Trump Defies Congress & The People On National Emergency with VETO
As I wrote about in a previous write-up, President Donald J. Trump couldn’t get his way in the Democrat-controlled House, so he created a Fake National Emergency to circumvent Congress completely using The National Emergencies Act to fund his monument to racism, his promised wall on the US/Mexico border.
On Thursday, 3/14, both houses of Congress voted in favor of a resolution of disapproval in regard to Trump’s use of national emergency powers, with 12 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote with Democrats in the Senate. Unfortunately, neither the House nor Senate had enough votes to make the resolution presidential VETO proof, and Trump’s response was to tweet a singular word “VETO!”, like a fucking child.
This VETO just goes to show how broken the US political system is. We, the people, is a joke, the people have no power, the power lies with the rich, and corporations with their lackeys in Congress. And even more so, the executive branch of government. 2/3 of Americans don’t support the wall and the use of emergency powers to fund it; while about 6/10 of Congress disapprove of President Trump’s actions, using emergency powers to circumvent congressional power, stealing money from other programs.
Unless Congress can cobble together enough votes in both chambers to override the presidential VETO, it looks like we are heading to the courts to decide on the legitimacy of Trump’s use of emergency powers. And given that Trump has stacked the courts and the judicial branch with extreme right-wing judges, in an effort to sway the judicial system in his favor, he might actually be successful in the federal courthouses.
Clearly, this is a manufactured national emergency, little has changed between January 2017 and March 2019, yet the southern border is suddenly a national emergency according to the President. It would have been much easier for Trump to get the funding for his signature wall when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate, but it was not enough of an emergency then, despite official numbers indicating otherwise, because they had to pass tax cuts for the wealthy and trying to kill the Affordable Care Act.
The question I ask is; how can the USA call itself a democracy when one person, the president, can overrule the will of Congress, unless 67% of Congress votes in favor of a resolution, making it VETO proof? That’s like 66% of voters being overruled and the candidate getting 34% of the vote gets elected.
2020 cannot come soon enough for me, and many other Americans. Hopefully, the Democrats don’t run another corporate Democrat, like they did Hillary Clinton in 2016 when a far better option was available. Someone who polled much better against Trump at the time of the Democratic convention, but no, Bernie Sanders was hindered by the DNC, and now we have Donald J. Trump as president as a result.
If this is allowed to stand, it’s open season for the next Democratic president, who can call healthcare a national emergency to push a Medicare For All agenda, or maybe the issue of large parts of the country not having lead free drinking water, how many years has Flint, MI been suffering? these are national emergencies. Not to mention climate change, which is a global emergency; and the clock is ticking, we have just over a decade to take action, while Trump and many Republicans dodgedly deny its existence.