The United States is currently having the worst outbreak of COVID-19 out of any country. The CDC reported that as of April 1, the United States had 186,101 confirmed cases and had 3,603 virus-related deaths. Missouri had 1327 confirmed cases. By the next day, April 2, the number of confirmed U.S. cases jumped to 213,144, with 4,513 deaths, and globally, we surpassed 1 million confirmed cases.

In one week, the week of March 30, data from Johns Hopkins showed that Missouri alone saw an increase of 600 percent in total cases, which is currently the largest increase in the United States, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

It is necessary to understand that these numbers just represent confirmed cases. Many people have had and will get COVID-19 without showing symptoms or without getting tested and can easily spread it to others.

This is a pandemic, and many people are not taking this seriously enough, especially in the United States.

First, there are those who deny its significance. President Trump refuses to see how dangerous the current situation is and says he wants everything to go back to normal by Easter. A pastor in Florida was arrested for holding a church service with hundreds of people after defying orders to stay home. 

“The World Health Organization has come in and is using a pandemic to take over not just America, but the whole of the world,” the pastor commented.

Second, there are those who are panicking, which is also not the appropriate response. Buying all the toilet paper you possibly can does not make you immune to the virus, nor does it help anyone else by hoarding everything for yourself.

It is normal to be anxious and uncertain during this time, but it is important to remember that everyone else is going through the same experience. Additionally, one mindset to have is that if you are social distancing at home, you can be thankful that you have the ability to be safe at home.

Third, some people have decided it’s okay if they get the virus, which again, is not a good approach.

This is one of the many reasons why it is imperative that people stay home and practice social distancing. Going to the store to buy groceries is considered an essential activity and is okay to do, but hanging out with your friends is not okay. By staying at home, you drastically reduce your chances of getting the virus and passing it on to someone else. While you yourself may not die from contracting the virus, you risk spreading it to those who have weakened immune systems or are elderly.

However, there are many people who are doing their part in all sorts of ways. Doctors, nurses, and all medical professionals are putting their lives on the line to help those infected by the virus. Additionally, many schools, churches and other organizations are providing meals to children who usually rely on schools to feed them. Teachers are adapting and continuing to teach children during this unprecedented time too. We also cannot forget all the selfless essential workers at grocery stores, banks and restaurants.

All of these people are doing their part, and we need to do our part by staying home. The sooner we get this virus under control, the sooner our lives can go back to normal.

President Trump officially declared a state of emergency as a method to free up billions of dollars for funding a wall on the Mexican-American border. The fight over a border wall has defined the Trump presidency. Since December, the tension regarding the situation has ramped up as Trump took on a major offensive to secure funding for his signature policy issue while the newly empowered House Democrats have resisted.

After a historically long government shutdown, the government reopened with Trump receiving less money for border security than the Democrats had initially offered. The media widely interpreted this outcome as a capitulation by the Trump administration and a victory for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Trump has decided on a drastic unilateral route to secure funding.

After this defeat, Trump declared a national emergency – a unilateral process – instead of taking any recourse that would involve the legislative branch of government. The move allows him to take money from the Defense Department’s budget and funnel it to the building of a wall, bypassing Congress entirely.

The origins of the national emergency are murky. The Constitution does not grant the president emergency powers. The only time it comments on inadequacies of governmental power is when is designates emergency powers to the Congress, including the ability to suspend habeas corpus.

However, in practice, presidents have often felt the need to act outside the stated boundaries of their office and Congress has only infrequently challenged them.

President Lincoln unilaterally suspended habeas corpus in a move of highly dubious constitutionality, though the Congress later retroactively authorized his actions. During World War II, FDR took on vast emergency powers to mobilize the nation resulting in acts like the internment of Japanese-Americans.

The courts have been as reluctant as the legislative branch to challenge the authority of the president on what constitutes a state of emergency and what actions a president can take when one is declared.

Two significant provisions do exist to mark the outer boundary of this amorphous authority. The Supreme Court established some rough framework when they stopped President Truman from taking control of the steel mills in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, and after Watergate, Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act of 1976 – giving Congress a mechanism to stop presidentially declared national emergencies.

The National Emergencies Act give Congress a way to end a national emergency through a vote in both houses. However, since a Supreme Court decision struck down the theory of legislative vetoes – the idea that Congress can enact bills that are not subject to the presidential veto – Trump could veto the motion to override his national emergency, making it only passable if two-thirds of Congress concur. Given Republican loyalty to the president, it is unlikely such a majority would be achieved.

Due to the unwillingness of congresspeople to defy presidents of their party, the United States has been in a continuous national emergency since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Currently, 31 national emergencies are active and in effect.

The basic premise underpinning presidential emergency powers assumes presidents will use their power sparingly and to forward the public interest. This idealistic idea has allowed a vast well of power to concentrate in the presidency.

For instance, constitutional theorists and legal experts suggest that with present active statues, presidents could theoretically deploy soldiers onto the streets of American cities, suspend habeas corpus, sanction American citizens without due process, significantly reduce civil liberties and even potentially take control of the internet.

Though both chambers of Congress are preparing to pass a resolution canceling the national emergency, it is extremely unlikely that either chamber will have sufficient Republican defectors to override the inevitable presidential veto. The fate of the national emergency will likely be left to the courts – where lawsuits have already been filed against it. Whichever way judges across the country rule it is possible that the final decision will have to be made by the Supreme Court.

The possibility of this chain of events have sparked fervent speculation on how the nine justices will decide: a decision shrouded in uncertainty given Trump’s own statements on the dubious necessity of the emergency and the court’s historic reticence on limiting emergency presidential power.

On Feb. 15, 2019, President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in the United States to further his agenda for the border wall. On Feb. 28, President Trump confirmed that should Congress pass the resolution voiding his declaration of a national emergency, he would veto the resolution.

