Trump was never going to get Democrats to agree to more border wall funding, because the wall is unpopular and he didn’t have the leverage. This kind of national emergency declaration is also out of step with previous ones, which generally focus on sanctions and situations that simply cannot await congressional action. “If today, the national emergency is border security, tomorrow the national emergency might be climate change, so let’s seize fossil fuel plants or something,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said last month. We simply haven’t seen a president extend the use of a national emergency declaration for something like this, because past presidents had some compunction about executive overreach. And Trump seems to have worn down the likes of McConnell, who previously opposed a national emergency declaration and now says he’ll support it.

Source: Washington Post February 14, 2019 21:46 UTC