The request is for 15 minutes at 6PM Tuesday 1/8/19 Eastern Time
Since there was no formal contact with the networks, no response would be necessary. The feed would be available, for them to use or not.
The N.Y.Times had an article today, Trump Wants to Deliver Prime-Time Address on Government Shutdown and Will Visit the Border, that discussed this, including this link to a previous request June 18, 1993
After weeks of awkward stumbles and generally bad news, President Clinton hit a run of good luck this week that was timed so propitiously that his advisers decided that the President was ready for prime time.
But two of the three broadcast networks decided otherwise.
ABC and CBS did not carry the President's news conference live, opting instead for reruns of a magicians' special and a mystery drama. White House officials were angered by the decision the news executives made and said they had received unfair treatment at the hands of the networks.
CNN carried the entire news conference, but NBC cut off its coverage after the first 30 minutes.
I would suggest the CEO of the networks make a public announcement such as::
To our viewers:
We pride ourselves on providing programing that is stimulating, challenging and thought provoking. The current closure of the governments is supported by one party, and opposed by the other. It would be inappropriate to allow the leader of one of the parties to have exclusive time to promote his argument, while the other does not have an equal voice.
This speech will be covered by our cable affiliates, and described on on our regularly scheduled news programs.
While the President is making vague threats of declaring a national emergency, he has not done so, and it is unclear whether this includes control of private television company programing.
About declaring a National Emergency, not a single venue has this detail from an earlier diary of mine:
Toward Comprehensive Reform of America’s Emergency Law Regime
PP 15: of the PDF
House of Congress shall meet to consider a vote on a concurrent
resolution to determine whether that emergency shall be terminated.”
The enacted version also specifies that declared emergencies will terminate automatically after one year unless renewed by the President,On and that the President may terminate a national emergency at any time.
100
Congress has enacted two significant amendments to the NEA
since its passage. First, although it retains the requirement that
Congress meet every six months to consider terminating national
emergency powers, the statute now provides that a joint resolution,
rather than a concurrent resolution, is the appropriate mechanism
for terminating national emergencies.
101
Like a typical bill, a joint resolution requires the President’s signature to become law, and
Congress can override a President’s veto of a joint resolution with a
two-thirds majority in both houses. Second, the emergency authority granted under the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) is not exempt from the modern statute,
102
since the TWEA no longer provides a basis for declaring a national emergency in peacetime.
103
Notwithstanding these differences, the plain text of the contemporary statute clearly reflects Congress’s intent to curb the unchecked propagation of national emergencies and the unrestrained exercise of emergency powers.
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A President can use the National Emergency clause to have close to dictatorial powers, but for some reason a simple majority of both houses is not sufficient to end it. The President can veto the required joint resolution, but then it takes 2/3 of both houses to overturn that veto.
Now that’s a bummer
