Today, Explained - Emergency podcast!

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

President Donald Trump declared a national state of emergency today. It’s the latest installment in his controversial “Build the wall!” series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you trying to hire someone? You could post your job on a job board or you could post your job on LinkedIn, where a whole lot of people, it turns out, go every day to make connections, to grow in their careers, and to discover new opportunities. You can go to linkedin.com slash explained right now and get $50 off your first job post. That is linkedin.com slash explained. Terms and conditions apply. The order is signed and I'll sign the final papers as soon as I get into the Oval Office and we will have a national emergency and we will then be sued. They will sue us in the Ninth Circuit, even though it shouldn't be there. We will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we'll

get another bad ruling, and we'll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we'll get a fair shake, and we'll win in the Supreme Court. Just like the band, they sued us in the Ninth Circuit, and we lost, and then we lost in the appellate division, and then we went to the Supreme Court, and we won. And it was very interesting because yesterday they were talking about the ban. Because we have a ban, it's very helpful. Ninth Circuit, fair shake, Supreme Court, just like the band. Lizzo Vox, we're having an emergency. It's official. Is that exactly how it's going to go?

That's pretty much how it's going to go. He nailed it. He did. He declared the emergency and he's going to face a ton of lawsuits in response to it. The president has been hinting at this for a while now. What took so long? Why did he declare a state of emergency on Friday, February 15th? A major reason for the delay is that Republicans aren't particularly in support of this. And I think if he had had his party behind him, he might have done it sooner. So what exactly does he get from declaring this national emergency?

The national emergency is very broad. It basically gives presidents the ability to say something is threatening our national security. We need to do something about it. And it gives them the authority to do a wide array of things. In this case, Trump wants to use it to redirect funding that's already been allocated to military construction projects and some other DOD resources in order to fund the construction of his border wall. Do we know exactly where the money's coming from, or is it just sort of general defense slush fund-y stuff? It's coming from a couple different places.

So he wants to get roughly $6.5 billion in total from three main buckets of funding. One of them is the Treasury's drug forfeiture program, and he's trying to get $600 million from that. Then he's trying to get $2.5 billion from a counter-narcotics program that's under DOD, and $3.5 billion from kind of a wide range of military construction projects. Okay. And you mentioned that this took a while because Republicans weren't sure about it. Democrats are definitely going to sue him, right? For sure. I think you're going to see a lot of groups coming out to sue him,

but House Democrats have already said they're interested in taking two actions. So one of those actions is that the House can actually put a check on the president when he decides to declare an emergency. And so they're definitely going to pass a resolution that's basically like, you can't do this. We disagree with you. That resolution needs a simple majority to pass in the Senate as well. And right now, it's unclear if it will because Democrats would need Republican support. But enough Republicans have already said they disagree with this move. I can tell you that for people on my side of the

aisle, one of the concerns we should have is if today the national emergency is border security and it entitles them to go out and do something, we all support that. Tomorrow the national security emergency might be, you know, climate change, so let's seize fossil fuel plants or something. I mean, maybe it's an exaggeration, but my point is we've got to be very careful about endorsing broad uses of executive power in our republic. The issue at that point is that Trump would probably veto the resolution.

So it would bounce back to Congress where it would need a veto-proof majority in order to kind of actually come to fruition. And that's where the real question comes up, because that would mean two-thirds in the Senate. And it's highly unlikely that many Republicans would be willing to take a stand against Trump. When this goes to the courts, because it will go to the courts, right? Right. What exactly will the lawsuit look like or lawsuits? There's a couple different routes. So if House Democrats pursue a lawsuit, they have grounds to say what Trump is doing is unconstitutional because the Constitution gives Congress the ability to allocate federal funding. And they can say Trump is completely bypassing that, bypassing the separation of powers, trying to do things unilaterally. But it's uncertain if they have the grounds to do that.

