The latest report from the Department of Homeland Security sets the number of people apprehended attempting to cross the southern border at its lowest level since 1971. The State Department makes it clear that there is “no credible evidence” of any terrorists entering the nation across the southern border. If there was ever any time in which it was possible to sit back and make rational decisions about how America should move forward on immigration policy, this should be it.
But there is a crisis. It’s just not on the border. Donald Trump’s policies are the crisis. Those policies are leading to family separations, to the death of children, to the internment of thousands in desolate camps, and to a government shutdown that imperils the nation’s security, economy, and future far more than every “caravan” and “coyote” that ever existed.
They’re also bringing the nation to the brink of a genuine threat to democratic government, as Trump continues to ponder calling for a “national emergency” simply because negotiations are not going his way. Trump’s policies—including his immigration policies—were roundly repudiated across the nation in November. That’s exactly why he has to deal with Nancy Pelosi, and why her refusal to give him exactly what he wants is not a national emergency. Voters did not endorse Trump’s plans at the voting booth. If they had, Trump might have a case that refusing to give him his billions is thwarting the will of the people. They did not. Trump lost in the fall. Now he’s losing at the negotiating table. And he’s still talking about taking his ball and going home—only in this case, the ball is democracy, and once it’s taken, it’s not clear how it ever gets brought back.
To declare a national emergency in any way that is meaningful when it comes to building his massive vanity project, Trump would have to do more than just issue one of the almost routine “emergency” proclamations that have been used to enforce sanctions over the last four decades. Trump’s action would be more serious than that for two big reasons.
First, in order to secure funding under the National Emergencies Act, Trump would have to make this a military emergency. Any proclamation would be likely to be accompanied by additional deployments of troops along the border, by a claim that his wall constitutes a military fortification, and perhaps even by an insistence that departments within DHS are themselves a military branch.
Second, and even more devastating to the nation, Trump would be flat-out saying that the emergency isn’t generated by anything that happened outside the capital, but is simply an emergency of Trump not getting his way. That’s not a small technical point. That’s a coup.
With a handful of Republican senators scrambling to find something—anything—that allows a return to semi-rationality while providing a salve to Trump’s ego, it still seems possible that this freight train could be stopped short of the yawning chasm ahead. It’s even possible that this whole thing could turn out to be a blessing in disguise, with Republicans finally willing to make a deal on DACA and other items for a dollar figure far below the one Democrats agreed to over a year ago.
But the other possibility is still out there. America is poised on a knife edge, and that knife is being wielded by a toddler who doesn’t understand that “No” is a legitimate answer.