On Friday, President Trump took the step of declaring a national emergency for the purposes of helping build a wall on the US border with Mexico. I do not wish to litigate that decision here. If you want to discuss the merits or details of that decision, we already have a great conversation about that which you can find here.

Rather, I want to discuss the general principles that make one kind of presidential action acceptable and another not acceptable, and where the line should be drawn between the two.

I prompted by this comment in the above-mentioned thread from Ricochet member @manny. I had posed the question, if this was such a national emergency, why wait until now to declare one. Manny replied:

[The President] gave Congress the deference to tackle it first, which would have been the preferred method, but they punted. Given they punted, there is no alternative but to declare an emergency. Nothing is being done to solve the crises. So it’s time to take executive action.

If you want to see the full comment and its context, you can find that here.

I should correct something in this statement. Congress didn’t “punt,” they examined the situation and decided they did not share the President’s evaluation, and chose not to fund his proposed solution.

But this is interesting as a statement of general principle.

So, if the President sees a crisis or crises, asks Congress to approve a proposed solution, and Congress chooses not to approve the President’s proposed solution — Is it acceptable for the President to take executive action and do it anyway?

I think everyone reading this would object if a President Harris asked Congress to fund a Green New Deal, and when they refused, declared an emergency, and spent the money anyway, claiming that Congress “punted” and that “Nothing is being done to solve the crises. So it’s time to take executive action.” (After all, what could be a bigger existential emergency than climate change?)

So where is the line then? What makes the Trump example okay, but the Harris example bad?

I should state, unambiguously, that I see neither example as acceptable. It is not acceptable for a President to use executive powers to do an end-run around Congress. It might be different if Congress had not or could not specifically weigh in on the issue. But in the case of both the real example and the hypothetical example, the plan was presented to the Congress, they refused the President’s proposed solution, and the President claimed extraordinary executive powers to do otherwise. Presidents can and do frequently have their legislative will thwarted by Congress. It is not acceptable for them to then claim it is an emergency and do it anyway.

I’d also like to say, it makes me very uncomfortable to see a President declare an emergency and then use the military to do something that the legislature refuses to do. It strikes me as not only wildly inappropriate, but dangerously anti-republican, not only in the action itself, but the precedent it sets. The action smacks of despotism. The precedent is potentially republic-ending.

But perhaps not everyone shares my evaluation. Maybe I’m all turned around on the subject. Maybe there’s some angle I’m missing or some distinction I’m not drawing.

So I want to pose a few questions for discussion:

What is the general principle at work here? When is it okay for a President to engage what is, in essence, legislative action, when Congress refuses to do so?

And to those of you who approved of President Trump’s action on Friday:

Where are the lines between what is acceptable and what is not? And what is the limiting principle here?