Trump VS Democrats, National Emergency At The Mexican Border
Trump CAN Bypass Congress With National Emergency Powers To Build The Wall. In a press conference a few days ago President Donald Trump stated he considered declaring a national emergency to build the wall on the southern border with mexico.He later announced plans to address the nation on issues of national security citing a humanitarian and security crisis at the border.According to NBC News Trump can bypass Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the Democrats to build the wall with emergency powers and using funds from the department of defense.
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A few days ago at a press conference, a reporter asked President Trump if he'd consider using emergency powers to bypass Congress and build the wall.
His response?
I have, and I can do it if I want.
He later said he would address the nation on the issue of immigration and the humanitarian and national security crisis at our southern border.
Critics called on news networks not to air this message because Donald Trump is a liar, but then later said Democrats should be given time to respond.
Journalists said they should simply fact-check Donald Trump.
The reality is, whether or not there's a national security on our southern border is entirely an opinion, and it's up to Donald Trump whether he wants to declare this.
We know that there are drug smugglers, human traffickers, and gangs coming through the southern border.
The left says it's not really that big of a deal because the numbers are small, but the right says, hey, this actually is a crisis.
In the past, Democrats have actually supported a border barrier, but it seems like their position may have changed.
So today, let's take a look at the issue of national security powers, how the Democrats have changed their opinions, and whether or not a border barrier will actually work.
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Following the press conference with Trump, NBC News ran this story.
Fact check.
What is a national emergency and can Trump declare one to get his wall?
Legal experts said it wouldn't be as simple as Trump seemed to suggest on Friday, but maybe not totally out of the realm of possibility.
Two weeks into a partial government shutdown, triggered by an impasse over the money President Donald Trump demanded for his promised border wall, Trump said he could declare a state of emergency and build his wall without congressional approval.
I can do it if I want, he told reporters at the White House on Friday.
We can call a national emergency.
Because of the security of our country, we can do it.
I haven't done it.
I may do it.
Is that true?
Legal experts said it might not be as simple to bypass Congress, which ultimately controls the federal budget, as Trump suggests, but not necessarily impossible.
NBC News reported Friday that lawyers from the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon are meeting to discuss whether or not it's doable.
We're in uncharted territory, said University of Texas School of Law professor Stephen Vladeck in an interview Friday evening.
What is a national emergency?
A president can declare the country is in a state of national emergency at his discretion.
The declaration confers a set of special executive authorities that are designed to give the president the power to effectively handle emergencies such as an outbreak of war.
They say that legal experts said Trump could find sure footing by using unobligated money within the Department of Defense's budget because federal law allows the military to fund construction projects during war or emergencies.
A Pentagon spokesman said in December 2018 that Title 10 of the U.S.
Code could give the military the authority to fund border barrier projects under certain circumstances.
The Department of Defense has funds in its account that are not specifically designated for anything.
Congress gives them money and says we don't know what's going to happen over the next year.
Here's 100 billion.
Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet told NBC News, guessing at an approximate funding amount.
My instinct is to say that if he declares a national emergency and uses this pot of unappropriated money for the wall, he's on a very solid legal ground.
Conservatives were quick to point out that the funding Donald Trump is requesting is a tiny fraction of the actual federal spending bill.
From CNS News, they say, Trump's $5 billion border wall request equals 0.11% of federal spending.
According to the monthly Treasury statement for October, the Office of Management and Budget
has estimated the federal government will spend a total of $4,509,641,000,000 in fiscal 2019,
which started on October 1st. President Trump is now asking Congress to approve $5 billion
in the fiscal 2019 Department of Homeland Security appropriation to fund border wall construction
along the U.S.-Mexico border.
That $5 billion would equal 0.11% of the anticipated total federal spending.
They made this very informative graph which shows that the amount requested doesn't even actually appear because it's so small compared to the actual funding for 2019.
One of the lines pushed by Democrats is that Trump claimed Mexico would pay for this.
Trump's response?
Well, with the new USMCA deal, the new trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, we are going to make tons of money in tax revenue which effectively pays for the wall.
