On Tuesday a group of 16 states filed a lawsuit to stop Trump’s national emergency declaration and redirecting funds already allocated by Congress for different purposes to build his border wall.
President Donald Trump tweeted saying: “As I predicted, 16 states, led mostly by Open Border Democrats and the Radical Left, have filed a lawsuit in, of course, the 9th Circuit! California, the state that has wasted billions of dollars on their out of control Fast Train, with no hope of completion, seems in charge.”
This new legal fight has raise a questions about Trump’s view of his own power and his frequent attempts to evade legal, political and constitutional restraints on his actions that add up to a more untethered notion of the presidency than most of his modern predecessors.
Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to fund his border wall represents one of the boldest grabs for presidential authority in generations and caps what is now a lengthening record of contempt for the regular political order.
One of Trump’s most enduring strategies is his willingness to stake out easily disprovable positions if they support his political goals another way that he is unencumbered by the constraints of many of his predecessors.
In a new manifestation of his resistance to objective fact, he is now openly trashing the data collected by his own agencies when it doesn’t support his hunches on what he claims is an invasion of undocumented migrants.
He’s even insisting he’s already building his border wall reflecting the potential political price he may pay for failing to honor his top 2016 promise.
I use many stats,” Trump told a reporter who challenged him with official government data on drug trafficking last week. “Let me tell you, you have stats that are far worse than the ones that I use.”
Trump emergency declaration is in itself an expression of contempt for congressional power and is different than previous emergency declarations since he plans to spend money already allocated by lawmakers for other purposes to build a wall they refused to fund.
