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Trump Declares National Emergency at the Southern Border
Fox News reports:
President Trump said Friday he is declaring a national emergency on the southern border, tapping into executive powers in a bid to divert billions toward construction of a wall even as he plans to sign a funding package that includes just $1.4 billion for border security. “We’re going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border … one way or the other, we have to do it,” Trump said in the Rose Garden.
The text of the Executive Order declaring a national emergency has been made available at Whitehouse.gov:
Published in GeneralThe current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency. The southern border is a major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics. The problem of large-scale unlawful migration through the southern border is long-standing, and despite the executive branch’s exercise of existing statutory authorities, the situation has worsened in certain respects in recent years. In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending. If not detained, such aliens are often released into the country and are often difficult to remove from the United States because they fail to appear for hearings, do not comply with orders of removal, or are otherwise difficult to locate. In response to the directive in my April 4, 2018, memorandum and subsequent requests for support by the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense has provided support and resources to the Department of Homeland Security at the southern border. Because of the gravity of the current emergency situation, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to provide additional support to address the crisis.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 201 and 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States, and that section 12302 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretaries of the military departments concerned, subject to the direction of the Secretary of Defense in the case of the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. To provide additional authority to the Department of Defense to support the Federal Government’s response to the emergency at the southern border, I hereby declare that this emergency requires use of the Armed Forces and, in accordance with section 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1631), that the construction authority provided in section 2808 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretary of Defense and, at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, to the Secretaries of the military departments. I hereby direct as follows:
Section 1. The Secretary of Defense, or the Secretary of each relevant military department, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, shall order as many units or members of the Ready Reserve to active duty as the Secretary concerned, in the Secretary’s discretion, determines to be appropriate to assist and support the activities of the Secretary of Homeland Security at the southern border.
Sec. 2. The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and, subject to the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretaries of the military departments, shall take all appropriate actions, consistent with applicable law, to use or support the use of the authorities herein invoked, including, if necessary, the transfer and acceptance of jurisdiction over border lands.
Sec. 3. This proclamation is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand nineteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-third.
DONALD J. TRUMP
I’m not saying there won’t be consequences down the line, just that we won’t remember this happened in a couple weeks. Do you remember last months GIANT news? Nah, me either.
Everyone’s justification of why we need a border wall and issues they have with immigration do not also justify the blatant fact that this is purely a way for Trump to get what he wants since Congress refuses to give it to him. Whether or not you personally believe there is some situation at the border that constitutes a crisis, in my mind there is no arguing that Trump is using this as a political tool. That is my, an many other people’s problem with this. If, when a congress of a different party doesn’t give a president what he wants, he can just do it anyway…..what the $&@# do we have a congress for?? I don’t give a darn if you want a wall, that isn’t a reason to turn the executive into a monarchy. It wasn’t when Obama was president and it isn’t now.
It’s already been done. We’re you on the Space Station during the Obama Presidency?
It’s all politics. Starting with how the Democrats have been acting. Way more political across the board. So Republicans can’t be political? So they have to maintain all the standards so people like you can feel like you have an argument against their actions- repeated actions. They don’t care. They aren’t even discussing it. Meanwhile, they get to have it both ways, and enlist people like you for support?
Boy are they getting mileage out of principled Republicans.Then when they do the same, they will claim every Republican- that would include you, sir, – was squarely behind Trump on this, forgetting all the GOPers they trotted out on CNN and MSNBC denouncing as “purely political” this move was.
Listen, just keep denouncing Trump, and then when Democrats do something unconstitutional you can tell them they are being “just like Trump”. That’ll stop them!
We are not the parents of Democrats. They aren’t following anyone’s example, they just want power.
This may have been a bad political move, I don’t know yet, but standing on these glorious principles has been a complete loser. I’m not seeing any real infraction here anyway except for “ political motivations” .
The constitution needs preserving, but one side doing it by example while the other is doing nothing but trying (and succeeding!) to undermine it everywhere doesn’t make any sense. The charge of hypocrisy shouldn’t be taken too seriously coming from these people.
Gary : “Perhaps you missed the news that William Weld is running for President in the Republican Primary. If not Weld, then Larry Hogan. If not Larry Hogan then any Republican with a pulse.”
With all due respect Gary, there is not one moderate Republican out there who has shown the guts, fortitude, patriotism and brains to begin to solve any of America’s many problems, not just immigration.
Part of the problem is that way too many moderate Republicans, including most of the Republicans now serving in the Senate and House, have for far too long have failed to lift even a finger to counter the absurd and often gratuitously illegal actions of the Marxist Progressives, while on the hand have leaped with great fervor to stab the Republican base in the back when the country needed a stalwart stand the most.
I think the budget scam just concocted by McConnell and friends was a watershed kind of political turning point event where the Republican political class with no ambiguity whatsoever gave the Republican base and indeed America itself, a big, fat ugly middle finger salute essentially telling us we are now a Country for the Entrenched Special Interests, by the Entrenched Special Interests and of the Entrenched Special Interests and that you bitter clinging peons out there of the Republican base are now just powerless serfs who we the entrenched elite will slowly and mercilessly grind into oblivion.