Trump is using that to say It's effectively being paid for by Mexico.
The argument is kind of pointless as far as I'm concerned because the U.S.
certainly has more than enough money to fund this border barrier, and many of these Democrats have actually voted in favor of a 700-mile-long border barrier only about 10 years ago.
From PolitiFact, Did top Democrats vote for a border wall in 2006?
They call this half-true.
Now, I'm pretty critical of PolitiFact because the issue isn't whether or not Democrats voted to build a border wall, which is why they essentially write it half-true, but whether or not Democrats supported border barriers.
You can call it whatever you want.
I certainly think it's fair to say that Trump's using the wall rhetoric.
It's a bit further than saying a border barrier, but it's true.
The Democrats did support a border barrier in 2006.
PolitiFact notes, the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, authorized about 700 miles of fencing along certain stretches of land between the border of the United States and Mexico.
They say Obama, Clinton, Schumer, and 23 other Democratic senators voted in favor of the act when it passed in the Senate by a vote of 80 to 19.
PolitiFact goes on to say that Trump is talking about something that's much bigger.
He says he would need about 1,000 miles because of natural barriers, not the complete 2,000.
He said it could cost between $8 billion and $12 billion, be made of precast concrete, and rise 35 to 40 feet or 50 feet or higher.
Experts have repeatedly told PolitiFact that the differences in semantics between a wall and a fence are not too significant because both block people.
So PolitiFact still says this is half true, but in reality, yes, Democrats have repeatedly spoken out against illegal immigration and have supported a border barrier in the past.
But for some reason now, we're hearing from Nancy Pelosi that building a wall is immoral.
To which Representative Jim Jordan had a somewhat comedic response.
He said, Obviously, he's a bit facetious.
You wouldn't expect anyone to vote for that, but he makes a good point.
Pelosi said the wall is immoral, but we actually do have walls in certain areas.
But the other question that arises is whether or not there's an actual security crisis on the southern border.
Mike Pence tweeted this story from the Washington Post.
They say, after years of Trump's dire warnings, a crisis has hit the border, but generates little urgency.
The story says, with parts of the federal government shut down over what has morphed into the defining symbol of Trump's presidency, administration officials are clamoring louder than ever.
Only this time, they face a bona fide emergency on the border, and they're struggling to make the case there's truly a problem.
Record numbers of migrant families are streaming into the United States, overwhelming border agents and leaving holding cells dangerously overcrowded with children, many of whom are falling sick.
Two Guatemalan children taken into U.S.
custody died in December.
In November, the New York Times ran this story.
Record number of migrants and families were apprehended at border last month.
And just yesterday, Left-wing publication Mother Jones says as Washington fights over a wall, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding on America's doorstep.
The New Yorker wrote mid last year how the humanitarian crisis on the Mexico border could worsen.
Now these left-wing publications are talking about the migrant caravan issue, the children who are getting sick and dying.
One of the arguments here from the right is that these migrants are encouraged to come because they know they can get through the border and thus they embark on these dangerous journeys with children and sometimes the children get sick and die.
The left then blames customs and border protection, which they did.
And I don't think that's fair.
You know, these families are going on dangerous journeys, and whether or not you want to empathize with the families is entirely up to you, but they do choose to go on a very dangerous journey.
And by all means, you can find sympathy for these people, but you can't blame CBP because the children got sick on the way and died.
But now we move on to the question of whether or not border barriers work.
And it looks like, based off evidence from around the world, they actually do.
For some reason, and I don't know why, you have Democrats saying walls don't work.
They like to bring up things that aren't really related to what's going on on the southern border.
They talk about how terrorists are being apprehended in Canada, or how they're apprehended from trying to come in on airplanes, or that most illegal immigrants just fly into the United States and overstay their visas.
And those things are true.
But the issue is whether or not the wall will stop people from entering from the southern border.
You can debate the expense.
You can talk about whether or not it's going to be effective, by all means.
