Majority Of Americans Oppose National Emergency To Fund Border Wall
Most Americans oppose the President's use of a national emergency to get funding for his border wall, but don't expect that to cause him to change his mind.
A new poll finds that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the President’s declaration of an emergency at the southern border to make an end run around Congress to get funding for his wall:
About six in 10 Americans oppose President Trump’s national emergency declaration to fund a wall along the southern border.
Sixty percent of Americans voiced disapproval to the move Trump made last month, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The survey found that 53 percent of Americans strongly disapproved of using a national emergency to divert military funds for construction of a border while seven percent said they “somewhat” disapprove.
Meanwhile 39 percent of Americans said they did support a national emergency to fund a border wall. Just 1 percent of Americans are unsure
The poll comes weeks after Trump declared a national emergency to allocate unappropriated funding to building a border wall. Trump made the announcement as he agreed to sign a Congressional spending bill without the $5.7 billion in funds he wanted for a steel barrier along the border.
These results are roughly identical to numbers we saw from polling that took place just after the end of the government shutdown when the President both signed the bill funding the government through the end of the Fiscal Year and declared a national emergency even though he admitted at the time that he “didn’t need to do it” and that his main motivation for making an end run around Congress was because of his frustration and not getting what he wanted out of the negotiations that ended the budget crisis. It’s also consistent with polling taken during the government shutdown — see here, here, and here — showing that a majority of Americans opposed the border wall itself. In this respect, it is entirely unsurprising.
Even with these numbers, though, public opinion is unlikely to have much of an impact on the situation at this point. The President isn’t going to revoke his emergency declaration, and with the exception of a handful of Republican Congressmen and Senators, very few Republicans are going to break with their party to support the resolution disapproving of the Presidents declaration, which will apparently pass the Senate only to face a veto which will not be overridden. This means that we will have to look to the Courts and the various lawsuits that have been filed against the Presidents declaration in the past two weeks. While that is the way the system is supposed to work, it would be nice if the voters’ Representatives in Washington actually reflected the will of the people on an issue like this. Unfortunately, we’ve got an entire political party in Washington that appears to exist solely to protect the current occupant of the White House rather than reflect the will of the people they represent.
The New Yorker has a piece up on The Making of the FOX News White House.
We see an old fool who shot off his mouth with a stupid plan, and is now determined to proceed despite no support from the Congress, trampling the Constitution in the process. They see a fighter going to any lengths to keep them “safe”. As always these days, no one’s mind will be changed, it’s a question of whose voters will be more motivated to turn out.
Most American voters opposed Trump, and he won the Electoral College anyway. He learned the wrong lesson from that, assuming he learned a lesson at all.
Right now I’d settle for 2 Senators and a Representative defending their own Constitutional prerogatives. Instead I’ve got 3 people more useless than tits on a boar. Apparently they don’t think they are even necessary for the continued operation of this government. I think I’ll demand their salaries back.
Most Americans oppose most of what this idiot want to do…
It was only a few years ago when are majority of Americans supported such a border wall. Why the change? Because the Democrats will not support anything that Trump proposes, even if the Democrats have proposed it, previously, and regardless of what damage that lack of support will cause.
Most Americans would say WTF over most of the current 31 or so “National Emergencies” out there. The legal version of National Emergency is nothing like the common usage. Seriously, banking sanctions against tyrants in sub-Saharan Africa? I agree with the sanctions, but National Emergency? This is Princess Bride territory (That word…).
@Eric Florack:
Please provide a link to any polling that suggests the majority of Americans supported a 35′ high wall from sea to shining sea?
If you are unable to…you should just STFU…you racist fuq.
It has always seemed to me that Dennison was on weak ground here. He went to Congress to ask for money…Congress’ Constitutional role…he was denied…signed their appropriations bill…and then promptly signaled his intent to go around them.
If they strike down his Emergency Declaration…and then he vetoes that and goes after that money anyway…it’s a clear violation of Constitution.
I don’t see anyway he wins in front of the SCOTUS…even with Justice Boof wandering the halls in a drunken stupor.
Tim Wu, a law professor who just wrote a really good book on antitrust in the modern tech era, just wrote a really good article about how policy-wise the American public is basically center left, and being thwarted by an inside the Beltway conventional wisdom of center-right people.
linky
Oh, like how Republicans refused to support the ACA, even though it is full of Republican ideas…why do so-called conservatives project so much…
@An Interested Party:
You still seem to be under the misbegotten idea that Republicans are all conservatives. They are not.
As to the rest…
The trouble with that assertion, of course, is that Trump’s approval numbers actually spiked, directly incidental to the decision to declare that emergency.
Oops, huh?
The Usual suspects have been claiming rather loudly is that the supposed opposition to the wall is proof that Trump is out of touch with the American people. Thing is, his approval numbers give lie to this.
At this stage of the game Trump’s approval numbers are just about where the approval numbers of Bush 43 was, about the same as where Bill Clinton was, and about the same where Barack Hussein Obama was and all of these went on to win their subsequent re-election efforts.
I’m forced to conclude by the approval ratings that Donald Trump is not out of touch with the American people and is in fact more in touch with them then the Democrats are. I’m also forced to conclude that this is the leftist Press trying to make their own reality.
Were that not true, why would the Democrats be expending all of this bile, spittle, and taxpayer money to investigate everything the man has done for the last 40 years, along with the obviously scripted protests, political show trials, and reversing themselves on security measures for this country that they approved of voted for it and saw that approval signed into law just a couple of years ago?
The answer to that seems clear: They feel it’s the only chance they have of reversing the voter rejection that hit them in 2016.