Daily: 02/11/2019

Turkey Opens Government Vegetable Stalls in Battle with Inflation

Battling a sharp rise in food costs, Turkish authorities opened their own markets on Monday to sell cheap vegetables directly to shoppers, cutting out retailers who the government has accused of jacking up prices.

Crowds queued outside municipality tents to buy tomatoes, onions and peppers in Istanbul’s Bayrampasa district, waiting for an hour for items selling at half the regular shop prices.

The move to set up state markets follows a 31 percent year-on-year surge in food prices in January and precedes local elections next month in which President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party faces a tough challenge to maintain support.

Traders blamed storms in southern Turkey’s farming region for food price inflation, as well as rising costs of labor and transport. Authorities called it “food terror” and said they would punish anyone trying to keep prices artificially high.

“This was a game. They started manipulating prices, they tried to make prices skyrocket,” President Tayyip Erdogan said in a campaign speech on Monday.

“This was an attempt to terrorize (society),” Erdogan said.

Under the government initiative, municipalities are selling vegetables at around 50 percent of prices recorded by the Turkish Statistical Institute in January. A maximum of three kilos of goods per person is allowed.

The move will be extended to rice and pulses such as lentils, as well as cleaning products, Erdogan said.

The project is currently taking place only in Istanbul, where around 50 sites are selling the cut-price goods, and in the capital Ankara. That means it is unlikely to have a direct impact on national inflation figures, but could mitigate the price rises for residents of Turkey’s two largest cities.

Barely managing

Mustafa Dilli, 55, said he was struggling to make ends meet and hoped shops would follow suit by lowering their prices. “I think I can only shop here from now on,” he said. “We barely make it through to the end of the month.”

Several shoppers in Bayrampasa said they hoped the sales would carry on after next month’s vote. “I am curious whether this will continue after the elections,” 43-year-old housewife Nebahat Deniz said as she bought spinach and eggplants.

Agriculture Minister Bekir Pakdemirli, visiting a tent set up by the Ankara municipality, said the project would continue as long as it is needed, and could become permanent.

Last week, authorities inspected fresh produce wholesalers and imposed fines totaling 2 million lira ($380,000) on 88 firms for setting unreasonably high prices, according to the Trade Ministry.

At an Istanbul food market in a covered parking lot, traders complained that they could not compete with municipality stalls they said were subsidized by taxpayers and had been set up to win votes.

Standing behind an array of peppers, tomatoes and fresh greens, one trader said he was being hit by rising costs across the board.

“Prices in the food market are affected by the price of plastic bags, employee wages, stall fees, taxes, fuel prices.

All of them are increasing the cost of the goods,” said the trader, who only gave his first name, Yusuf.

“The government does not have these costs,” Yusuf said. “All of their costs are paid from the money out of our pockets.”

Another vendor, Erkan, said municipality sales were aimed purely at maximizing votes. “After the election, municipality sales will halt,” he said.

Erkan said the profit margin at his own stall, which supports three or four families, was very tight. “If we buy for 8 liras per kilo from the wholesaler we sell with little profit. We sell the goods for 9 liras for example,” Erkan said.

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Помер екс-прокурор, якого підозрювали у злочинах проти Майдану – представник ГПУ

У Києві помер колишній прокурор Андрій Сайчук, якого звинувачували у злочині проти Майдану – про це журналістам 11 лютого повідомив прокурор Департаменту спецрозслідувань Генеральної прокуратури Олексій Донський.

За його словами, Сайчук приходив до будівлі Генпрокуратури, щоб ознайомитися з матеріалами справи проти себе. Однак вже коли збирався йти, йому стало погано.

«Вже біля ліфта (там очевидиця була – прибиральниця) різко впав, посинів, йому стало погано, і там біля ліфта до приїзду «швидкої» ще помер», – цитує Донського інформаційна агенція «Уніан».

Журналіст Bihus.info Данило Мокрик розповів, що вранці 11 лютого був присутнім на засіданні у справі Андрія Сайчука, яке зрештою відклали на тиждень.

Сайчука звинувачували у незаконному притягненні до кримінальної відповідальності учасника Революції гідності Миколи Пасічника.

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Mexico President Calls for Steps to Keep Power Prices Low

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday contracts private companies have with state-run power utility CFE should be revised to keep electricity prices low, sending shares in one Mexican contractor tumbling

“We are urging companies that have agreements with the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to come together to review contracts and above all to reach an agreement that electricity prices will not increase,” Lopez Obrador said during his morning press conference.

