Samuel Martin - In Wielding Emergency Powers, Trump Paves a Dangerous Path Forward

In Wielding Emergency Powers, Trump Paves a Dangerous Path Forward

Summary
Today, Friday, February 15th, 2019, President Trump announced that he was putting the country into a national emergency to get fund his border wall. A national emergency gives the president over 100 statutory powers that he is supposed to use to get the nation out of emergency - two of which he will probably abuse to start construction on the border wall without Congress' consent. He hopes to build the wall while the government is in hold, then end the national emergency saying that his demands were met because the wall will have resources and funds dedicated to it. This move is extremely hypocritical of republicans because in 2014, they sued President Obama for misappropriating funds and spending government money without Congress knowing and Trump is calling a national emergency to do the exact same thing. These actions bring up questions about whether or not these actions are legal and if this will set a precedent for future presidents declaring national emergencies to get questionable funding for unauthorized projects.

Analysis
This article was written on Friday, February 15, 2019 in Washington DC, this means that it is close to where the national emergency was announced from. Before reading this, I knew that Trump was trying to shutdown the government again but I didn't know that declaring a national emergency gave him this much power. This relates to United States history when George Washington was president and he set the precedent for a peaceful transition out of office as well as the limit on the number of terms a president can serve. The audience is everybody in the US because we are all effected by the federal government and its decisions. The author is Carl Hulse, who is the Chief Washington Correspondent at the NYTimes and has written there for over 30 years, so he knows everything about what the government has done for almost 6-7 presidents. The purpose of this article is to keep the US informed about the consequences of the government. This is important because we are all effected by the government and today's actions can set precedents for future leaders, not only in our country but across the globe.

Source
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/us/politics/trump-national-emergency-congress.html