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This morning, Democracy Fund President Joe Goldman issued the following statement in response to the prospect of the president’s declaration of a national emergency. We believe it lays out the danger embedded in the moment more succinctly and powerfully than anything else we have read.
President Trump’s plan to declare a national emergency to secure funding for a wall at our border—which he has justified using racist and xenophobic language—demonstrates his willingness to use authoritarian methods to circumvent our system of checks and balances. President Trump’s actions are the real emergency. The temptation for a president to aggrandize power is precisely why the framers of the Constitution created three co-equal branches of government—each to check the others. That the president would declare a manufactured national emergency when he cannot get what he wants from Congress is the essence of undemocratic behavior. Congress and the courts must step in and constrain this abuse of executive power.
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Please share.—Ruth McCambridge
