U.S. VOTERS CONSIDER THREE ISSUES, ALL MAJOR PROBLEMS

…Senator Susan Collins, (R-ME) feels Trump is rendering the Congress Appropriations process meaningless.

Opioid addiction, Climate change and the Southern Border, all are considered major issues.

For weeks, Washington lawmakers and White House staffers had warned Trump against declaring his national emergency declaration at the southern border.  This is especially a big issue since Trump had promised for two years that Mexico would pay for the wall.  Why the president thinks he can now force the American taxpayers to pay for his wall, and that the money would come from areas where the Congress has already appropriated the money, that’s against the US Constitution and the separation of powers.

Even the Republicans, especially in the Senate, are divided on this move, which is “one of the most serious executive branch challenges to congressional authority in decades.” 

As expected, a coalition of 16 states yesterday (so far) has filed a federal lawsuit aimed at blocking President Trump from following through on his emergency declaration to use existing money to build his border wall. 

Many in his own party are talking out against this move.

“He is usurping congressional authority,” Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) told the New York Times. “If the president can reallocate for his purposes billions of dollars in federal funding that Congress has approved for specific purposes and have been signed into law, that has the potential to render the appropriations process meaningless.”

It would only take four Republicans to join with Senate Democrats to pass legislation rebuking the president, and leadership aides have put the number of potential defectors as high as 10, reports the Times.

Sixteen states governed by Democratic governors, with the exception of Maryland, though that state's attorney general is a Democrat, they are seeking an injunction to “prevent the president from acting on his emergency declaration while the case plays out in the courts,” per my colleague Amy Goldstein. 

The complaint, filed in a US District Court for the Northern District of California (known for ruling against Trump), accuses the president of “an unconstitutional and unlawful scheme” and argues the states are working “to protect their residents, natural resources, and economic interests from President Donald J. Trump’s flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution.” The lawsuit cites a handful of Trump's own tweets. 

Key facts from the Lawsuit: “There is also no objective basis for President Trump’s Emergency Declaration. By the President’s own admission, an emergency declaration is not necessary. The federal government’s own data prove there is no national emergency at the southern border that warrants construction of a wall. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) data show that unlawful entries are near 45-year lows. The State Department recognizes there is a lack of credible evidence that terrorists are using the southern border to enter the United States.  Federal data confirm that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than are native-born Americans.  CBP data demonstrate that dangerous drugs are much more likely to be smuggled through, not between, official ports of entry,  rendering a border wall ineffectual at preventing their entry into this country,” according to the suit. 

Other lawsuits already filed include a Public Citizen suit “on Behalf of Affected Texas Landowners, Environmental Group;” a suit from the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Legal Defense Fund. “If he gets his way, it’ll be a disaster for communities and wildlife along the border, including some of our country’s most endangered species,” according to Brian Segee, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The ACLU is expected to file its lawsuit this week. “What Trump is doing is patently illegal, because there is no emergency,” Cecelia Wang, the deputy director of the ACLU, writes. “He even admitted it himself during his news conference today: 'I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.' ”

However, Americans need to know that there are a number of conditions that do work in Trump's favor.  The litany of legal measures could become only a temporary roadblock. That's because there's pretty broad criteria for what constitutes an emergency under existing law: 

1. Congress won't likely overrule a presidential veto, report The Times's: Carl Hulse and Glenn Thrush. House Democrats have already said they plan to spearhead a resolution of disapproval on Trump's move, which will likely pass that chamber.  Under law, the Senate is bound to take up that measure, and it could even pass it.  But Trump could veto it, and overriding that would take an unlikely two-thirds majority in both congressional chambers.

As Hulse and Thrush put it: " . . . the unrest seemed well short of the sort of partywide revolt necessary to override a veto by Mr. Trump of any legislative attempt to prevent his declaration of an emergency, leaving a legal challenge as the only recourse.”

“I would not vote for disapproval,” said Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), according to The Times. “He’s got the power to defend the country, to defend the borders, to protect the people as commander in chief. I believe the courts would uphold him on this.”

2.   In the courts, Trump might lose in the 9th Circuit. But he could win on the Supreme          Court, to which he has appointed two members.

The justices have already shown a "willingness to defer to Trump on claims of national security” the Brennan Center's Elizabeth Goitein writes in The Post. "When he invoked broad immigration powers to ban travel from majority-Muslim countries after revising the ban twice to deal with objections from lower courts, five Supreme Court justices were willing to credit paper-thin national security justifications and ignore obvious signs of an unconstitutional motive."

The key quote: “There is a risk that the Supreme Court or other courts could take a similar approach here — and that they could choose to read the emergency powers themselves quite broadly.”

Trump has figured this out: “We will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we'll get another bad ruling, and then we'll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we'll get a fair shake," Trump said this during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden. “Look I expect to be sued. and we'll win in the Supreme Court.” 

3. A possible  Win-Win?  That is if the lawmakers override Trump's veto or if the courts rule against him, some strategists say the president will emerge unscathed from the situation with a political boost as he can now tell his backers he lost, but he was willing to take on the Courts and the Congress. 

However, none of these scenarios negates the possibility of serious backlash among voters that are outside of the president's wall-loving base.  Trump's “willingness to fabricate a national crisis and subvert constitutional checks and balances to avoid legislative defeat places him closer to a Ferdinand Marcos than to a Ronald Reagan.”  That quote was from political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who argue: “How would a president who is willing to fabricate a national emergency over a simple legislative impasse behave during a real security crisis?"

What is noteworthy is that a Fox News poll released last week found a majority of Americans, 56%, are "opposed to the president declaring a national emergency as a way to construct the wall without congressional approval." 

“But, 63% of voters consider the situation at the southern border a major problem. The same number, 63%, also feel that way about climate change.  The Opioid addiction dwarfs that at 87%, who consider that another emergency or major problem.”  This is all per the Fox poll. 

Still fuming over former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe's new book, Trump's Presidents' Day Tweet Storm culminated with a quote from Fox News', Sean Hannity accusing McCabe of "plotting a government overthrow when he was serving in the FBI, before he was fired for lying and leaking."  Just another Fox lie in support of Trump.

Trump’s allegations refer to McCabe’s claims that he “discussed ‘counting votes’ among Cabinet members to see who would consider invoking the 25th Amendment, which removes a president from power in the event he is ‘unable to discharge’ his duties.  This occurred after Trump had fired FBI director, James Comey, and the bureau was in chaos and wondering if Trump was working for Russia.

Trump also accused Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein of engaging in “illegal and treasonous” activities with McCabe.  CNN’s Laura Jarrett broke the news that Rosenstein will be stepping down from his current position in mid-March.

Newly confirmed Attorney General Bill Barr has selected Jeffrey Rosen, the current deputy transportation secretary, as his deputy AG to replace Rosenstein.

This is another issue in dealing with President Trump that, “It ain’t over, til it’s over.”

Copyright G.Ater  2019