I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
Well, he puts his cigar out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window, it is made out of bricks
The national guard stands around his door
Ah, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
Bob Dylan
Donald Trump has threatened to call a state of emergency if he fails to secure funding in order the build his border wall. This is obviously unethical, but could it be done and what would the consequences be?
Technically, yes it would work and could open up alternative avenues for procuring the billions needed to fulfil Trump’s most discussed and ridiculous campaign promise.
However, any attempt to engage on this course of action would undoubtedly be met with legal challenges, perhaps even from both sides, but what legal standings any challenges would have are blurry and how they would hold up against a determined Trump administration is unclear.
“Let me be very clear,” stated Trump “we really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier. If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on 15 February again, or I will use the powers afforded to me under the law and the constitution of the US to address this emergency.”
While many experts agree that this could be a massive abuse of power, it would be one way on which Trump could give himself a massive advantage over those who may wish to throw spanners in the works of his border wall plans.
Now that the US government has been reopened for the next three weeks, it could well be time for democrats to double down, how they do this, however, is a tricky question.
They could potentially reject any further negotiations for funding, and then, when the Donald declares a national emergency in order to gain the funding from elsewhere (possibly the military budget), shout from the rafters how big an abuse of executive power that could be, but this would be a ‘hit and hope’ strategy that depends on variables such as public and the media reception, both of which can be notoriously unpredictable.
Controversy, or at least the damp, swampy feel of it, seems to surround Donald Trump and his administration and these latest demands will likely come as no shock to anyone who has been keeping at least half of one of their eyes on the US president since his bombastic campaign and terrifying victory.
The air of anti-establishment populism that now fills the halls of the white house like an unchecked draught is stagnating quicker than it takes to say “fake news” and US policy makers no doubt have a fight on their hands over the coming weeks.
Their fight withers in comparison, however, to that of the 800,000 or so federal workers that have gone without pay since the shutdown initiated and are only now since the reopening able to claim pay checks that had been delayed.
It would be interesting to see how many of those workers agreed with Trump’s actions and were working without pay because they ‘understood’ what The Donald was doing. How many of them ‘got it’ and gladly watched their debts mount in order to secure funding for the wall? Not very many, I’ll bet.
One thing that has occurred to this author in the past few moments is that, with his persistent use of divisive tactics and dismissive, some would argue disrespectful, attitude towards traditional presidential custom and tradition, are the President and the advisors and yes-men he surrounds himself with creating the very conditions for the emergence of a kind of ‘deep state’ their more conspiracy-orientated supporters are convinced already exists?
So why would they then make it easy for him? Is The Donald making enemies with the worst kind of people possible, those with their hands grasping the edges of the carpet upon which he stands?
Maybe, only time will tell, but after demanding over five billion dollars of public money for his wall project, the President has now had to back down and reopen the government after gaining the grand total of zero.
This guy really is quite something…
Writing Wrong 