In trying to bulldoze his way to build his pet Mexican border wall, US President Donald Trump may have succeeded in dividing America. Most of the world is mystified at the oldest democracy declaring a national emergency just to stop homeless economic migrants from Mexico and Guatemala crossing over into the “land of the free”. In one stroke, a President verging on autocracy has overturned 200-plus years of history, declaring an emergency on such flimsy grounds. The situation seemed so dire that Mr Trump headed to the golf course for the weekend. The timing seemed more bizarre as the President and America’s legislators had just agreed on a deal to avert another embarrassing federal government shutdown, with Congress voting to fund the government till September.
Mr Trump’s declaration of an emergency, when he will try and order $5 billion-plus funds for his pet wall, will face immediate legal challenges. The House Democrats may soon pass a resolution to prevent Mr Trump granting himself emergency powers over the federal budget, and they are likely to attract enough defectors from among Republican senators to get it passed in the Senate too. Mr Trump may face all kinds of hurdles before he can make his next move on the wall, with which he hopes to address his core “America First” constituency of anti-immigration voters ahead of his re-election bid next year. At the core will be the very structure of a presidential democracy, as an egotistic head of state strays into uncharted territory in his war against the House even as pollsters find that two-thirds of Americans oppose this meandering wall.
