The more I think about it, the more I think today’s fiasco is low-key one of the stupidest, most self-defeating episodes of Trump’s presidency. He had total control of government for two years, at any point of which he could have demanded full funding for the wall, and somehow he parlayed it into:

1. A bad immigration bill which his base despises and which gives him barely more than a billion dollars for “fencing,” and

2. An emergency declaration which the public hates, which probably won’t stand up in court, and, if it does, will certainly benefit the left’s agenda more long-term than it will the right’s.

Oh, and he shut down the government in the process to make all of that happen, taking a (temporary) hit to his approval rating in the process. It’s almost miraculously incompetent.

At least he earned some cred from his populist fans by declaring that emergency, though. Wait, no? They still think he’s a sellout?





Philip Klein sees the future. And not the distant future, either:

Those who seek to limit the size and scope of government should want it to be more difficult for the executive to arbitrarily use power. That Trump is taking this action means that a Republican president will have been on board with using emergency powers to undertake a massive infrastructure project without the consent of Congress. What’s more, the Republican leader in the Senate, along with no doubt plenty of other Republicans, will have signed on this action, along with, no doubt, plenty of conservative Trump cheerleaders. For the past week, we’ve been debating infeasibility of the Green New Deal. But many of its provisions suddenly become a lot more politically possible if a president is allowed to seize emergency powers in such a way. If Trump succeeds, it would not be difficult for a Democrat to declare an emergency based on the National Climate Assessment, and then go about using the military for massive infrastructure projects in clean energy.

“I don’t want this national emergency move to become the new Harry Reid’s filibuster reform,” warns Dana Loesch. Better hope that Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh “disappoint” the right by nuking this power grab, then. Because, as you’re about to see, Nancy Pelosi’s already thinking about the possibilities of future executive decrees. Selling the public on the idea that gun violence is a national emergency would be a lot easier than selling them on the idea that illegal immigration is.

By the way, most of the chatter this past week from the media’s White House sources was that Trump *wouldn’t* declare an emergency. Rather, he’d cite some form of “legal executive authority” to try to re-appropriate Pentagon money for the wall. The advantage of doing that was that it would have prevented Congress from holding a vote to try to rescind his order; by law, in cases of an emergency decree, the House and Senate can act to nullify the decree. The fact that Trump is going ahead with a decree anyway makes me think he’s confident that, with McConnell’s backing, the GOP caucus will fall in line and not try to override any emergency declaration. To put that another way, it’s within the power of 20 Senate Republicans to stop him from setting this garbage precedent. But they won’t do it because they care more about their jobs than they do about letting POTUS flout separation of powers, even knowing full well how this will be used against the right down the road.