Saturday, February 16, 2019

The emergency is still emerging



A funny thing happened to Trump on his way to declaring a national emergency in the Rose Garden yesterday, according to Mark Krikorian at National Review—he signed a bill into law that ensured he can't build any wall, at least not for the moment:
That’s because the bill allows the fencing to be built only in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in South Texas. It’s surely needed there [says Krikorian, wrongly], but real barriers are also needed elsewhere, such as the parts of the Arizona or New Mexico borders where there’s only vehicle fencing.
But the Democrats had a reason for this limitation. The bill states:
Prior to use of any funds made available by this Act for the construction of physical barriers within the city limits of any city or census designated place…Department of Homeland Security and the local elected officials of such a city or census designated place shall confer and seek to reach mutual agreement regarding the design and alignment of physical barriers within that city or the census designated place.
In other words, local governments would have an effective veto over whether barriers would be constructed. And which party controls all local government in South Texas? Go ahead, look it up, I’ll wait.
It's not just Democrats, it's democrats lowercase—the use of the $1.375 billion reserved in the bill for barrier-building is contingent on the approval of politicians whose voters overwhelmingly oppose it, 61% to 35%, as reported by Gordon Dickson at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in spring 2017:
The reasons for their opposition to the wall are as varied as the communities that sit along the Rio Grande. Some are concerned about losing private land to make room for the structure. Others warned that building a continuous wall could cause massive flooding. Still others spoke against the potential impact on wildlife, and the state’s natural landscape.
And many border residents said they had serious doubts that such a wall would succeed in reducing illegal immigration or drug smuggling — the primary justifications often cited by supporters.
And because of its disruption of local culture and creation of local division and irrational fear, as Beto O'Rourke was saying the other day, adding that he'd gladly tear down the one they have in El Paso since 2008, and the citizens would agree with him.

It's what the people don't want. Please explain, freedom-loving conservatives, why it's so important to force it on them.

Of course the situation only lasts until the emergency finishes emerging and comes out of the Supreme Court gently flapping its new wings to dry them off. But I wouldn't count on that ever happening—Trump's advisers themselves have been assuming the declaration is unconstitutional and they'll never have to act on it. Dara Lind/Vox says that's a dangerous assumption, noting that the third version of the Muslim ban ultimately succeeded, but please, it took 11 months before they were able to start putting it into effect, and that was with enthusiastic supporters in the administration, whereas this one was designed to fail, giving Trump a momentary chance to claim victory while the rest of the world moves on.

It's also a different case altogether, dramatically illegal in a way the Muslim ban wasn't once they'd narrowed it down into a collection of miniature bans that were more irrational than merely racist; this time he's asserting the right to spend money, a huge amount of it, that Congress has explicitly refused to appropriate, and the legal challenges were out in force before sunset.

And Trump seems pleased enough with his declaration of victory, and of independence really (from Congress or from reality in general), in a hexameter as relaxed as a shuffleboard game:
One thing that I do have to say is: Tremendous amounts
of wall have already been built, and a lot of — a lot of wall.
When you include the renovation of existing fences
and walls, we've renovated a tremendous amount and we've done
a lot of work. In San Diego, we're building new walls
right now. And we've — right next to San Diego, we've
completed a major section of wall and it's really worked well.

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