In order for Congress to say no to the national emergency, a simple majority is needed. This means assuming all left-leaning members of Congress vote to end it, only four Republican senators would need to flip on President Trump.

On Sunday, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) became the fourth Republican senator to declare that he would flip – giving the Democrats the weight they need to vote no on the president’s use of emergency powers.

“I stand with the president often, and I do so with a loud voice,” Mr. Paul wrote in an opinion piece published late Sunday on Fox News’s website.

“Today, I think he’s wrong, not on policy, but in seeking to expand the powers of the presidency beyond their constitutional limits,” wrote Paul. “ I cannot support the use of emergency powers to get more funding [for a wall along the border with Mexico], so I will be voting to disapprove of his declaration when it comes before the Senate.”

Although it is already abundantly clear that President Trump will still initiate the national emergency, the question remains: will we actually see the wall?

It is unclear from a legal standpoint how far President Trump can stretch his executive powers – and he is known to play with the truth of the matter.

According to USA Today, the best conclusion says no, President Trump will not be successful at constructing a wall despite the national emergency.

“Poorly drafted laws give the president a wide range of easily abused emergency powers. Even if he can declare a “national emergency,” however, that does not mean he can use it to pay for and build a wall,” reported the Atlantic.

This is justified through specific reference to statutes in the Constitution.

Section 2808 states that, during a “national emergency” that “requires the use of the armed forces,” the president can reallocate defense funds to “undertake military construction projects … that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces.” No threat posed by undocumented immigration “requires the use of the armed forces,” and it is hard to see why a wall is “necessary to support such use.”

Source: USA Today

To this end, assuming Trump is not granted incredible executive leeway to mobilize the government in any way he sees fit, the political action of declaring a national emergency is nothing but symbolic. This still carries significance as much of the executive is symbolic in terms of tradition and precedent, but it should be made clear that the capability for the national emergency to create material violence is minimal.

The precedent Trump is setting with his current actions is no different than what some of the most successful Republican politicians have done up to this point – create catchy phrases to attach to policy initiatives which boil down the issues to easily consumable bites of rhetoric.

The terms “climate change” and “war on terror” are products of this method as well – “national emergency” is no different.

The fear that the words provoke is intended to spur voter interest and passion, leading them down a course of action conducive to solving whatever problem it is they posit to be at the heart of whatever problem they have identified.

The effort President Trump has exerted in pushing his wall is valiant. Unfortunately, the results of democracy are predicated on the will of the constituency, not necessarily the single-sighted desires of the president.

Democracy structurally excludes these sorts of authoritative decrees as they are a threat to the fluid movement of the U.S. government. Not to say the government is moving fluidly now, but choking the democratic processes by using executive orders and veto powers is not a safe precedent to set for presidents to come.

Coming off the heels of a devastating government shutdown that we’ve somehow all already forgotten about, the president’s declaration of a national emergency Feb. 15 was not only a nakedly obvious attempt to distract his base from his own pathetic loss in that gamble – in which  he actually impeded his own plans, coming out with $1.3 billion for 55 miles of fencing, far less than what he wanted and had been offered by the Democrats weeks prior – but moreover was not even a particularly good attempt at doing such. What that base received, instead, was perhaps the most doddering and senile display our president has given yet.

The whole affair calls back to one of the more banal stories in the mainstream news media last year, that of the supposed caravan of Latin American migrants approaching the U.S. border. The story then was the same here – a campfire tale for senior citizens who are convinced that MS-13 seeks to invade their podunk, midwestern towns. And while that tactic may have seen results at afternoon Bingo, the American people would appear to know better, given the rejection of this nonsense in the midterm elections.

The truth is that the caravan story is the same as every other conservative brouhaha about immigration – it is a fundamental misdirection as to where the origins of our country’s problems lie. When the people who embrace this anti-immigrant stance are able to actually articulate meaningful concerns re: immigration, it is almost always the fear that they will lose their jobs to lower-paid immigrant workers. It’s become something of a trope, the evergreen cry of “They’re takin’ our jobs.”

Here’s where the misdirection comes in. If your boss can replace you with someone and pay them less than what they pay you, why be mad at the new guy? Why not be mad at the boss instead? Or at the lawmakers, who aren’t just letting it happen – they’ve written it into the rules. The American economy of 2019 is demonstrably not designed for everyone, this is proven twice daily on Wall Street.

In the interest of good faith, though, I want to posit that Trump may be onto something here. The problems we face today in the U.S. are legion, and the processes in place seem almost designed to result in half-measures. It could very well be the case that a future president may need to call a national emergency themself in order to lead the country out of hard times. To help them with that, I’d like to propose a few options.

A president could call a national emergency to overhaul our healthcare system. The CDC reported in 2017 that at least 40 million American adults were unable to afford health insurance or access medical care.

Similarly, a president could call a national emergency to reign in the pharmaceutical industry, where rampant price-gouging has led to social media’s inundation with stories of kickstarters for life-saving surgery or cases as heartbreaking as a diabetic teenager who risked his life stretching his insulin so as to help his parents save money.

It need not stop there. A national emergency could be called to advance the Green New Deal – it may require such. Or, perhaps as a national apology for our president and his party’s actions, one could be called to reunite the thousands of children cruelly separated from their parents at the border.

As for Trump, he will never do any of these things. He’ll need to think fast on what his next move is though, given that the House has since motioned against his declaration and the Senate appears poised to do the same. His vision of carnage in the streets may have been enough to rile up the racists and profiteers for a time, but in the wake of growing resentment, it is clearly getting harder for him and his party to maintain that facade.
In short, the president’s national emergency is a godd*mned joke. But don’t just take my word for it, Trump himself admitted as much from the get-go.