VOA常速英语:特朗普为建造边境墙而宣布国家紧急状态

President Donald Trump may have ended a battle over the federal budget, but he opened a door to a much bigger dispute when he declared a national emergency to build his border wall. It’s a great thing to do, because we have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people, and it’s not acceptable.
Some, including President Trump’s own Republican Party, do not accept that rationale, saying the president is abusing his powers and bypassing congress. Fundamentally, this should be congress’ role, and I’m afraid this lets congress off the hook from doing its job. It is not emergency. What’s happening at the border is humanitarian challenge to us. The president, it has tried to sell a bill of goods to American people.

Presidents in both major US political parties have increasingly used executive power to unilaterally implement their policies. But President Trump appears to be employing one of the boldest uses of emergency powers to force through such a politically divisive policy. He has continuously claims that he would just use emergency power as a workaround to congressional action, and that is a very rare instance of usage of emergency powers by presidents.
There are also concerns about this president’s decision setting a precedent. You could say global warming is a national emergency. You could say that lack of affordable house care is a national emergency. You could say that homelessness is a national emergency. Meant all of them are at least plausible, if not more plausible than the need of building a security wall.
Trump may have further hurt his legal chances on Friday when he himself seems to suggest the border situation wasn’t an immediate crisis. I could do the wall for a longer period of time. I don’t need to do this but I’d rather do it much faster. Congress will likely try to overturn the president’s national emergency, but at this point there probably aren’t enough vote to overcome a veto.
Bill Gallio, VOA news, the White House.