National emergency

[Ringo84]

This will be AFAIK the first one to face a court challenge.

Hopefully it'll be tied up in the courts for longer than Donny infests the Oval Office. I've heard that there are Dubya-era eminent domain cases still being litigated, so there's a good chance (from my non-lawyerly vantage) that Donny still won't get his precious wall even with an emergency declaration.
Ringo

 

[TLK Valentine]

We shall see, the precendient been set with other Presidents declaring emergencies, a bi-partisan practice.

Other presidents declared emergencies when emergencies actually existed... a small but crucial detail.

 

[wing2000]

Hopefully it'll be tied up in the courts for longer than Donny infests the Oval Office. I've heard that there are Dubya-era eminent domain cases still being litigated, so there's a good chance (from my non-lawyerly vantage) that Donny still won't get his precious wall even with an emergency declaration.
Ringo

Just out of curiosity, can the POTUS seize privately held land under National Emergency powers?

 

[Orthodoxjay1]

Just out of curiosity, can the POTUS seize privately held land under National Emergency powers?

Hopefully he can seize the opposition lands, before they do it to christians.

 

[wing2000]

Hopefully he can seize the opposition lands, before they do it to christians.

...I kind of doubt Trump cares who owns the privately held land along the Texan / Mexico border.

 

[yougottabekidding]

Declare it! There is yet another caravan, some estimate 12,000 plus on it's way.

Does a president have legal authority to declare a national emergency?
Yes. A relevant law is the National Emergencies Act of 1976.

The act itself did not give a legal definition for a national emergency, nor did it set specific criteria for declaring one. Rather, it created procedural requirements.

It requires a president to formally submit to Congress and to the Federal Register a declaration of the national emergency; to specify the statutory authorities he or she is invoking; and to renew the declaration every year, or it will automatically expire.

"Even though the Constitution itself grants the president very little in the way of emergency authority, Congress has ceded broad powers to the president that he can invoke merely by claiming that an emergency exists," said Gene Healy, a vice president at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Yet another Democratic Sponsored act that has come back to bite them when they don't like the President.

But is it the first?

Trump's wall would be the 32nd active national emergency - CNNPolitics

 

[Ringo84]

Just out of curiosity, can the POTUS seize privately held land under National Emergency powers?

I'm honestly not sure. I hope not.

It sounds to me, though, that Texas landowners near the border are not in favor of a wall. So it's likely they'll fight whatever Donny tries to do.
Ringo

 

[GlabrousDory4]

Your "data" is not very convincing. Illegal immigration is the lowest in 15 years. Great data point. But this data point does not lead to the conclusion there is not a national emergency with the present amount of illegal immigration.

Ahh, this is something we can work with. I will rely on your claimed experience in the sciences for the next bit.

I earlier posed this but you appear to have ignored it, so I'll go over it again. When testing something like this I am testing whether I should give DJT his money or not. Do I feel he is lying to get the money or is it a reasonable ask. (Bear with me, obviously I'm speaking generally).

DJT predicates his claims on the presence of an Emergency. You correctly note that not all emergencies are time-sensitive, so we can't simply assume that because Trump didn't shut the government down during the first 2 years of his administration over this "emergency" to say likely he is lying. But here's how I construct the hypotheses:

(I am counting on you remembering your days doing inferential statistics when you were a sociologist).

Ho (Null Hypothesis): There is no crisis (no need for an emergency declaration)
Ha (ALternate Hypothesis): There is a crisis (need for an emergency declaration)

Note how I constructed that. Just like your sociology experiments or my chemical experiments we first set up the null as "No effect" and test against that. The goal being to see if we can REJECT THE NULL without making an error or FAIL TO REJECT THE NULL.

Now, obviously, we are not working with quantifiable data here so we are left with some more abstract measure of the data.

Is there a crisis or need for an emergency status? Here's the data that I'm using:

1. Illegal immigration numbers across the southern border are DOWN over the past many, many years.

2. Most illegal immigration comes from people overstaying visas (meaning it isn't illegal crossing of the border, especially not along the southern border)

3. Trump promised the wall during his campaign and he made the promise very specific including the size, shape, materials and the fact that Mexico would pay for it. He did this repeatedly.

4. Trump had 2 years to enact this emergency measure to build the wall. But he didn't. Instead he focused on giving tax breaks to millionaires. Suddenly when his party is no longer in power the "Crisis" shows up.

5. The wall is now very different. It isn't a concrete wall, it is steel slats. And most damning of all is that Mexico is clearly NOT going to pay for the wall, by any means whatsoever.

