The Senate's sound and fury over a non-emergency

How the Senate went to pieces over Trump's emergency declaration

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Nataliashein/iStock, LUONG THAI LINH/AFP/Getty Images)

Michele Bachmann is weeping somewhere. If Thursday's vote to pass legislation that would block President Trump's recent national emergency declaration is any indication, for the first time in my life we have a chamber of Congress controlled by members of the Tea Party.

Every single Democrat on Thursday sounded like an obscure right-wing House candidate circa 2012. Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.) made it sound as if he believes that eminent domain is illegal instead of a long-standing practice with a broad base of support among liberal legal thinkers. He droned on about how Trump, "like some autocrat," was "gonna break the Constitution." He called Republican support for the declaration "a betrayal of conservative principles." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) made repeated references to "this moment in history" and called Trump's use of executive power to appropriate the budget equivalent of a few pennies some kind of unprecedented looting of our treasury. He even went so far as to argue that people could disagree in good faith about the advisability of the wall — a break from recent Democratic rhetoric but very much in line with where the party was even six years ago.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.