Trump’s Reasonable—And Yet Still Worrisome—Emergency Declaration
When President Donald Trump issued emergency declarations in response to the coronavirus pandemic on Friday, many Americans didn’t know whether to breathe a sigh of relief or to call the American Civil Liberties Union. Trump’s negligence in addressing the growing crisis had been galling to watch. But when a president with autocratic tendencies invokes emergency powers, red flags start to wave. Should Americans be encouraged by the president’s action—or deeply worried?
The coronavirus pandemic is clearly an emergency, and the emergency measures that Trump announced fall well within the law. They could give a moderate boost to efforts to treat the virus. But the declarations do not necessarily signal a newfound commitment to responsible disease-mitigation efforts, let alone undo the damage his neglect has caused. And given this president’s record of disdain for the rule of law, the country must be on guard for abuse of the president’s powers, both emergency and nonemergency, in ways that undermine civil liberties without advancing public health.
[Peter Wehner: The Trump presidency is over]
Let’s start with Friday’s declarations themselves. To assess whether they were appropriate, we need to know what powers Trump invoked, what they allow, and how he proposes to use them. After all, Congress has passed hundreds of laws that confer emergency powers, and they vary widely in the scope of the authorities they delegate and in the powers’ potential for abuse. Trump’s declarations Friday relied on two of these laws: the Stafford Act and the National Emergencies Act.
The Stafford Act, a 1988 law that amended the 1974 Disaster Relief Act, authorizes the president to declare either a “major an emergency, but he also
