Demonstrators form a human border wall with quotes from President Trump during the Women's March in New York, January 20, 2018. Erin Lefevre/ Press Association. All rights reserved.
When President Trump declared a national emergency for ‘virtual invasion purposes’, he gave new meaning to the Latin maxim ‘necessitas legem non habet’ (necessity has no law). There is only one sense in which Trump was speaking truthfully when he declared a national emergency to combat a ‘foreign invasion of our Southern border’. Many other Presidents before him have issued emergency decrees. President Obama signed one to fight the Swine Flu epidemic. So did President Carter during the Iran Hostage Crisis. And President Bush was reacting to a very ‘real’ crisis when he issued a national emergency following 9/11.
Yet when Trump declared the border crisis a national emergency, even he seemed aware that he was putting the cart in front of the horse. In order to run for President, he created a solution to a non-existing problem; a wall to keep ‘rapists’ from entering the United States. To do so he wanted a wall. And now as President, he required funding in order to build the wall, which meant that he must manufacture a national emergency in order to transcend the rule of law.
