Southern California response to Trump’s emergency declaration? See you in court, Mr. President

It’s a dictator’s move!

It’s a long-overdue push against illegal immigration!

It’s politically tone-deaf!

And that covers just some of the views expressed by immigration activists, Southern California House members, constitutional scholars and others when asked about President Donald Trump’s plan to declare a national emergency as a way to override Congress and pay for part of his much-promised wall on the Mexican border.

Some critics see Trump’s declaration as flatly undemocratic, saying the president is moving to seize a power (in this case, funding for the border wall) that the Constitution specifically delegates to Congress.

“There’s a long history of fascists using ’emergencies’ to create fear and conflict,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in an interview with Vox that was published early Thursday, prior to news of the emergency declaration.

If Trump declares a national emergency over the wall, Albright added, he would be “a bully with an army.”

Even some conservatives who typically back Trump — and who generally agree with Trump on immigration — offered only tepid enthusiasm for the move.

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, whose district includes several Inland Empire communities, wrote: “I would urge the President to be judicious in the scope of this declaration and keep the focus on reallocating resources to address the crisis.”

Rep. Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, wrote: “While I support President Trump’s goal of securing our border and his right to declare a state of emergency, I’ll need to see the details, particularly where any money to fund the increased security will come from, before I can pass judgment on the specific declaration.”

Others, however, see Trump’s emergency declaration as key to creating what they view as a secure border — one that features the kind of wall Trump promised as a presidential candidate and once said Mexico would pay for.

“He cannot afford to just sit back and watch this continued influx of new illegal arrivals,” said Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of immigration into the country. “It’s too much of a burden on the communities that are forced to absorb them.”

Legal experts — including some who oppose Trump’s immigration policies — point out that Trump is tapping into an existing law (the National Emergencies Act of 1976) that’s been used by every president since Jimmy Carter.

In all, presidents of both parties have declared 58 national emergencies, and 31 of those emergencies remain in effect, according to data from the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, a policy institute that tracks legislation.

But the scope of previous emergency declarations has been narrow, and usually connected to international events (President George W. Bush declaring a national emergency following Sept. 11, 2001) or fast-moving domestic affairs (President Barack Obama declaring a national emergency to allocate money for a vaccine to help thwart swine flu in 2009).

To date, no president has used a national emergency as a response to losing a dispute with Congress. Because of that, many believe Trump’s emergency declaration will be challenged in court, and that the case could set historically important legal and political precedents.

“The question in this case is, ‘Is this essential to national defense?’ I would say the vast majority of facts indicate, no, it’s not,” said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University who focuses on political law, referring to what Trump has described as an emergency “crisis at the border.”

“It’s very likely that someone is going to sue,” Levinson added. “What we don’t know is how much latitude (judges) are going to give the president in this situation.”

Regardless of the president’s action, or the legal response it might provoke, many believe border wall construction isn’t likely in the near term. Instead, some see Trump’s emergency — and other politicians’ support or criticism of it — becoming a political issue, much like recent votes on Obamacare and last year’s tax cut.

UC Irvine Professor Louis DeSipio, who teaches political science and has written about U.S. immigration, said House members may take a vote to reverse Trump’s national emergency, forcing the GOP-controlled Senate to do the same. And that, he suggested, could put political heat on Senate Republicans.

“Some GOP members may support the president’s goal of having a wall, but they do not support the executive branch challenging the traditional responsibility, and constitutional responsibility, of the legislative branch to appropriate funds.”

DeSipio said Trump’s emergency declaration is a sign that the country’s political system is “sliding into dangerous territory,” but that the problem started when the National Emergencies Act was passed in the mid-1970s. Trump, he suggested, might only be “accelerating it.”

But DeSipio added this: “If the lesson President Trump takes away from this is that if he strongly believes something, he should just call it an emergency and do it, that’s bad for the country.”