Trump’s strategy to get his way: declare one fake ‘emergency’ after another | Steven Greenhouse

6 hours ago 10

Hating legal constraints, Donald Trump has repeatedly taken unilateral actions for which he had zero legal authority unless he found some national emergency to declare. So Trump, no stickler for the truth, has conveniently invoked numerous national emergencies to justify his unilateral actions – whether imposing tariffs on dozens of countries or deporting immigrants without due process – even when there wasn’t anything close to a real emergency.

A recent example involves Trump’s anger at Spain. Early this month, Trump was so furious at Spain for not letting the US use its air bases to help his illegal war against Iran that he called for cutting off all trade with Spain. Trump said he would order a trade embargo, with his treasury secretary suggesting that he’d invoke a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

“Spain has been terrible,” Trump said. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain.” While Trump may view Spain’s refusal to bend to his will as some emergency blow to his ego, does anyone other than Trump believe that Spain’s action constitutes an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US – the standard that must be met to impose trade sanctions under the IEEPA?

Last April, Trump bombastically declared Liberation Day and slapped painful tariffs on more than 80 countries. He justified that move by asserting that the US trade deficit was a national emergency even though the US has run a trade deficit every year for the past 50 years. Considering that the US had the world’s strongest economy during that period, does anyone other than the truth-disdaining president see the trade deficit as a dire emergency?

Last month, the supreme court overturned those tariffs, ruling that Trump didn’t have the power to impose them because Congress didn’t authorize presidents to impose tariffs under the IEEPA. In that case, the court unfortunately failed to address a major falsehood that underpinned Trump’s tariffs – the justices should have declared that the Trump administration was lightyears from the truth when it asserted that the trade deficit was a “national emergency” and an “unusual and extraordinary” threat.

Trump is the most dishonest, authoritarian and lawless president in US history. In the tariffs case, it was good to see the supreme court – which has been inexcusably complacent about checking Trump’s power grab – finally rule that one of his major actions was illegal. But to help safeguard our democracy and counter Trump’s push for ever more power, the court needs to emphatically address Trump’s systematic war against truth. The justices should as soon as possible issue a major ruling that declares that one of Trump’s actions – for instance, deploying the National Guard to a blue city – was based on falsehoods and fabricated emergencies. That, let’s hope, would help create a red line that might deter Trump from declaring more faux emergencies to justify his actions. (Perhaps the justices will be more willing to call out Trump’s falsehoods because he slimed them as “unpatriotic” and “lapdogs” of “the radical left” after they overturned his tariffs.)

Consider the tariffs Trump slapped on Canada. He justified them by insisting that all the fentanyl entering the US from Canada constituted an emergency. That claim was preposterous considering that a mere 43lbs of fentanyl were seized at the Canadian border in 2024, compared to 21,000lbs at the Mexican border. It would have been great if the supreme court, in its tariff decision, had not only upheld the law, but also upheld the truth, and ruled that the tariffs against Canada were illegal because they were based on a fictitious emergency.

Another fabricated emergency involved Trump’s sending the national guard into Portland, Oregon, by falsely asserting that the city was “burning to the ground” and had “insurrectionists all over the place”. Fortunately, a federal district court judge there, Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee to the bench, had the courage to call out Trump’s dangerous hogwash. Concluding that Trump’s claims about violence and insurrection in Portland were “untethered to the facts”, Immergut wrote that while judges owe a “great level of deference” to the president, this “is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground”.

It’s great to see Immergut and other brave lower-court judges call out Trump’s lies, but it’s dismaying that the supreme court has so far been too craven to do the same. It’s been too deferential to Trump’s deluded version of reality. The US judicial system does give district court judges first crack at making factual determinations in lawsuits, but even so, it would speak loudly if the supreme court used a few cases to show that it emphatically agreed with district court judges’ findings that Trump was basing his emergency declarations on fabrications and falsehoods.

With such a dishonest figure in the White House, the supreme court should see its role as not just saying what the law is, but saying what the truth is. This is especially important right now because Trump seems intent on aggressively interfering in this November’s elections. Many Democrats fear that Trump will invoke a fabricated national emergency – for instance, that hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants are voting – to justify sending troops or masked ICE agents into various communities at election time to intimidate people of color and discourage them from voting (and thereby help Republican candidates). If the supreme court issues a major decision over the next few months to make 100% clear to Trump that it is not going to turn a blind eye to his falsely invoked emergencies, that could go far to discourage Trump from corrupting this fall’s elections.

Hannah Arendt repeatedly warned that when truth is destroyed, it is easier for authoritarians to gain power and hold on to it. When a US president seeks to systematically destroy truth, with tens of thousands of lies and distortions and by declaring numerous false emergencies, that helps the president destroy democracy, too.

Recognizing this danger, protesters at several No Kings rallies have carried signs saying “Prevent Truth Decay.” It’s time for the supreme court to step up and also fight truth decay.