President Donald Trump said he could declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, after telling Democrats he\u2019s prepared to keep part of the government shut down for a year or longer if his demands aren\u2019t met.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely we can call a national emergency because of the security of our country,\u201d Trump said Friday at the White House. \u201cI haven\u2019t done it. I may do it. We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president\u2019s authority in this area is intended for wars and genuine national emergencies,\u201d Evan Hollander, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. \u201cAsserting this authority to build a wasteful wall is legally dubious and would invite a legal challenge from Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump made the comments moments after Democratic leaders left the White House saying there\u2019d been no progress toward a deal during a nearly two-hour meeting. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the meeting was contentious, and that Trump refused their proposal to reopen government and deal separately with the dispute over the wall.<\/p>\n
Trump, however, said moments later that the meeting had been productive. The sides agreed to meet over the weekend, and Trump expressed optimism that an agreement could be forged. The president tweeted Saturday that there is \u201cgreat support coming from all sides for Border Security on our very dangerous Southern Border.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump continued to tweet about the wall on Saturday, terming the southern border \u201cvery dangerous\u201d and claiming support from all sides for his position.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s Friday comments were met with skepticism within his own party and sharp criticism from Democrats. Several lawmakers and experts said Congress would still be required to allocate the funds for the wall even if the president declared a national emergency.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe could declare an emergency, but that does not create the funding,\u201d said former Republican Senate Budget Committee staff director Bill Hoagland. \u201cCongress would still have to fund the emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parts of the U.S. government are now into a 15th day of shutdown after Trump refused to sign a spending bill that didn\u2019t include billions of dollars to continue construction of a border wall, his top campaign promise. He remains at an impasse with congressional Democrats, who consider the proposed wall a waste of money.<\/p>\n
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said Trump would still need Congress for the funds if he pursued the national emergency strategy.<\/p>\n
Washington Democrat Adam Smith, incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Trump would be harming the military if he tried to fund the wall through a national emergency declaration.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiverting money from these military construction accounts could have substantial impacts for service members at installations across the country and on defense projects that are important in supporting readiness, training, operations, and quality of life for military personnel and their families,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump said he could declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, after telling Democrats he\u2019s prepared to keep part of the government shut down for a year or longer if his demands aren\u2019t met. \u201cAbsolutely we can call a national emergency because of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51929,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51927\/revisions\/51929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}