Trump Renews Post-9/11 State of Emergency

September 19th, 2017

Awake Goy

Trump Renews Post-9/11 State of Emergency

September 18th, 2017

President Trump has become the third president to renew a post-9/11 emergency proclamation, stretching what was supposed to be a temporary state of national emergency after the 2001 terror attacks into its 17th year.

But the ongoing effects of that perpetual emergency aren’t immediately clear, because the executive branch has ignored a law requiring it to report to Congress every six months on how much the president has spent under those extraordinary powers, USA TODAY has found.

Exactly 16 years ago Thursday, President Bush signed Proclamation 7463, giving himself sweeping powers to mobilize the military in the days following terrorist attacks that crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. It allowed him to call up National Guard and Reserve troops, hire and fire military officers, and bypass limits on the numbers of generals that could serve.

Presidents Bush and Obama renewed that emergency each year. And on Wednesday, Trump published a now-routine notice in the Federal Register extending the emergency for the 16th time, explaining simply that “the terrorist threat continues.”

But as Trump extends the emergency into a third presidential administration, legal experts say a review of those powers is long overdue.

“The president is given these emergency powers as a temporary measure until Congress has time to act. It stretches credulity to think Congress hasnâ€™t had time to act since 9/11 happened,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “We should not be treating 9/11 as an emergency in 2017.”

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