But the reality is, a border wall, or fence, or whatever you want to call it, will stop people from crossing over, be they illegal immigrants, drug smugglers, gang members, whatever.
A wall works, and we have data to prove it.
In response to some comments from Tucker Carlson, CheckYourFact.com said,
Fact check.
Have Israeli and Hungarian border walls proven remarkably effective?
Fox host Tucker Carlson claimed that in Israel and in Hungary,
walls have proven remarkably effective at controlling who crosses the border
during a Thursday segment.
Citing Israel's and Hungary's border wall initiatives, Carlson suggested that President Donald Trump's
campaign promise to build a wall on the US-Mexico border could effectively stem illegal immigration.
That's why Democrats oppose a wall on our border, Carlson continued.
Not because it won't work, but precisely because it will work.
True.
Migration data confirm Carlson's claims.
The erection of border walls successfully brought down unwanted migration into both Israel and Hungary.
The first graph they show on CheckYourFact is illegal immigration into Israel.
They say there were a total of 42 attempted or successful illegal border crossings in 2014, a year after the wall's completion, down 99.5% from over 10,000 in 2012, a year before the wall's completion.
Hungary experienced a similar problem with unwanted migration beginning in 2014.
Following several political and humanitarian crises across the Middle East and North Africa, flows of refugees and migrants into the European Union surged.
Hungary's strategic position as the gateway to wealthy pro-refugee Western Europe from the Balkans placed undue stress on the Central European country society and government.
Public Hungarian police data of migrant flows only stretched back to January 2015, when the refugee crisis was already underway.
But the data demonstrate a clear trend of surging migration after March 2015.
And we see something similar.
A massive spike just into 2015 of nearly 140,000 people.
But after they erected a barrier, it falls nearly to zero, at least relative to where we were.
According to Wikipedia, in a section on the Hungarian border wall, it says, impact of the number of illegal immigrants entering Hungary.
Attempted border entries have fallen since the barrier was constructed.
During the month of September 2015, there was a total of 138,396 migrant entries.
And within the first two weeks of November, the average daily number of intercepted migrants decreased to only 15, which is a daily reduction of more than 4,500.
So here's what I can say.
We know that border barriers work.
Does it mean it will stop all immigration?
No.
No, absolutely not.
We know that planes exist.
But the reality is, as far as it goes with border crossings, and the nearly 40,000 or 50,000 we've seen at its peak in some months, it will likely deter those people from embarking on these journeys, and it will likely stop them from entering the country.
So yes, border barriers work.
If you want to debate the price, the cost of building the wall and maintaining it, by all means, I think that is a more reasonable discussion to be having because, well, that's a real issue.
Are we going to be able to continue to fund maintaining the wall?
The other question is, why do the Democrats kind of flip on their positions?
How is Nancy Pelosi saying it's immoral when Democrats have voted for it in the past?
I guess it's fair to say you can evolve on these issues.
But critics from the right say it's because Democrats are hoping to nationalize these people so that they vote Democrat.
I don't know if that's necessarily true.
I think it's just tribalism.
I think the reason the Democrats are opposing the border barrier is because it's one of Trump's core promises.
They want to make sure that Trump can't keep that promise because they don't want him to win in 2020.
2020 will come around, and they will rub it in Trump's face and say he couldn't deliver.
And that's why I think Trump is willing to declare a national emergency to get it done, because he refuses to back down.
I gotta say, if Democrats think Trump will back down, they're nuts.
I've talked about it before.
Trump is willing to shut the government down for months to years, at least that's what he's saying, to get the job done.
Or maybe he will just declare a national emergency to make it happen.
But either way, let me know what you think in the comments below and we'll keep the conversation going.
The national address from Trump is going to be airing the night I filmed this video, but many people will probably watch this after the fact.
So let me know what you think about what's going on.
We'll see if Trump can actually pull off building the wall.
For me, I kind of don't really care one way or the other, but I think it makes sense to have a border barrier, especially when Democrats have supported in the past.
I think tribalism is getting in the way.
Do you agree?
Comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
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