President Donald Trump speaks to the media in Washington, D.C., January 6, 2019. (Joshua Roberts/REUTERS)

Josh Barro tweets:

The complete bad faith of all the conservative commentators claiming to now think billions of dollars for barrier funding inherently important is that Republicans, over and over, chose not to make it a priority in policymaking over the last two years and they didn't care. — Josh Barro (@jbarro) January 8, 2019

And:

The facts are obvious: The president thinks a wall sounds cool, and that's why conservatives find it necessary to build one. The wall is not relevant to the broader agenda — everify, entry-exit visa tracking, reduced legal immigration — that restrictionists want. — Josh Barro (@jbarro) January 8, 2019

Read the whole thread. I think he’s right. The problems at the border are real, even if the White House is deliberately exaggerating those problems. But they are no more real than they were last year or the year before that. But the GOP never delivered on the wall (though President Trump often says that much of the wall has been built — it hasn’t).



My point isn’t to pile on the GOP’s shortcomings or even Trump’s failure to deliver on something he insisted would be easy to do (and he said it would be easy to get Mexico to pay for it).

My point is that declaring a national state of emergency to use military powers to solve a problem that was no less “grave” a year ago is grotesque. As I noted yesterday, the real crisis isn’t a national-security one, it’s a political one for Trump. And even if you favor a wall or enhanced border security that is not an argument for the president formally declaring a national emergency when there isn’t one and deploying the military without congressional approval on American soil.

That would be a serious abuse of power, and Congress shouldn’t stand for it — one way, or another.