Another argument they can make is that this isn't an actual national emergency. So it doesn't warrant a declaration of national emergency. I think when experts look at that, they say the issue is presidents historically have had just wide-ranging ability to do what they're interested in doing if they kind of take this route. We're under like several states of national emergency right now. Right, right. We're constantly under a state of national emergency for different reasons. The other groups that could sue include landowners whose land could be seized in order to build this border wall. So they can make the argument that they're kind of being mistreated or that they aren't interested in this or want some kind of being mistreated or that they aren't

interested in this or want some kind of settlement in exchange for their land being taken. And places like the city of El Paso, Texas, have also said they're interested in suing because this could damage the reputation of the city. So I think landowners are kind of seen as the people with the most standing at this point to levy a lawsuit that could be effective. I mean, the president said today that he doesn't need to do this, but he'd just rather do it faster. I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster. Is that going to hurt his case for this? I think it very well could. I mean, that basically is an open admission that this

isn't an emergency. In front of the entire country, he said that. Right, right. He's on record saying that. So I can see that being used against him for sure. I mean, he said this is going to go to the Ninth Circuit. Is that a guarantee? It's likely going to start at a district court and then people are going to appeal. It will end up going, you know, up to the Ninth Circuit, then potentially the Supreme Court. And do we have any idea how the Supreme Court weighs in on this type of national emergency declaration? There's an interesting precedent that was set in 2015 by House Republicans who at the time sued the White House because they felt like they were abusing kind of that power of the purse constitutional right by trying to pay insurers via the Affordable Care Act.

Of course. The district court judge at the time actually said House Republicans had standing to sue the White House. And so potentially this time around, House Democrats could use that kind of precedent to do the same to the Trump administration. The issue is that case, I think, kind of stalled because the same to the Trump administration. The issue is that case, I think, kind of stalled because the Trump administration took over and just stopped paying insurers. So the problem that was being addressed didn't ultimately get resolved. So there's no legal conclusion there. So this is sort of a big question mark, how this will go in the Supreme Court.

Right. So it's going to take a while. Yeah, how this will go in the Supreme Court. Right. So it's going to take a while. Yeah. No breaking ground on the wall anytime soon. Probably not. And in the meantime, no shutdown either. Yeah, also no shutdown. Hey, look at that.

Which is a positive. That is a positive thing. Yeah. What does that deal look like? That deal is a massive deal. It's $333 billion in total. Wow. It includes seven spending bills that address nine federal departments, including transportation, agriculture, homeland security. And the main sticking point in that deal was how much is going to be spent on border security and a potential wall.

And the resolution of that is no money at all for the wall. The deal is actually written in a way that explicitly prohibits any funding from going to a concrete wall. But they did allocate $1.375 billion for border barriers that are made of kind of existing materials and technologies already at the border. And what that means is steel fencing or the equivalent of the steel slats that Trump has been referring to. How are Democrats and Republicans feeling about this deal? Was this like a sign of bipartisanship right here? In many ways, I think it was because we did see compromising about the fencing and we did see some compromising vaguely around ICE detention beds and how many beds there are. I think what you saw in the votes, which overwhelmingly passed the House

and the Senate, most lawmakers, I think, are just happy to have something that will fund the government through the end of September. So they won't have to deal with, will there be another shutdown in two weeks, kind of in perpetuity? It received 300 votes in the House. It received more than 80 votes in the Senate. So most people were excited. You did see, however, that there are pockets in both the Democratic and Republican parties who were lot of progressives, including well-known freshmen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, those folks who are pushing for people to vote against the deal. Because they said, first of all, it gives DHS more money than it got last year.

