How Trump taps 'never-before-used laws' to get his way: expert

President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi speak at a White House press conference. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

President Donald Trump has learned that creating “fake emergencies” is the best way to get things done with his various agendas while invoking obscure laws as justification.

That’s the opinion of Lisa Needham, writing in Public Notice, who says Trump, backed by the Department of Justice's favorable interpretations, basically declares something an emergency, then acts. That’s pushing the U.S. toward autocracy, she argues.

“It does things with no legal justification at all. It does things based on legal justifications that are obviously false. It does things based on legal justifications that have never been used before. It does things based on legal justifications that stretch far beyond reason," she observes.

“And it does so, always, by saying there is some emergency that allows — even requires — such action,” Needham writes.

Trump and his Department of Justice have invoked “little-known, sometimes even never-before-used laws” to justify their “emergency” actions. “That confounds the courts a bit as they are forced to grapple with scenarios where there isn’t a well-developed body of law,” Needham writes.

Add in the judiciary’s traditional defense of the executive branch, and it basically gives Trump a green light on almost anything, particularly if national security is invoked.

Needham cites four ways Trump has manipulated the law to his advantage:

1. The administration has invoked “a mishmash of domestic law” to justify Caribbean boat bombings and Iran.
2. Existing immigration laws were “cobbled together” to allow the administration to pretend there’s some legal authority for their actions.
3. Trump also relied on “never- or seldom-used laws about presidential authority” to deploy active-duty troops domestically.
4. Finally, he used emergency powers to justify his “sweeping, random, and retaliatory tariffs.”

Needham dismissed the few limitations the Supreme Court imposed on Trump’s powers “related far more to ensuring the safety of some justices’ pocketbooks rather than the safety of immigrants, Americans living in blue cities and unarmed fishermen and fishing boats in the Caribbean.”

Needham feels the judiciary is not blameless. “Courts are tangled up in this mess, playing whack-a-mole with each new development, while the rest of us try to survive a lawless, dangerous presidency.”

But courts are typically conservative and cautious entities, Needham concedes, writing, "their work is built on precedent, on looking at what has come before.”

That deliberation takes time. “And that’s a weakness in the judicial system that Trump exploits over and over again," she adds.

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