In a recent article in The New York Times, “For Donald Trump, Everything Is an Emergency” (Sept. 4), editor Adam Kushner wrote that the use of emergency powers has become Trump’s philosophy of governing. The imposition of tariffs, mass deportations, impounding funds, closing federal agencies, controlling the Federal Reserve, conning the Supreme Court into using its shadow docket — all have an emergency component. The problem, Kushner says, is that our Constitution has few curbs on a president’s ability to declare an emergency. There are no clear guidelines as to whether an emergency exists beyond an assumption of good faith. The legal tradition that gets in the way is “the presumption of regularity,” which means, according to Kushner, “that judges assume the government is acting honestly,” and further, that “(a) president’s factual claims are not subject to objective proof of error.”
What is clear from the above is that Trump has the tool he needs to declare martial law wherever and whenever he wants. Right now, we are watching him feel his way, probing the lines so to speak: sending some National Guard personnel and a few Marines into Los Angeles, deploying a few National Guard personnel into Washington, D.C., and threatening Chicago and other cities in blue states. The fake emergencies usually take the form of “out-of-control crime,” when, in reality, the real purpose is intimidation, the accelerated deportation of immigrants and, more darkly, a setting of the stage for the sabotage of the 2026 elections anywhere these forces are entrenched.
If the Supreme Court cannot find a way to condemn Trump’s fake emergencies soon, there is no telling what his next move will be. We, the people, are being called to man the ramparts to save our democracy. There is no time to spare.
Frederick Longacre
Hockessin
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