BORDER/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “Though betting odds had a 20 percent chance that Donald Trump would use his brief prime-time Oval Office address to declare a national emergency at the Mexican-U.S. border, he did not. Instead, he dedicated his time to a hodge-podge of lurid descriptions of violence juxtaposed to a plea for humanitarian aid. In no way does that mean the issue is settled, and a national emergency declaration remains very much in the mix as one way to break the logjam, appeal to the Republican base, reopen the government, and, oh, trigger a legal crisis. Just Wednesday [1-9-19], Trump claimed an ‘absolute right’ to declare an emergency, and threatened to do so if Democrats refused to give him the wall funding he wants. As with all things Trump, the knee-jerk reaction to the idea of the president declaring a national emergency has been extreme. Yes, Trump is manufacturing a crisis and wants to use an expansive notion of executive power to solve it; that may echo a path to tyranny, but as shadows on a cave wall aren’t the real objects, an echo is not the same thing as the real sound. Declaring a national emergency to solve an invented crisis might be misguided. It might be venal, cynical and wrong. It might set a terrible precedent, one that should not stand. And it might not pass the test of law if challenged in courts. That does not turn it into an existential threat.”
–Zachary Karabell, “Stop Freaking Out About Trump’s State of Emergency Threats,” Politico, January 9, 2019