Vox reports that on March 13, a group of Republican Senators met with Trump in an effort to avoid Republican "defections" which would have led to Senate passage of a bill to disapprove his "national emergency" declaration to fund a border Wall.


Since the House has already passed such a bill, similar Senate action would "embarrass" Trump by forcing him to use his veto. However, according to this and other similar reports, Trump refused an offer by a group of Republican Senators led by Mike Lee (R-Utah), which would have involved their supporting him on the "national emergency" declaration in return for his agreement to a bill which would place limits on his power to declare more national emergencies in the future.

According to these reports,Trump refused the compromise offer because he does not want any limit on his power to declare future national emergencies. See, Vox, March 13:

The biggest obstacle to Senate Republicans killing the disapproval of Trump's emergency is Trump.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...mergency-trump

The obvious meaning of Trump's rejection of the compromise offer is that, much as he wants his Wall obsession to become reality as smoothly and quickly as possible, and would like to avoid the humiliation of having a Senate led by his own party turn against him to curb his abuse of power, he is even more concerned with retaining his broad authority to declare more national emergencies in the future.

We of course do not know what these future "national emergencies" might deal with, but the nation may soon find out. What would happen, for example, if Trump decides that the prospect that he might lose reelection in 2020 is a "national emergency" and decides to cancel the election?

This may sound extreme, but dictators have done exactly that in other countries. Trump's refusal to accept the deal also shows - once again - that his purported concern with "crime" by immigrants coming through the Mexican border, as in his latest tweet also reported in the above Vox story, is not genuine.

The real purpose of his border Wall "national emergency" is to gain as much power as possible. As has also been the case in many other countries in recent history, attacks on racial and other minorities as "criminals" or "enemies of the people" have nothing to do with actually protecting the safety or well-being of a country's population.

The only purpose of these attacks is to gain power for dictators. This is the ultimate, if not the only, goal of Trump's anti-immigrant agenda. His brusque rejection of any Congressional proposal to limit his "national emergency" declaration powers, even with the sweetener of an agreement to support his current declaration to fund his border Wall, show this more clearly than ever before.

Roger Algase
Attorney at Law