Mark Levin wrote a Facebook note this morning refuting a tweet by NeverTrumper Peter Wehner and explaining why Trump can declare a national emergency to build the wall and why it would be appropriate:
Here’s what he had to say:
These NeverTrumpers get dumber by the minute.
On talk radio tonight I heard a "constitutional conservative" argue Trump should declare a national emergency to do what he wants on the southern border. Remarkable. There's no place they won't go. Once again, can you imagine how the right would have reacted if Obama did this?
— Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner) January 8, 2019
The National Emergencies Act of 1976 allows the president to trigger emergency powers conferred on him not by me but by Congress. It has been in place in various forms for more than 150 years. It confers powers on a president that I think go too far, such as confiscating private businesses, etc. In this case, involving building a border barrier of some kind, that is a uniquely federal governmental responsibility; the president can use the law to undertake such a project and it can be challenged in the courts or overturned by a joint resolution of Congress.
He needs to make his case under the statute, which is an easy case — that securing the southern border is a national emergency given the chaos there and the related consequences, and the refusal by the Democrats to address it in any meaningful way and their holding the rest of the government hostage. The president can use the legitimate legal tools available to him to try to solves these problems. Unlike Obama, he is not legislating by creating, say, DACA, which is unconstitutional and does violate separation of powers. Congress set up this process. This isn’t a misuse of unconstitutional authority. It’s about statutory interpretation.
I would encourage the NeverTrumpers to try to put their country ahead of their egos and try to control their emotional outbursts.
Okay first of all, if Obama declared a national emergency to build the southern border I would have loved it. That would have been awesome. But Obama wasn’t interested in stopping the flow of illegals into this country. Rather, he welcomed it with his policies and we all saw what happened.
But more to the point, Levin is exactly right. It is the fundamental job of the federal government to protect this nation and to control immigration into this country. Period. And if it takes a national emergency to finally do what congresses have failed to do for decades – even after voting to secure the southern border with barriers – then I think it’s appropriate for Trump to use his emergency powers in this regard.
Levin linked to this article from USA Today for more on these emergency powers…