The lawsuits have begun.
Still, the Democrats haven’t yet fired on Fort Sumter, as they did the last time they hated a Republican President this much.
Public Citizen in their just filed law brief claimed:
"Rather than responding to an emergency requiring immediate action, the Declaration seeks to address a long-running disagreement between the President and Congress about whether to build a wall along the southwestern border and Congress’s refusal to appropriate funds for that purpose,..."
“If Trump gets away with this, there's no telling what the next concocted "emergency" will be, who will be targeted and what emergency powers will be claimed. We refuse to tolerate this slide to authoritarianism.”
The Democrats, in addition to being hateful, suffer from Myopia, a condition where one can only see what is close. Add blinkers to a person with Myopia and you can understand how someone can see the President’s Declaration of a National Emergency as a push towards authoritarianism.
Everything the President is doing will enhance the safety of American citizens, save American Citizens money in the long run - and nothing he is doing restricts the freedoms of an American Citizen.
More clearly looked at, was the President disposed towards totalitarianism, knowing that there is a crisis at the border, or even feigning a crisis at the border, as the Democrats are claiming, he would have very early on ignored Congress and unilaterally moved swiftly to a Declared National Emergency.
But rather than being a totalitarian, and just being a President who has taken seriously his oath to defend this nation, he chose to involve a hostile Congress in the decision of how best to fund immigration enforcement at our Southern Border. Instead of working with him, the Democratic-controlled House, who as individuals also took a pledge to protect Americans, chose instead to attack the President politically - initially claiming that they would work with him and then immediately after he agreed to negotiate with them, declared that there will be no funding for a wall / a barrier - whatever it is that needs to be constructed to stop illegal border crossings.
A porous border makes America vulnerable to losing our republican culture, vulnerable to the introduction of bad actors into the country who deal in sex crimes and drugs, and vulnerable to terrorists discretely entering our country.
None of these eventualities mean anything to a political Party adhering to a philosophy of open borders and a demonstrated licentiousness in political matters
So, it is interesting how a non-politician, who at times has been observably awkward in his role as President, when he tries to work with a hostile Congress in solving a crisis, and then finally out of necessity does what must be done to protect the country - is labeled a tyrant.
I believe that the President’s political naïveté led him to believe that the Democrats would not do a 180 on their long-held border security position as a matter of national security. He should have sensed their entrenchment before the shutdown, and rather than threaten a National Emergency afterward, he should have early on signed another ‘disgusting’ Continuing Resolution that didn’t contain immigration legislation, and quickly moved to a Declaration; but, he didn’t.
Adding insult to injury, the Democrats’ largesse with the inclusion of 1.2 Billion Dollars for “border security” in the bill (with many restrictions on its use) is picayune ( and insulting) considering President Obama, who often did what he wanted without consulting Congress, was able to find $1,300,000,000.00 in cash laying around somewhere, and sent it off in the middle of the night to Iran.
Had Trump acted without all the histrionics and not spoken about declaring an emergency as much and as often as he did, it would now sound more like an emergency. Of course, the reality is, regardless of how much or how little the President spoke about it, the crisis is still a crisis, and the Democrats would still oppose him.
The President, though, has more options available to him in controlling illegal immigration besides the declared National Emergency. He can do more to keep people from crossing the border by using the Army and Federalized National Guardsmen more effectively. The President has explicit authority to use the National Guard to enforce Federal law.
Immigration is Federal law. I am astounded that this hasn’t been done. Using the Guard and the Military in the background at the border is ineffective when more troops are needed at the front. President Eisenhower Federalized the Arkansas National Guard in 1957 in Little Rock to prevent them from interfering with school integration pursuant to the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. He then called in the 101st Airborne to prevent, the country from “sliding into anarchy”. If today’s mess at the Sothern border with caravans approaching on a weekly basis is not anarchy, I don’t know what would be considered anarchy.
In 1954, during the Eisenhower Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), in cooperation with the Mexican government, rounded up and deported over 1,000,000 illegal aliens.
It is about time to do whatever is necessary to deport those here illegally, from Europeans and Chinese overstaying their Visas to Mexicans and Central Americans crossing the Rio Grande.
While the President is successfully angering the Left, one other measure the President might employ is to challenge the Fourteenth Amendment through the issuance of an Executive Order.
Executive orders are intended to clarify the implementation of legislation vis a vis how the President believes it was intended to be implemented when Congress passed it, or how legislation should be implemented vis a vis the Constitution.
The order would immediately get the Fourteenth Amendment on track to the Supreme Court and we would know very quickly if a new Amendment is needed, or if the current Amendment is fine, being limited to the past and freed slaves and not to tourists or illegal aliens birthing instant baby citizens. That would at least get the ball rolling towards stopping birthright citizenship.