In invoking emergency powers for an end run around Congress in building his border wall, President Trump violated a norm of presidential self-restraint.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday pointed to nearly five dozen previous instances in which presidents of both parties have declared emergencies as justification for his invocation of extraordinary powers to build his border wall. But there is no precedent for what he has just done.
None of the times emergency powers have been invoked since 1976, the year Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act, involved a president making an end run around lawmakers to spend money on a project they had decided against funding. Mr. Trump, by contrast, is challenging the bedrock principle that the legislative branch controls the government’s purse.
“On the surface, this ‘Oh, other presidents do this, too’ line seems logical,” said Chris Edelson, an American University government professor and author of a 2013 book, “Emergency Presidential Power: From the Drafting of the Constitution to the War on Terror.” “But there is no example where a president asked for funding for something from Congress, Congress said, ‘No,’ and the president said, ‘I’ll use emergency powers to do it anyway.’”
Mr. Trump sought to evade that distinction on Friday when he announced his border wall decision at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden. He portrayed his invocation of emergency powers as a routine use of executive authority that was never controversial when his predecessors did it.
“I’m going to be signing a national emergency and it’s been signed many times before,” he said. “It’s been signed by other presidents. From 1977 or so, it gave the presidents the power. There’s rarely been a problem. They sign it. Nobody cares.”
But a list of about 59 previous times when presidents since the Carter administration have invoked emergency powers, compiled for a recent study of presidential emergency powers for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, shows none that look like Mr. Trump’s declaration in crucial respects.
The overwhelming majority of those instances were moves by presidents to impose sanctions on various foreign officials and groups — freezing their assets and making it illegal for Americans to do business with them — for wrongdoing like human rights violations, terrorism or transnational narcotics trafficking. They attracted no controversy because Congress has wanted the executive branch to operate that way.
Congress has also enacted a statute that gave presidents, in a declared emergency “that requires use of the armed forces,” the power to redirect military construction funds to build projects related to that use.