And on top of that, it isn't really doing much to curb what ICE is doing in terms of detaining people. And they were upset with that issue. On the Senate side, you saw a similar split where 2020 Democrats especially are trying to prove that they are as progressive as they can be. So you had Gillibrand, Harris, Booker, Warren all voting against the bill, even though Sanders and Klobuchar actually ended up voting in favor of it. So that's the kind of dissent on the Democratic side. And then on the Republican side, of course, you've got the Freedom Caucus people who are up in arms always because this gave no money for the wall. And that's really what they wanted. How do we get to this point where you got a fairly bipartisan spending bill with no major allowances to the president for wall spending after we had you on the show several

times over to talk about the longest shutdown in the history of this country, it just makes it seem like totally pointless. It does. And I think that's what's one of the most kind of disappointing aspects of all this. It makes it feel very much like it was just a political bruise all along. And I think the main reason that Trump was even down to sign this bill is that that first shutdown hurt him a lot. And he didn't want that to happen again. Trump aside, I think Congress has always been able to figure out a deal like this. And I think you heard a lot of senators say that, like Richard Shelby,

who's the head of the Appropriations Committee, would be like, if you left us alone, we could figure this out in two hours. And I think that's true because we saw bipartisan bills come out of the House and the Senate last year. And that was without Trump's interference. But I think anytime Trump is like, I'm going to veto something, that kind of throws everything into flux. Do you think we'll forget the lessons that we've learned by september when a new funding bill comes up yeah i think september is gonna come around and then it's gonna be will there be another shutdown again oh that's just an evergreen question yep okay There was a shutdown.

Now there's a national emergency. Is this just what our government's going to look like for the next two years? I'm Sean Rotman's firm. That's next on Today Explained is actually our 250th, and our one-year anniversary is just around the corner on Tuesday. And what we've learned in these 250 episodes and, you know, 12 months is that hiring the right person can make a huge impact on what it is you do. And you can hire the right person at LinkedIn. LinkedIn told me that LinkedIn members haven't recently visited the top job boards, but nine out of 10 members are open to new opportunities.

They told me that a new hire is made every 10 seconds on LinkedIn and that 75% of the U.S. workforce is on the site. You can go to LinkedIn.com slash explained right now and get $50 off your first job post. That is LinkedIn.com slash explained. Terms and conditions apply, but you know what? Isn't that just how life goes? Linkedin.com slash explained, $50 off your first job post. Matthew Iglesias, host of The Weeds podcast from Vox. Three weeks ago, you were on the show.

We talked about how the deal to end the 35-day government shutdown was sort of the first big political event and standoff of this new political era. Trump and the Republicans in the Senate, Democrats controlling the House. Looks like we're getting into number two now. Absolutely. Trump is basically surrendering on the legislative fight, but he's decided we're in an emergency. Emergency! Everybody to get from streets! A couple months into this disagreement, a couple years into his presidency,

apparently, suddenly, there's an emergency. It seems like a rough start to this relationship. There's a shutdown and a national emergency, and we're less than two months into it. Yeah, it's a confrontational approach. I think a lot of people thought maybe Trump would take the opportunity to take up some of the less orthodox conservative stuff he'd said on the campaign trail, infrastructure, whatever, try to make some deals with Nancy Pelosi, try to drive a wedge in the Democratic caucus. But instead, he is a guy who he enjoys conflict and confrontation. And here we are.

Yeah, it just feels pretty dysfunctional. What's this done for Trump's relationship with his own party? You know, this is a thing. This has been the primary dynamic of Trump-era Washington. I have never seen a president who generates this much eye-rolling from his co-partisans in Congress. So little genuine respect and admiration. Like, you know, I love this guy. I really have confidence in his decisions. At the same time, in a practical sense, like a lot of unity.

Barack Obama, most Democrats in Congress really liked him. He also, he had problems having uniform support for his main initiatives. Here, it's like Trump, a couple weeks ago, Republicans in Congress were like, no, don't do this. Like, it's a crazy idea. But now Trump's doing it. And there's some questioning statements. But Mitch McConnell, the party leaders are like, yep, this is go do it, Mr. President.

