In his first 100 days in office, the US President Donald Trump has declared more national emergencies than any other president in modern American history.
Axios writes about this.
The powers, which were created to give the president flexibility in rare moments of crisis, now form the backbone of Trumpʼs agenda, allowing him to override Congress and issue unilateral decrees during his first three months in office.
Trump has now declared a state of emergency to impose the largest tariffs in a century, accelerate energy and mineral extraction, and militarize federal lands on the southern border.
Human rights activists fear that Trump is using vaguely worded laws to try to upset the constitutional balance of power.
How the emergency mechanism works in the US
The US President can declare a national emergency at any time and for almost any reason, without having to prove a specific threat or receive congressional approval.
The 1976 National Emergency Act, which unlocks more than 120 special powers, originally provided for a “legislative veto”, giving Congress the ability to end a national emergency with a simple majority vote.
But in 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that the legislative veto was unconstitutional, effectively stripping Congress of its original means of control and making it much more difficult to contain presidential emergency declarations.
Since then, presidents have largely relied on “norms” and “self-restraint” to avoid abusing emergency powers in non-crisis situations.
This precedent was broken in 2019 when Trump declared a national emergency to bypass Congress and access billions of dollars in border wall funding.
His predecessor, Joe Biden, used this mechanism to expand his powers. He decided to forgive student loan debt and justified this move by declaring a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“But Trump’s actions in his second term have plunged the United States firmly into uncharted territory — redrawing the boundaries of executive power in real time and fueling fears of a permanent state of emergency,” Axios believes.
How else is Trump expanding his powers?
Trump’s love of emergency powers is not limited to the Emergencies Act. For example, in justifying the new tariffs, Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — which can only be invoked when the US faces an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security, foreign policy, or the economy.
According to the White House, Americaʼs decades-old trade relationships, including with tiny countries and uninhabited islands, are under such threat.
As a result, a 1977 law, designed to combat hostile foreign powers and never before used to impose tariffs, is now being used to rewrite the global economic order.
Additionally, Trump invoked the wartime Foreign Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants who his administration claims are participating in an “invasion” of the United States.
And recently, the American Civil Liberties Union sounded the alarm over Trumpʼs flirtation with the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow him to deploy National Guard troops in the interior of the country without state consent.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.