Autocracy Watch Day 6: An authoritarian declares national emergencies on false pretenses

 The New York Times, NO. 6

An authoritarian declares national emergencies on false pretenses. Trump has.

Authoritarians often curtail democracy by declaring an emergency and arguing that the threat requires them to exercise unusual degrees of power.

Mr. Trump’s recent predecessors were not perfect on this issue. They sometimes declared questionable emergencies. He has gone to another level. He has used manufactured emergencies to sidestep Congress and impose tariffs, deregulate the energy industry, intensify immigration enforcement and send the National Guard into Washington. Chillingly, he has claimed that a Venezuelan gang invaded the United States to justify the killing of foreign civilians in international waters, in defiance of U.S. and international law.

The Bottom Line
Mr. Trump’s willingness to kill people without due process, through the blowing up of boats that American officials could instead stop and search, represents one of his most extreme abuses of power. It raises the prospect that he may expand the use of emergency power to other areas, including domestic law enforcement.

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