Tillis Comes Out Against Trump Emergency Declaration

WASHINGTON, D.C. – With Sen. Thom Tillis’ (RINO-NC) record of cozying up to Democrats and actively working against President Trump’s efforts to curb illegal immigration and enforce the law, it should come as no surprise that he is voicing opposition to Trump’s recent national emergency declaration on the southern border.

“It doesn’t matter who the President is or what party they belong to: I strongly believe in the separation of powers and curbing the kind of executive overreach that Congress has allowed to fester for the better part of the last century, including during the Obama Administration,” Tillis said of Trump’s declaration.

Tillis even had the gall to suggest he has supported the president’s plans to secure the border. Really? It didn’t really feel like a solid support for border security when Tillis proclaimed ‘there is no such thing as a border wall‘; or, when he repeatedly pushed legislation to grant amnesty to illegal aliens; or, in his latest vote to gut enforcement measures to deport illegal aliens.

He spins to voice frustration in that, “Congressional Democrats have blocked the reasonable and good faith efforts he has made to invest in more personnel, technology and infrastructure in order to protect the American people.”

We know how empty that rhetoric is coming from a senator that regularly denigrates border hawks as ‘far right,’ and has a habit of holding hands with the Left to advance their agenda on immigration.

“While I agree with President Trump’s policy goal, I don’t believe in situational principles, and it’s clear what kind of rabbit hole our country can go down when we have a Democratic President who wants more government intrusion into our economy and our lives,” concluded Tillis.

Tillis and others have pointed to the risk that future Left-wing presidents could use such declaration to enact their own agendas because President Trump has essentially broken the seal. The point would be valid, if it didn’t ignore a simple reality: the president already had this power to declare an emergency to effectively enforce the law and promote national security. It is not a new executive power dreamed up for the purposes of ignoring established law, as it was when President Obama gave temporary amnesty to Dreamers.

If wave after wave of illegal immigrant caravans marching toward and through the border, and domestic congress’s refusal to allocate funds for completing and augmenting border security doesn’t rise to the level of using this executive authority as leader of the executive branch, what does?

The difference in scope and scale between Trump leveraging executive authority to secure a national border under constant assault and a hypothetical Leftist president using it to force through a Green New Deal or take over financial institutions is laughably huge. It is apples and oranges. And if Tillis was so against Obama’s use of executive authority to grant temporary amnesty to Dreamers, why has he spent so much political capital trying to codify that very amnesty into law?

Tillis’ claim to be working for border security rings hollow considering his track record of decidedly NOT working toward Trump’s policy goals. Everything he says should be taken with a few grains of salt. Does he have a primary challenger yet?