When our group, Keep Our Republic, began five years ago, we were first focused on the discovery of the little-known Emergency Powers held by the President. These are now well catalogued by Karen Tumulty (below) and clarify what more we can expect during this dreadful period of had an inhumane destruction. T

The Washington Post
Opinion

Karen Tumulty

Another national emergency? If the president says so.

Such declarations offer presidents ways to skirt rules and laws they don’t like.

January 27, 2025

The U.S. oil and gas industry is booming, with production at record levels, while renewable sources of energy are expanding at a healthy clip and gasoline prices are at their lowest level in more than three years.

To President Donald Trump, all this good news amounts to a “national emergency.” Or so he claimed in one of the flurry of executive orders signed on his first day in office.

Dire, too, is the situation at the southern border, where, in another emergency declaration, Trump deemed there to be an “invasion” taking place, which is causing “widespread chaos.”

Never mind Border Patrol statistics saying that, thanks to stronger enforcement, the number of people crossing illegally has dropped sharply, and is lower than it was at the end of Trump’s first term.

By invoking the powers that come with the declaration of a national emergency, a president gains the ability, usually with just a signature on an executive order, to bypass laws and regulations. But at times, these proclamations are not tools for dealing with an actual crisis. Instead, they are used to sweep away impediments to a chief executive’s political agenda.

A president’s emergency powers are vast. In all, according to a tally by the New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, they stretch across 150 provisions in laws whose reach includes health and the environment, public land use, troop deployments, military construction, seizure of private property, even the dumping of garbage at sea.

Trump’s border declaration, for instance, opened the way for him to unlock billions in funding that Congress had denied for building a wall there — a rerun of what he did as president in 2019, when he cited a law permitting the executive to use military construction funds in a declared national emergency. Various laws have emergency provisions that would allow Trump to both deploy the 10,000 troops that he is thinking of dispatching to assist Border Patrol agents and shut down applications for asylum by migrants.

In his announcement Sunday that he was hitting Colombia with tariffs and sanctions in retaliation for its refusal to accept U.S. military planes carrying deported migrants, Trump cited his authority under the expansive International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Late Sunday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro backed down and agreed to accept the flights.

On energy, declaring a national emergency could allow him to loosen permitting requirements as he opens up more federal land for drilling, quash incentives for producing electric vehicles, and do away with requirements for more energy-efficient lightbulbs, appliances, toilets and shower heads.

That a president needs flexibility to take dramatic measures in the face of a crisis has been acknowledged since the dawn of U.S. history. In 1794, George Washington issued an emergency proclamation calling out militias to put down violent protests by farmers enraged by an excise tax on whiskey.

More recently, however, presidents have gotten creative in using these declarations to bend the law during times that are not genuine emergencies — the dictionary definition of which is an unforeseen set of circumstances that require immediate, and presumably temporary, action.

President Joe Biden claimed the covid-19 pandemic gave him power to cancel $400 billion in student debt. He cited authority under the 2003 Heroes Act, which allows the education secretary to rewrite rules that apply to student loans during times of war or national emergencies, and was meant to help military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The Supreme Court blocked that move.)

The concern that presidents can abuse their emergency powers has long worried members of both parties. In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, setting up more formalized procedures for such moments. It requires the president to specify which statutes give him the powers he intends to use, to report regularly to Congress on what he is doing, and sets a one-year expiration date for emergency actions — though the president may renew them by simply publishing an extension in the Federal Register, and it can take a veto-proof majority in Congress to terminate an emergency declaration.

Most of which both the president and Congress have ignored. There are currently more than 40 national emergencies in effect, the oldest of which dates back to the Carter administration.

The last Congress saw a bipartisan push to put some teeth in that law, but the measure never made it to Biden’s desk. “This kind of lawmaking-by-proclamation runs directly counter to the vision of our founders and undermines the safeguards protecting our freedom,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said when he introduced the bill. “It’s high time that Congress reclaimed its legislative power and restored constitutional balance to our Republic.”

Given Trump’s hold over the GOP, it is hard to imagine that a Congress where both chambers are in Republican hands will do much to constrain him.

So, expect to hear more manufactured emergencies coming from the Trump White House — each one chipping at the guardrails that limit presidential power.

By Karen Tumulty

Karen Tumulty is an associate editor and columnist covering national politics. She joined The Post in 2010 from Time magazine and has also worked at the Los Angeles Times.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/27/emergency-powers-trump-biden/