claiming, their is no provision that gives the President the absolute power to do anything other than take some of Congresses rights, and only because Congress allows it. If challenged at the S.Ct. I still think their is a very good chance they would declare the entire Act Unconstitutional. I am not sure its constitutional for Congress to cede its rights to the President. So, in this way of looking at it, we don't really know if the President has that power, it has not been reviewed by the Court.

But it was what I was saying.

When emergency powers were used by Roosevelt and Lincoln there was no such thing, and it was an unconstitutional act.

We can agree, mostly, but it was used, and when SCOTUS ruled against Lincoln he ignored them. When the SCOTUS did recognize such a thing, what the SCOTUS recognized is that some function of government must be able to act in an emergency, and that the only one designed to so such a thing was the Executive. They believed it was limited and that Congress was its check. As I said, read the rulings, they are interesting.

I noted later that I liked the National Emergency Powers Act and why. Defining and limiting what such powers entail is a good thing, as well as setting an expiration date if action isn't taken to renew such things so things like folks being unable to own gold would end... and in the end sanity would prevail.

It's never been my intention to say that Trump can use this to build a wall, because I think that if he tried it would fail miserably. Nor do I think it would because he knows that if he tries it would fail, miserably. It has always been my intention to say that they exist, especially so now with the Act, and told you that the blanket statement was factually incorrect.