6. Trump and his spokespeople lied about the scope of caravans, especially closer to the election time.

Right now there is almost NO DATA WHATSOEVER that justifies that we decree an emergency, certainly none that is any more pressing today than it was 2 years ago when nothing was done about it by Trump.

Remember: in order to justify the claim of a crisis or need of emergency response there must be actual data in support of that claim. It is not incumbent on anyone to show evidence that there IS NO CRISIS. That is called proving a negative.

And that isn't how we assess this. Look back the model. I'm testing against the null. If there's no data in support of rejecting the null I would be in error to reject the null. That would be a Type I error (false positive)

So let's go one step further. Why would I be hearing that there IS a crisis when no data really support the contention? Well this is where it becomes interesting to look at the source of the information. When I run an experiment in the lab and I keep getting data but I realize my equipment is grossly malfunctioning I cannot then just throw up my hands and say the data is what it is. I have to make sure my equipment is measuring what I think it measures.

Trump lies. He has lied consistently about the Southern border. Whether its lies about the number of "terrorists" detained at the border, or it's lies about diseases coming across the border, or it's likes about the crime rate due to illegal immigrants or it's lies about who is in the caravans, or the amount of drugs coming across the southern border etc. I have a very hard time finding ANYTHING that Trump has ever said about the Southern Border that is true. Ever. Seriously. Can you show me something?

On top of that Trump lies about everything no matter how unimportant.

If I had a piece of lab equipment that almost NEVER GAVE THE RIGHT RESPONSE TO A STANDARD I would be making a serious error in using that data in support of my analyses.

Now, lest you think I'm the Speak or the House or Vladimir Putin or someone with power over the President I want to calm you a bit and let you know I'm just a person. I'm trying to figure out if the claims being made to me are likely true or likely false.

This is how I'm approaching it. I'm doing it using the same tools we all use in the sciences. Best estimates. Best fit of the model.

Hope that clarifies it a bit. Maybe you can dial back the personal attacks and read what I wrote.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Who said anything about race or citizenship? It doesn't matter who is bringing these things in or out of the country. The point is that they are crossing our border....period. The picture of the weapons are the ones seized from American citizens trying to get them into Mexico and put them in the hands of drug cartels.

So a wall is going to stop legal exit and entry? And that's why we need a national emergency?

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

Hopefully he can seize the opposition lands, before they do it to christians.

wut?

 

[ViaCrucis]

Declare it! There is yet another caravan, some estimate 12,000 plus on it's way.

Does a president have legal authority to declare a national emergency?
Yes. A relevant law is the National Emergencies Act of 1976.

The act itself did not give a legal definition for a national emergency, nor did it set specific criteria for declaring one. Rather, it created procedural requirements.

It requires a president to formally submit to Congress and to the Federal Register a declaration of the national emergency; to specify the statutory authorities he or she is invoking; and to renew the declaration every year, or it will automatically expire.

"Even though the Constitution itself grants the president very little in the way of emergency authority, Congress has ceded broad powers to the president that he can invoke merely by claiming that an emergency exists," said Gene Healy, a vice president at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Yet another Democratic Sponsored act that has come back to bite them when they don't like the President.

But is it the first?

Trump's wall would be the 32nd active national emergency - CNNPolitics

I don't think the argument set forth has been that little Donny can't declare a national emergency legally. The argument has been that there is no emergency, and thus declaring a national emergency is just another act of white house buffoonery from the current idiot-in-charge.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[mala]

If he doesn't build the wall, then he lied concerning his promise.

He's already lied about a lot of things. If his base hasn't cared up till this point I doubt they will care about it from now on.

 

[NotreDame]

I know, and that's another of many edge cases that Democrats are going to have to clarify/clamp down upon when they get back in power.

HOWEVER, an emergency does not mean "president sits on his considerable behind for two years stuffing his gullet with McDonald's before losing the House and then trying to declare an emergency". It's an example of 'can do this', but not necessarily 'will be successful with this' or 'should do this'.

So you're technically correct, but the fact that it took two years for Donny to decide that there was a "problem" invalidates his claim of an "emergency".
Ringo

Not really. It could be he chose two years were spent seeking to utilize non-emergency powers for an emergency situation.

