Not Everything Is a National Emergency

Emergency declarations have become a loophole to administrative lawlessness

• In their present form, emergencies are governed by the National Emergencies Act of 1976
• Presidents from Jimmy Carter onward have declared 75 emergencies citing the authority of that law
• About half of those declarations, many now decades old, remain in effect today
• Some of them address situations (the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, for example) that may fairly be described as national emergencies, but others plainly do not

The point of an emergency declaration is that it permits the federal government to act when Congress does not have time to move

• National emergency declarations are not for when a senator won't vote the way the president wants
• They are not tools of presidential blackmail to make the legislature do the executive's bidding
• For all its demonstrated openness to presidential abuse, the purpose of the National Emergencies Act was not to completely invert the Constitution's design for the flow of federal action

 

https://reason.com/2022/07/19/not-everything-is-a-national-emergency/