President’s dubious claims of ‘emergency’ threaten civic and political norms in authoritarian style, experts warn

Trump’s dubious claims of ‘emergency’ threaten civic and political norms in authoritarian style, experts warn

Donald Trump’s drives to pursue his radical policies on immigration, tariffs and energy may seem at first to have little in common beyond a shared Maga political agenda.

But Trump has made spurious or thinly documented claims of “national emergencies” to justify harsh illegal immigrant measures, sweeping tariffs and massive energy deregulation, say legal scholars, watchdog groups and Democrats.

Some fear that governing by claims of “national emergency” has become normalised under Trump, posing a threat to US civic society and political norms as he governs in a permanent crisis mode and authoritarian style.

  • FirstCircle@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    12 minutes ago

    “The other side” is catching on, realizing the utility of “emergencies” as an excuse for exercising authoritarian power. https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/breaking-washington-mayor-declares-state-1203356

    This mayor is thought of as “left-leaning”, which, in Spokane, describes anyone who isn’t a Christian Fascist, or not yet anyway. In the event described at that link, she declared this “emergency” as justification to allow city cops to violently attack and arrest peaceful protesters, and to clear the area around the ICE building with a declaration of a curfew so that the latest pair of kidnapped dark-skinned people could be transported out to a temporary prison (“processing” center) on the other side of the state.

    Watch what “emergencies” the Iran War brings about. “Only one of the ‘Enemy Within’ would complain about inflation, unemployment, high gas prices, cuts to domestic spending, and curtailment of Constitutional rights, when our soldiers on the Iran Front are suffering so much in this Emergency. Such talk against the government is deemed traitorous and shall be punished severely by the Emergency Tribunal.”