After all, he received funding to repair and refortify existing border wall in 2017, along with money for other border security measures. His administration began separating families in an effort to deter the flow of illegal immigration at the border. He has requested, on more than one occasion, funding to build more wall. Issued an EO restricting asylum claims to be made at ports of entry. Issued an EO increasing the number of illegal immigrant that are a priority for deportation. He cancelled Temporary Protective Status. Issued an EO to end DACA.

Finding those measures inadequate for the emergency, and Congress not giving him funding for a wall that he believes is part and parcel of combating illegal immigration, facilitates combating illegal immigration, he decided to formally declare what was already, and in his mind he believed, to be an emergency.

 

[NotreDame]

What does that mean (honest question; not trying to be argumentative) - that Congress gets to decide? That seems like a poorly thought out plan, since if the president's party controls all the chambers of Congress, they can declare whatever they want. I don't think that fits with the founders' vision of coequal branches of government that serve as checks on each other.

Because there is no emergency, and because there is neither the public will nor the necessity to build this stupid wall, I would argue (and yes, I know it's "not what the statute says") that Donny should not be able to finagle his way to throwing money down the drain for nothing.
Ringo

To an extent, yes, it means Congress to decide by passing legislation, if they want, clearly delineating guidelines of what is or is not a national emergency, and the President can sign or veto it.

That is consistent with the coequal branches of government notion. Congress can check the Executive by law.

 

[mala]

Not really. It could be he chose two years were spent seeking to utilize non-emergency powers for an emergency situation.

After all, he received funding to repair and refortify existing border wall in 2017, along with money for other border security measures. His administration began separating families in an effort to deter the flow of illegal immigration at the border. He has requested, on more than one occasion, funding to build more wall. Issued an EO restricting asylum claims to be made at ports of entry. Issued an EO increasing the number of illegal immigrant that are a priority for deportation. He cancelled Temporary Protective Status. Issued an EO to end DACA.

Finding those measures inadequate for the emergency, and Congress not giving him funding for a wall that he believes is part and parcel of combating illegal immigration, facilitates combating illegal immigration, he decided to formally declare what was already, and in his mind he believed, to be an emergency.

interesting because he employs undocumented immigrants in his hotels. strange strange strange indeed. maybe they ran out of taco bowls.

 

[Ringo84]

Which can be easily answered with research that shows that apprehensions of the border have been dropping since 2000: There Is No Border Crisis

If we're fortifying border wall that we already have, and border apprehensions have been dropping, then there is no emergency. There's just an old man having a temper tantrum over scary brown people.

Seems like a monumentally bad idea to base decisions on "well, the president really believes it to be true". I really believe that we should have single-payer health care, so I'll just declare an emergency and get it done. I really believe that global warming is a problem that we have little time to fix, so I'll declare an emergency. I've heard that courts aren't eager to rule in favor of that particular abuse of power.
Ringo

 

[NotreDame]

Which can be easily answered with research that shows that apprehensions of the border have been dropping since 2000: There Is No Border Crisis

If we're fortifying border wall that we already have, and border apprehensions have been dropping, then there is no emergency. There's just an old man having a temper tantrum over scary brown people.
Ringo

Dropping numbers doesn’t mean no crisis. Dropping numbers also doesn’t mean no emergency.

 

[mala]

Which can be easily answered with research that shows that apprehensions of the border have been dropping since 2000: There Is No Border Crisis

If we're fortifying border wall that we already have, and border apprehensions have been dropping, then there is no emergency. There's just an old man having a temper tantrum over scary brown people.
Ringo

i honestly doubt that he even really cares. it's more that he is easily manipulated by the likes of stephen miller and the perception of tv personalities that he appears to be weak and caving.

 

[Ringo84]

Dropping numbers doesn’t mean no crisis. Dropping numbers also doesn’t mean no emergency.

Of course it does. It proves that everything he's said about the so-called "crisis" at the border is a lie. Where's the proof of the "crisis" if the numbers and experience on the ground don't support it?
Ringo

 

[Ringo84]

i honestly doubt that he even really cares. it's more that he is easily manipulated by the likes of stephen miller and the perception of tv personalities that he appears to be weak and caving.

Oh, I definitely don't think he does. I think he's scared out of what mind he has of Mexicans and has been a virulent racist his entire life. That's just been cultivated by bad-faith actors like Miller*, Bannon and others who see Donny as an opportunity to see their white supremacist dreams come to fruition.

That we're even still talking about his wall like it's going to happen is probably more a testimony of Donny's stubbornness than anything else.


*To the extent that generational cohorts mean anything, Miller is a cohort of my generation: the Millennials/Xennials. I wish we could disown him.
Ringo