Why is that? Why is it that there's this eye rolling? You hear Lindsey Graham mocking the president and then fervently supporting him. Why is there this sort of duality to the way the Republicans react to him? I think it's because Trump is such a media phenomenon that the Republican base gets so much of their information through conservative partisan media that is really itself really into Trump and really gauges authentic conservativeness by loyalty to Trump and to the Trump agenda. And so members of Congress are quite happy to sort of express quietly or even medium volume

various kinds of discontent with the president. But like they want to be on record as Trump supporters on Fox, on talk radio, kind of all the time. Is that to say that because the base still so adamantly supports the president, it's not in the interest of, say, Republican senators to oppose him on any of these major decisions? Particularly in public ways. I mean, I think a telling thing here, right, is that the old deal that Trump rejected had about $1.6 billion for fence construction. Yeah.

The new deal has actually less money than that. Right. So that shows like how important do Republican negotiators actually think this is? Like how much do they like genuinely in their heart of hearts in like a tough negotiation behind closed doors? Like not at all, right? They actually cut fence money in this. But then like when the cameras are on, right, it's like all you're asking is position taking, right?

It's like do you support Trump and his wall and his emergency? And they're like, yes. Yes, I do, right? Like they want to be seen as Donald Trump's supporters. Now, a different question is like do they actually care about the things Trump says he cares about? And the answer is no. The president took a moment today to shout out the fact that according to at least one poll, a little more than 50 percent of the country approves of the job he's doing. Is he just cherry picking polls there or what?

Yeah. I mean, you know, his poll numbers have gotten better since the shutdown, but that's to say they got really bad during the shutdown. They're bouncing back up. They're still bad for an incoming president, low 40s mostly. Every once in a while, a poll comes along that shows he's at around 50%. But that's what you'd expect, right? If the president is in the low 40s, then one poll out of every 40 or so is going to put him up at around 50.

And we'll see what happens with this emergency. The idea of declaring an emergency has polled very poorly. But unlike the shutdown, right? I mean, I said on this show, the shutdown is going to be one of these things where politics impacts people's actual lives. And that made him very unpopular. The emergency, you're not going to notice, right? Like nothing is going to happen in a concrete way that impacts you, particularly because

there's probably just going to be a lot of litigation about this. Right. I just feel like so far this year, or even towards the end of last year, there are like these two competing narratives I want to ask you about. One is that, you know, our government's a hot mess. There's shutdowns. There's this emergency. But on the other hand, we just got this big, huge bipartisan funding bill this week.

Both parties are fighting the president on withdrawing troops from Syria and Afghanistan. There was this bipartisan mandatory minimum sentence bill that the president actually signed late last year. How should Americans feel about how the government functions right now? The government is not functioning very well, I think. But the country is functioning pretty well. And a lot of these big problems are internal to the government, right? It's like if Trump had never started saying that it was like a huge problem, that we only had a moderate pace of border fence construction, then there was no problem here. So the fact that he couldn't get Congress to act on it is itself not a problem.

The only problem is that the antics wound up like shutting down air traffic and the Indian Health Service, right? It's not to say there's nothing wrong with America. We have one of the world's highest child poverty rates. The opioid crisis is obviously quite bad. But compared to where we were as a country 10 years ago with the economy, compared to the height of the Iraq War or something like that, things are kind of okay, right? A question that should worry us all is like when crises do occur, how are we going to deal with it? We have the example of Hurricane Maria, which dealt with very poorly, right?

And that happened sort of at the margins of America in this territory where they don't have members of Congress. I mean, and I look at this stuff all the time. Like, well, what if there was a real emergency? Like, would anyone even believe Trump? Like, would he be able to make deals with Congress? Would he be able to mobilize resources, focus on a problem?

It doesn't really seem like it. That said, things are going okay. As long as Trump isn't shutting the government down. Life goes on. Thanks again to LinkedIn for supporting this episode of Today Explained. You can go to LinkedIn and find a place where people go every day to make connections, to grow in their careers, to discover new opportunities. LinkedIn.com slash explained is the website to get $50 off your first job post. Again, that's LinkedIn.com slash explained. Terms and conditions apply.