The National Emergencies Act is a little- known law that’s been getting a lot of attention. Passed in 1976, the law empowers the president to declare a “National Emergency,” which gives him or her statutory authority to transfer surplus weapons, deploy troops for disaster response, and the like.
The law is so often invoked–an average of nine times a years for natural disasters–that it has not proven controversial. Now President Trump is floating the idea of declaring a national emergency to build a wall on the entire U.S. Mexican border, people are waking up to the possibility that the law could be abused in non-emergency situations.
And it could be hard to stop him. As law professor Steven Vladeck points out Congress can only terminate an emergency without the president’s consent today if veto-proof supermajorities (290 members of the House and 67 Senators) agree to do so.
Any declaration of emergency to build a wall would be met by a court challenge that might check the president. But Vladeck says that that Congress need to rewrite the law–and soon.
In the four decades since Congress originally passed the National Emergences Act, judicial and congressional tweaks have created a flawed and potentially dangerous situation.
