Donald Trump Declares a National Emergency and Sings About Getting Sued
Donald Trump has declared a national emergency over the “crisis“ at the border, using very rare executive powers to override Congress’s refusal to fund his wall. Talk of such a drastic move had circulated for a few months during the battle over funding Trump waged with the Democrats, which resulted in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. But only today, in the bright sun of the White House Rose Garden, did Trump finally declare the emergency, which would allow him to, as The New York Times reports, “divert $3.6 billion budgeted for military construction projects to the border wall”—then he sang about what will likely come next: getting sued.
Along with the $3.6 billion, Trump will tap $2.5 billion from counternarcotics programs and $600 million from the Treasury, and already has $1.375 billion from a spending bill authorized by Congress on Thursday; all in all, the amount Trump can now use to extend and build new barriers between Mexico and the United States is way more than the $5 million Congress refused to give him before the shutdown. In declaring the emergency, Trump built on weeks of unfounded claims he has made about acts of violence being committed by migrants, and referred to “an invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country.” (Encounters with U.S. Customs and Border Protection have resulted in the deaths of 97 people, citizens and noncitizens, inside the United States since 2003, according to a Guardian report from May 2018.)
Toward the end of his speech, Trump veered into a singsong-style rap about getting sued, which is exactly what Democrats and other citizens groups will likely do. “And we will then be sued,” Trump warbled. He described how, like after his travel ban, he expected to be sued in federal court, “and we will possibly get a bad ruling, and we’ll get another bad ruling,” chanting about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court. Something that might help those litigating? Trump all but admitted that the emergency was manufactured in response to a question from a reporter, saying, “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”
Of course, the Internet has already turned this little ditty into an Ed Sheeran song, which we can all listen to while we wait to see what actually happens with this “national emergency” after all. (Also, if Trump is looking for a true national emergency, may we suggest climate change?)
