We’ve all come across a situation, either by directly participating or observing, in which we threatened to do something if our demands weren’t met. Let me water that down just a bit, I am talking about low-bearing threats like not taking the dogs for a walk if you don’t get to watch twenty more minutes of “Golden Girls,” or refusing to take the SAT unless you can take the car for the weekend, both examples may or may not be personally anecdotal.
Regardless, psychology teaches us that our acute stress response, more commonly known as fight-or-flight,
Suffice to say that President Donald Trump has been in a constant state of fight-or-flight over the course of the last two months as Congress has discussed, on end, how to best go about answering Trump’s funding request for several billion dollars to construct his border wall. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, Trump shutdown the government just to demonstrate how serious he is about this wall.
Personally, the only time I am ever serious to a level comparable to Mr. Trump is when I am serious I don’t want to throw up, or eat something disgusting. On Thursday, bipartisan members of Congress voted to pass a government spending deal which will increase funding for border security, all of which had to be completed before Friday, lest President Trump enact another partial shutdown.
The House and Senate appropriators, endorsed by veto-proof majorities across the legislative branch, told Trump that he’d receive no more than $1.375 billion to build fifty-five new miles of steel fencing, but made it unabashedly clear that he should, under no circumstances, declare a national state of emergency to enable the US military to be used as his personal construction crew.
As I’ve said, humans can choose to fight or flea in these situations and President Trump elected to fight.
Rather than adhere to the demands of the United States Congress, President Trump announced a national emergency on Friday morning in an executive order that will grant him the right to use $8 billion, a substantial increase from his original request, and the courts will have to choose if and how to intervene. As for the response from the Democratic leadership, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a joint statement which stated:
“…It’s important to note that when the president declares this emergency, first of all, it’s not an emergency. What’s happening at the border, it’s a humanitarian challenge to use. The president has tried to sell a bill of goods…Declaring a national emergency is a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall…”
-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
President Trump has found himself in quite the predicament. During the 2016 campaign season, Trump would shout at rallies that he will build a wall once elected, and Mexico will be responsible for footing the bill.
As we’ve come to see, this convoluted binational deal never took place. The Mexican government scoffed and thought it was absolutely ridiculous. Given that Trump declared a state of emergency, all we can do is wait and see the ramifications of his actions.
