He splits the GOP

By Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer
January 11 at 10:20 AM

... President Trump’s threat to declare an emergency because Congress won’t give him $5.7 billion for a wall, designed to respond to talk-radio hosts' hysteria, will mark a new phase in his presidency. Rather than provide an “off-ramp" so he can declare victory in an unwinnable standoff, its most likely result will be the erosion of his power as a result of intensified judicial scrutiny and shattering of his support in the Republican Party.

... There is no illegal immigration emergency (border crossings have diminished dramatically in recent years); to the extent there is a humanitarian crisis of asylum-seekers, it is not one a wall would address. The president has made it plain: The emergency didn’t exist when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. It will not exist if Congress capitulates, allocating billions that will be spent only after years of litigation. That’s certainly not an “emergency,” as the term is used in everyday parlance (“a serious, unexpected and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action”) ...

The federal district and circuit courts have not been shy about rebuffing Trump’s executive overreach (on the Muslim travel ban, sanctuary cities, child separation, limits on asylum, environmental actions and more). They are highly unlikely to accept the president’s argument that an emergency is whatever he says it is and that it can be used to defy Congress when it refuses to exercise its power of the purse in ways he doesn’t like ...

If Trump heads for the emergency exit and reopens the government, he very likely will be rebuffed while the government resumes operation. By the time this works its way through the courts we will be at the end of the fiscal year, where presumably this very same fight will be replayed. His promise for Mexico to pay for the wall has already gone up in smoke; when he has no wall to show for all his histrionics, he will be hard-pressed to declare victory. The courts in all likelihood will have confirmed that Trump (and his successors' powers) are curtailed by the Constitution and the courts. His ambition and his extravagant claims of executive authority will be limited. The winner will be the courts and Congress ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/11/emergency-trump-splits-gop/?utm_term=.e36ffb44502a