Opinion
CHANG | A Permanent Emergency
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The non-emergency national emergency that President Trump declared on Feb. 15 was a thinly veiled ploy to get funding for his border wall, despite lacking congressional approval. But to hold Trump’s expansive use of emergency powers as exceptional would be ahistorical. Presidents from Nixon to Truman have utilized emergency powers for their own agendas, and a litany of political theorists like Giorgio Agamben think these states of exception are inherent and inevitable to democratic societies. But we must resist this move towards unchecked executive authority.