Thread by @JewhadiTM

Dump The National Emergencies Act, via@Julie_Kelly2 bit.ly/2FsZ9V3

One of the more revelatory aspects of the Trump era is how the national media, after taking an extended nap between 2009 and 2017, now are very worried about constitutional overreach by the executive branch.

Presidential power-grabs—which were super cool just five years ago when Barack Obama threatened to use “a pen and a phone” to work around a Republican-controlled legislative branch—suddenly went out of style in January 2017.

Obama needed to take unilateral action as a last resort, the media argued, because of those big, bad Republicans.

“Blocked for most of his presidency by Congress, Obama has sought to act however he could,” lamented the New York Times in August 2016.

“In the process he created the kind of government neither he nor the Republicans wanted—one that depended on bureaucratic bulldozing rather than legislative transparency.”

But it was for our own good, insisted the Times. “An army of lawyers working under Obama’s authority has sought to restructure the nation’s health care and financial industries, limit pollution, bolster workplace protections and extend equal rights to minorities.

The former president often defended himself to sympathetic journalists. “I am not going to apologize for trying to do something while they’re doing nothing,” he boasted to George Stephanopoulos in a June 2014 interview on ABC News.

To what was Obama referring? Immigration. “The majority of the American people want to see immigration reform done.”

We had a bipartisan bill through the Senate, and you’re going to squawk if I try to fix some parts of it administratively that are within my authority while you are not doing anything?”

But now that Donald Trump in the White House and Democrats are in control of the House, the same rules do not apply

Trump is correct when he says that invoking the National Emergencies Act (NEA) is wholly within his presidential purview.

Whether it’s a smart political move is a separate discussion, but there is little doubt he has the legal authority to stem the flow of illegal immigrants at our southern border via that statute.

So, political foes are dispatching Trump to a presidential No Man’s Land, alternatively downplaying (or entirely ignoring) previous applications of the law and fabricating fictional scenarios about how future Democrats could exploit Trump’s alleged precedent—”whatifism.”

The most outlandish warning is that a Democratic president could declare climate change a national emergency and take any number of drastic measures, from shutting down coal plants to forcing the military to build wind turbines.

Perhaps these folks don’t remember that the Obama Administration declared war on carbon dioxide in 2009, paving the way to propose hundreds of billions in federal regulations with the alleged purpose of limiting carbon emissions;

this included attempting to execute the Clean Power Plan, which the Supreme Court found so excessive and outside the authority of the executive branch that it took the highly unusual move of halting the EPA-imposed rule in 2016.

But if we’re now expected to believe that the NEA suddenly is either unlawful or unconstitutional merely because Trump is president, and his action could portend a dark future of presidential authoritarianism, then the only reasonable step is to eliminate the law. Permanently.

According to a 2014 report by USA Today, “in his six years in office, President Obama has declared nine emergencies, allowed one to expire and extended 22 emergencies enacted by his predecessors.”

This included proclaiming in 2009 that the flu was a national emergency, which allowed for waiving federal rules and set off a public frenzy for flu vaccines. Others deal with national security threats posed by Colombia, the Congo, and Yemen.

Applying the NEA—much like firing the FBI director or appointing an acting attorney general—is yet another presidential power that the media, Democrats, and anti-Trump Republicans would deny because the president happens to be Donald Trump.

If protecting our southern border in order to stop a legitimate emergency that previous presidents also have identified as a crisis, then few, if any, events could surpass this ongoing humanitarian and security disaster that Congress refuses to solve.

If lawmakers suddenly are worried about how a Democrat president could abuse the NEA to impose drastic climate change policies or gun control, doesn’t it make sense to repeal the law now?

If there is a legitimate and grave national emergency in the future, Congress and the president could address it together as need be.

Our laws are not capricious and subjective: they aren’t enforceable based on whether or not we like, or even trust, the person empowered with executing the law.

Either let Trump exercise his legal authority and suffer any political consequences—or repeal the NEA. Congress can’t have it both ways.