Trump’s National Emergency: A Preemptive Response
A few days ago, I posted an essay about the border wall / shutdown fiasco. It contended that President Trump, fully misreading the political battlefield, would be taken apart by Nancy Pelosi over the coming weeks. The crux of the argument was that by not securing payroll funding for Border Patrol and ICE officers, the President ensured that his political support would collapse under the weight of their unpaid mortgages and credit card bills. He could hold out for a while, but eventually his frontline immigration agents would cry uncle and Trump would be cooked. Once he lost them to the realities of the modern economy, the rest of his “plan” — such as it is — would disintegrate.
By the current rules of governance, I still think that is the most likely scenario. In fact, I don’t see a way out of it under normal order. To use a gambler’s metaphor, in this high-stakes poker game, Speaker Pelosi holds the nut cards. She simply can’t be beat, she knows it, and she’s playing like it. What I’d missed, of course, is that Trump being Trump, when presented with a no-win situation, is far more likely to kick over the table and pull his six-gun than he is to take his lumps like a true cowboy.
Thus, tonight on national television, we will likely see Trump either declaring a national emergency or threatening to do so if the Democrats in Congress don’t cave to his border wall demands. The idea would be that under the National Emergencies Act, he could order the military to build a border wall using previously allocated monies from the budget of the Armed Services.
The whole idea is nuts. Imagining the Army Corps of Engineers erecting defensive fortifications on our southern border is crazy as hell. But, well . . . Trump.
Yet, if he does so, I say that those of us in the resistance look at the bright side! I say we use our best befuddled good nature when debating the Lynchburg Lemmings of our social media worlds who make up the President’s base! I say we embrace the notion and then get them do describe WHY this is a crisis of such epic proportions that it requires overturning the will of the voters and the norms of our republican system of governance to achieve his ends.
Chances are the President will outline — and the knuckleheads will parrot — how the “crisis at the border” is a national emergency. It will almost assuredly cite the dangers that an unsecured border poses to American civilians. The simplest version being:
There’s the danger of crime.
There’s the danger of terrorism.
There’s the danger of drugs.
There’s the danger of gangs.
We can take that argument and, doing a bit of jiu-jitsu, turn the stupidity back around on them.
And so, I’m now going to declare my unabashed support of President Elizabeth Warren, in her first act in office, declaring homelessness a national emergency. I fully (and preemptively) support her wise and reasoned order that the United States military immediately surrender $25 billion of their overall budget, and that they begin the construction of housing for the half a million American who sleep on the streets every night!
Those Americans are at an enormous risk of being mugged, killed, or raped every night of their lives. They need homes, private homes, to live in.
Those Americans, our countrymen and countrywomen, sleep in public railway stations, subway tunnels, bank entrances — all of which are the known targets of terrorist bombs. They deserve to be safe behind their own four walls.
Their world is flooded with drugs and drug users, putting our brothers and sisters at constant risk of being drawn into a world of disease and criminality. They, and we, deserve better. They deserve a place to live.
Homeless Americans, many of whom are veterans, are prayed upon by gangs like MS-13, both as victims AND as targets for recruitment into the ranks of those organized, violent lives. We can’t morally allow them to go without the dignity of private housing a moment longer.
The Homeless of our Streets are Americans First! They are our fellow citizens and if their plight — our plight — is certainly an emergency of greater proportion then poor migrant families presenting themselves for asylum at the border — and any reasonable Trump supporter would have to acknowledge that obvious, self-evident truth.
Now, I don’t expect that argument to work with Trump or his gelded flock or angry sheep. Nor do I really expect (or even want) a Democratic President to suspend the literal rule of law to achieve political ends, no matter how much more moral and defensible the action would be. But if we could just penetrate a damn inch into the skulls of our political opposition about how unbelievably dangerous it is to allow this foolish, foolish man to upend our entire structure of government rather than simply accepting that he has been outplayed in this instance and LEARNING from the experience, it would be worth it.
I’m not hopeful.
I’ll leave you with this: A few days ago, I felt pretty assured that Trump had backed himself into a corner. I felt he had blundered so badly that he would be forced to face the consequences of not looking at the whole picture and thinking strategically. I’m not feeling that now. Rather, I’m more than a little scared that when faced with the first challenge of his tenure in office by a political opposition with the leverage of Congressional power, his reaction will be to actually call in the United States military to secure his will and vision. And the Republican Party will sit silently and let it happen.
Jesus. That is terrifying. And it sure as hell won’t stop there.
I guess we’ll see where we are at about 10PM tonight. I wish us luck.