I think you moderates best be careful for your friends in Congress may have just poured gasoline all over and lit a flame to a very explosive cauldron of boiling anger that if it explodes may take America to some very ugly depths.
William Weld, champion of “true conservative” Gary Robbins…. still laughing!
He’s gonna inspire and convince! OMG!
He just needs to get elected….
i can’t….
The Bill Weld Republican Primary run should be called the (R) Consultant Full Employment Act.
Some (R) insider consultants will make a few million flopping around pretending Bill Weld is a serious contender until realty (an actual Primary vote) slaps everyone in the face with the realization that, in giving money for a Bill Weld primary challenge, they are paying for the new built in swimming pool at the (R) consultants summer home in the Hamptons.
Nicely put.
Also, incredibly incisive.
Given that Weld was a popular re-elected Governor in Massachusetts, and Hogan is a popular re-elected Governor in Maryland, and Trump had never been elected to anything, they would be much better than the Anti-Reagan, Trump.
Elected and re-elected as Governor. But Weld’s strongest claim to fame is that he isn’t Trump, and that he has a pulse.
I just contributed $100 to Bill Weld’s campaign. The website notes that he won re-election as Massachusetts’ Governor with 71% of the vote, when only 14% of his voters were Republicans. Not bad. Certainly better than the Anti-Reagan incumbemt Trump.
Gary, Bill Weld is to the left of Shultz. He was for gay marriage and legalized maryjane…in 1992! That was before most Democrats! He’s pro-choice, too.
So let me get this straight, the fact that he was elected in Massachusetts by an overwhelming margin of mostly Democrats makes him someone you, a Reagan conservative think is worthy? And you gave him money?
from what I remember about Flint, didn’t it come out that several people knew about the problem months, if not years, before it was ‘discovered’? Weren’t there mainly Democrats in charge of Flint, but there was a Republican governor who took office not too long before the ‘discovery’? It was present before him, but he got the blame, as I recall.
Is it possible there was something else going in the Obama administration that needed a ‘shiny object’ to divert everyone’s attention? If so, Flint fit the bill…..
I just created a post about William Weld on the Member Feed with his platform.
“Any Republican with a pulse”. Yeah, Gary, that’s a slogan to stir the fiery passion in the breasts of the citizens! Sheesh, man–who in the field of ‘R’ candidates of 2016 would have stood up to all the crap, vitriol, lies, slander, hate, and lawlessness of the media, Democrats, and NeverTrumpers for longer than a week, much less over 2 YEARS? Maybe Trump got favors so he couldn’t serve in the military, but I think the military, law enforcement, border patrol, and the citizens who elected him appreciate the fight he’s putting up for the country. Maybe God does have a plan, and we’re not able to figure it out, but Trump’s the President, and we need to support him. Media figures who are calling him an idiot because he hasn’t, yet, come through on the wall (when he’s done more good otherwise than anyone since Reagan) can take a long walk off a short pier into an empty pool (looking at you, Coulter!).
I can think of 16 candidates who could have and would have done so better than the Anti-Reagan, Trump.
Let’s see what the 2020 primary voters say!
Yes. $100. Someone must take on the Anti-Reagan, Trump.
I don’t think this emergency declaration is a good idea, but neither am I inclined to oppose the only Republican who is currently the president.
Given all the rabid opposition Trump has faced, including members of the FBI and DoJ fomenting a coup, I think it’s astonishing that he has been able to accomplish as much as he has.
I don’t think Trump supporters will hold it against him that he didn’t get the wall, but Republicans who have always opposed him certainly will.
They weep bitter tears that the economy is doing well, that Trump has governed in a reasonable manner up to now, and that he has accomplished more for the conservative cause than they ever could simply because he means what he says, something that is completely foreign to them.
Just think what could have been done if 10% of the opposition had helped him! You’re right—he means what he says, which is foreign to his opponents, because they say one thing, and then say it meant something else! Black is white, hot is cold, etc.
To me, this was enough to justify the label “emergency.”
Hahahahaha. You mean the guy who endorsed Clinton and Obama?
How do you think he got elected in Massachusetts? He was more Liberal than the Liberals.
Exactly and ideology is what’s preventing people from seeing it.
You realize you pissed it away.
President Trump, in the Q&A/press scrum after his Friday remarks, lauded Rush Limbaugh’s rare ability to talk, without taking calls, for 3 hours a day on the radio. It is a talent.
Yes. Dennis Prager will mention occasionally how not everyone can create meaningful audio content worth listening to, 3 hours/day, 5 days/week
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the content of Walsh’s radio show, as much as I personally am unable to tolerate a slow talker.
Having a president exercise statutory authority, powers granted to presidents, not a personality, by Congress, is the farthest thing from monarchy. If you are really worried here, you will be calling your member of Congress and Senators to exercise the statutory remedy: vote to end the national emergency. Here is the law to which you should direct their attention: 50 U.S. Code § 1622 – National emergencies:
I laid all this out in The “411” on “National Emergency.”
I have developed an aversion to the inverse as well, with Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro being too exhausting.
You mean the one Trump signed into law?
Well then, by that logic, the number of “record” drug busts that occur every month should be more than enough of an “emergency” to justify suspending the Constitution.
After all, it’s an emergency.