President has declared a national emergency
which seeks to divert eight billion dollars
towards the building of a US-Mexico border wall.
Thank you for taking a few minutes to jump in on a very important topic with me here.
I wanted to do this video because there's a lot of
biased information out there, and I wanted to break this down from a purely legal and analytical standpoint.
What you probably don't know if you're watching our channel for the first time
or if you just casually watch the channel
is that I am also a lawyer in the state of California.
I passed the Bar Exam on my first try,
And I thought this was a great opportunity to speak to you directly
about some of the legal ramifications that are inherent here.
What it means for the United States, the United States Constitution, and ultimately what it means for you.
If you guys are wondering about any of the references. They're all in the description below.
So let's get started.
So as you may know, the president has declared a national emergency, which seeks to divert eight billion dollars
away from areas previously allocated by Congress
to build a US-Mexico border wall.
This is very important for a lot of reasons.
Let's get into it.
As you've probably heard, the US government just
reopened after the longest shutdown in his history of 35 days.
Now, why was it shutdown?
Well quite frankly because Congress couldn't agree on a budget bill that they knew the president would sign.
Under Article 1 of the Constitution
Congress has the power of the purse, which basically means they have the power to control
The money of the United States of America.
Now, that's their department. That's their branch of government.
However, they can't pass a budget bill or a law solely on their own.
The balance of powers require that the president sign off on a bill or a budget in order for it to
Become law. So here's where this really starts to matter.
Well the president signed off on the budget, that budget didn't include.
the eight billion dollars of funding that he wanted to build the US-Mexico border wall.
So what is he to do, if he really wants to make this happen?
He either has to quit and go on.
Or - if you're on an unorthodox guy - you can invoke your national emergency powers.
What is required exactly for a president to be able to declare a national emergency and what is it?
First and foremost, a national emergency is a power that a president can use to
basically, give them extra power in a moment of crisis.
Way back in 1911, Woodrow Wilson was the first one to
declare a national emergency and after him, presidents really liked it.
They started declaring more of them.
FDR declared a bunch of them.
The problem was, that at no point during these declarations
did the president cite relevant statutes which gave them the authority to declare an emergency.
They didn't cite the scope or for how long an emergency was supposed to be in effect
So it started to get into unfettered power territory.
In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act.
Which limits the authority from which a president can declare an emergency
To about a hundred and thirty five statutes.
It also requires that if a president is to declare an emergency,
he must cite one of those statutes as the basis for his power.
On February 15th
The president declared his construction authority from one of these statutes.
Specifically, 10 USC 2808 a.
I have the statute right here.
I'm gonna read it to you
with my handy dandy piece of paper.
In the event of a declaration by the president of a national emergency
that requires the use of the armed forces,
the Secretary of Defense, may undertake and authorize military construction projects
not otherwise authorized by law
which are necessary to support such use of the Armed Forces.
That's what the president is basing his authority off of.
What does that mean?
Well number one, you need the armed forces to be at the border
in order for this to be even relevant.
Well, that's true, the armed forces are at the border.
Secondarily, the construction aspect of this statute, is supposed to be in support of
the purpose for which the armed forces are there.
So given what the president is citing for his national emergency authority here.
The only question becomes whether his
declaration can be seen as legitimate within the bounds of this statute.
[~Interlude~] (Jump to 4:56 to get back to the national emergency, otherwise stay for the sponsorship message~)
Now, back to that national emergency.
Now as you may know,
multiple states have filed suit in direct opposition to this emergency declaration.
So it will inevitably go to law. The court will need to look at two things.
Number one, they will first need to ask whether or not
the national emergency required the use of the armed forces
and number two whether the building of a border wall is
necessary to support the use of the Armed Forces.
They will also look at precedent.
This construction authority has been used two other times by both Bush presidents.
With George W. Bush, it was after the attacks of 9/11.
And we sent troops all over the world and the construction authority
was necessary to support those troops as they went about the global war on terror.
In addition, George H. W. Bush cited this authority when Kuwait was first invaded by Iraq.
