Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

There were actually only 40 national emergencies in force as of Jan 2025, with a total of 95 having been declared since 1976 so its not as common as you're making it out to be

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_in_the_United_States

The vast majority of the currently active declarations of national emergency relate to imposition of sanctions or seizure orders against foreign groups, states or individuals and have no domestic impact

Trumps recent declarations of national emergency are different, in that they are self serving and intended to bypass the normal processes and procedures to usurp power for the executive. Bypassing the normal checks and balances.

His first declarations of emergency were to open up the national parks for oil and gas exploration, Tariffs on Canada on the ludicrous assertion that they were flooding America with fentanyl, sanctioning the ICC because they are investigating the genocide in gaza

So trump was lying…again. Made up statistics to justify his tough guy bullshit. But so what, right? Those checks and balances will curb him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/12/national-guard-civil-unrest/

There's no ambiguity about Trump's desires, and those of Project 2025's architects. To say that voters can exercise their franchise to challenge this, at a time of focused disenfranchisement and gerrymandering, is either woefully naive or deliberately disingenuous. Democracy is not the endstate being envisioned with these actions.

You present this statement as though legal precedent is something that exists anymore. SCOTUS has given Trump carte blanche to break rules however he chooses. There is no effective opposition to him in government.

a certain phrase comes to mind in all this discussion on whether Trump has crossed the line or not ie paralysis by analysis.
Some ‘facts’ we need to acknowledge which are as follows :-

(1) just because Trump says that there is an emergency in a certain geographical / behavioural area does not mean that there is an emergency,. But he interprets the situation as that once he states that there is an emergency he thinks that he has the right to take action

(2) Congress has the right to ‘ question’ and indeed rescind a it of these executive orders issued. By Trump if found to be unconstitutional but it is afraid to do so

(3) cthe US justice system does not seem to be very independant. It seems to be packed with Trumpites.

(4) some US laws can be ‘ interpreted ‘ in a number of ways and are revisited so as to find a new interpretation that can suit Trumps agenda.

So, Manic , IMO, I think that you are being too generous in giving Trump the ‘benefit of the doubt’

President Trump's nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has proposed ending releasing the agency's closely watched jobs report each month.

"It's a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately," Antoni said.

"Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data," he added.

Well maybe thats not such a bad idea, the initial headline was a bit misleading.

I think there's two issues:

First, is this actually an "emergency"? If it's not an emergency, it can't be a national emergency. A long-standing, settled state of affairs is clearly not an "emergency" in the ordinary meaning of that word; an emergency is something that arises unexpectedly, or with little warning, and that requires a rapid response. The political crisis in Burundi was an emergency in this sense.

The declaration of an emergency in relation to the ICC is a bit harder to defend. The declaration was made in 2020 and was triggered not by investigations into Netenyahu but by investigations into war crimes in Afghanistan. This was hardly unexpected or unforeseen; Afghanistan had been a party to the Rome Statute since 2003; the war had been going on there since 2001; there had been well-documented cases of war crimes since 2009; the prosecutors first sought authorisation to investigate in 2017. So I think this fails the "unexpected" test. It may also fail the "demands an urgent response" test; the US could, for example, have waited until the ICC actually brought charges against US personnel before taking any steps (which never happened; charges have been brought, but only against ISIS and Taliban personnel).

The second question — and this requirement is laid down in the law — is whether the emergency "constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States". I agree with Manic that it's hard to see how the the situation in Burundi constituted a threat to US national security, but it could arguably have threatened US foreign policy objectives for the region, and that's enough.

Similarly, the ICC investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan could hardly threaten US national security. To be honest, it's hard to see how it could have threatened US foreign policy either, unless it was the policy of the US that it should be possible for participants in the war in Afghanistan to commit war crimes inwith impunity, which would be, um, an embarrassing policy to admit to. (But, then, a lot of US policy in Afghanistan was fairly embarassing. And a threat to an embarassing foreign policy is still a threat to foreign policy.)