And we needed to intervene and create infrastructure for our militaries so that we could stop that from happening.
Now the courts could very well rule in favor of the Trump administration here.
That wouldn't surprise me at all.
In general, the courts defer to the president when it comes to authority as the commander in chief.
But even if the president is able to do this; just because
he can do something, we need to ask ourselves whether or not it's the right thing to do.
Here's what I mean.
We're dealing with a situation: where multiple other departments of the executive branch,
the same branch as the president
such as Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security.
Their data shows that since
2000, captures at the border have all gone down.
While enforcement of the border has all gone up.
That means that border security is working.
There is no real way to sugarcoat that because there is
no other data that supports his opinion
as strongly as he has his opinion.
It's… completely unprecedented in that sense.
Unfortunately for all of us,
there is very little direction under the National Emergencies Act
which says how much of an emergency something actually needs to be
for the use of an emergency declaration to be considered legitimate.
Regardless of all that, the main problem is that this politicizes the national emergency power.
That's the greatest threat to the United States here, and to the Constitution.
Food for Thought.
Thanks for spending a couple minutes here with us
at Corridor Digital and I'd love to hear what your guys opinion is on this.
Leave a comment below. I'll definitely be taking a look and scrolling through responding back.
Keep it civil.
Please.
Please keep it civil.
That is the one thing that we need more of.
Thanks for watching
CC added by kuu (@faizal_101) Note: From here on it's automatic captions.
Hey, how's it going guess what I just hit submit on our amazon store front page for top ten games
You can play in your head by yourself. That means on Saturday, March 2nd
This book is finally going to be live and ready to purchase. I'm super excited about it. We've been working on this for almost
Five years and it's it's a monumental occasion for me because I've never released the book. We've never done anything like this
I've been reading the subreddit March last corridor. Just asking what's the deal with this book?
I can't find anything about it online I and what is going on?
Have you played these games and trust me? We had a lot of the same questions when we first discovered these books
Actually, I brought for my house 3 the very first three volumes that we actually found in
2014 it's a really interesting story because when we first found these things like we didn't even
Know what we were getting into, you know
but after starting to read them like we noticed that there was like spare subtly influencing kind of like all the videos that
We were making let's see
volume six has some great games in it a small tiny guns was kind of influenced by small and gay a game about
Shrinking things down and shrinking yourself down. The titles are super
Rudimentary and maybe the author didn't want to like color you're experienced
Zombies was good because actually there was a zombie bull fighting moment
Airplane ride was really really incredible because one you start simulating flying in your mind
you get some really great ideas for drone videos drone star wars kind of ended up stemming from that Oh fight city tactical reloads was
Kind of influenced from that of this seedy underbelly of police and criminals kind of end up getting some really great
Weapon fighting and reloading abilities in a jungle primitive technology. Well jungles
basically
you are trapped in the jungle and
You've got nothing to live for and you've got nothing except the skin on your back and you have to survive
So not the second tank video with him alone with me along with the first tank video
I filmed with Danny where I'm trying to sell him a tank army was a huge part of that
I think you're getting into like a war zone thing
It really focuses on
kind of more the budgetary
aspects and the management parts of the army that you don't normally think about and what we got here volume 8 I
Remember this one time machine?
I was reading this one before we shot lifeline and it really helped me get in that headspace of just understanding
How time travel works and really kind of answers the question of when someone is time-traveling from the past to the future
Where are they in-between? If you play the game time machine you you won't quickly find that out. I still haven't played dancing
It's pretty incredible
It's just a little bit of taste of actually
What's been kind of going on behind the scenes here at corridor digital over the last few years?
Yeah, I mean it found it, honestly
We are just really excited to finally start to share this we didn't realize that
Until we started giving these copies and blending them around the studio
How much of an impact do to really have on everyone's lives?
I know Nick and Jake have both gotten really into it to the point where they've actually come to the studio with
stories they had in their dreams of these games actually, uh
they were so good that we wrote them in the
Testimonial subsection at the end of this book the really great little read after you're done playing the games
You definitely don't read them before you play Charles. It kind of taints the experience