Lopez Obrador noted that the state-run utility is already contractually obliged to pay billions of dollars to the private firms that developed seven gas pipelines to supply power stations, even though the projects are incomplete and unable to deliver gas.

Those companies are Mexican energy infrastructure firm IEnova, a unit of U.S.-based Sempra Energy; TransCanada Corp; and Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim’s Carso, said CFE chief Manuel Bartlett.

“If the pipelines can’t be built, as is happening in seven large gas pipelines, the companies still have to be paid even if there is no gas,” said Lopez Obrador.

IEnova’s shares dropped 6.7 percent, TransCanada’s were down 0.5 percent and Carso slipped 0.21 percent after the comments. In a statement to the Mexican stock exchange, IEnova said it has one pipeline that entered into operation in 2017, but that the supplies to CFE were interrupted due to “sabotage.”

Lopez Obrador has been a staunch critic of landmark 2013-14 energy reforms that ended the wholesale electricity monopoly held by CFE and opened up the Mexican oil industry to private investment.

“We are looking to achieve a voluntary restructuring of agreements and commitments within the framework of the law … The Mexican government is committed to not increasing electricity prices for consumers, but we want private companies to help in this initiative,” he said.

The reforms ended state oil company Pemex’s decades-long monopoly by allowing private producers to operate projects on their own as well as enter into partnerships with Pemex known as farm-outs.

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Росія скликає засідання Ради безпеки щодо України – дипломати в ООН

Росія скликає засідання Ради безпеки ООН щодо ситуації в Україні, повідомили українські дипломати в Організації Об’єднаних Націй. Засідання призначене на 12 лютого, на 17:00 за київським часом.

Як повідомив речник постійного представництва України при ООН Олег Ніколенко, задекларований Росією привід – четверта річниця підписання мінських домовленостей (ідеться про третю й останню з серії мінських домовленостей, так званий Мінський комплекс заходів, укладений 12 лютого 2015 року – ред.).

«Але не поспішайте вірити в те, що Росія почала палко перейматися мінськими угодами, в яких вона досі не виконала жодного пункту. Справа в тому, що це – чергова «димова завіса», метою якої є відволікти увагу держав-членів ООН від першого комплексного обговорення в Генеральній асамблеї ООН російської агресії проти України. Спеціальне засідання заплановане на 20 лютого – у п’яту річницю початку конфлікту – в рамках нового пункту порядку денного Генасамблеї, який провела Україна у вересні минулого року», – наголосив Ніколенко.

За його словами, «у конструктивну роль Кремля у вирішенні ініційованого ним же конфлікту в ООН ніхто не вірить, тому скликання російською стороною засідання Радбезу виглядає особливо цинічним – але кого це вже дивує?»

А в інтерв’ю з цього ж приводу українському агентству «Укрінформ» Олег Ніколенко поставив Росії ще одне риторичне запитання: «Чому російська делегація в ООН не скликала засідання Радбезу, коли підтримувані нею маріонетки сотні разів порушували режими припинення вогню, обстрілювали житлові квартали Маріуполя, Пісків чи Авдіївки, або її бандитські формування блокували роботу спостерігачів ОБСЄ, в тому числі шляхом знищення БПЛА моніторингової місії?»

«Використаємо нагоду, щоб донести до відома міжнародної спільноти актуальну інформацію про події на сході України. Останніми днями там російські бойовики обстрілюють українські позиції, в тому числі із забороненого мінськими домовленостями озброєння. Говоритимемо також про те, чому важливо зберігати тиск на агресора, допоки на українські землі не повернеться мир», – заявив речник представництва України при ООН.

Гібридна агресія Росії проти України почалася 20 лютого 2014 року з початком перших дій Москви для окупації українського Криму, пізніше вона продовжилася воєнним втручанням на сході України і триває донині. Для її завершення в білоруському Мінську у вересні 2014-го і в лютому 2015 року були укладені три домовленості. Київ і його міжнародні союзники заявляють, що Москва, яка є безпосередньою стороною конфлікту на частині Донбасу, так і не виконала своїх зобов’язань за цими угодами. Росія у відповідь твердить, що не є стороною конфлікту і підписувала угоди, мовляв, лише як «гарант», а не як учасник, і відтак ніяких зобов’язань за ними не має і виконувати їх не буде, а натомість звинувачує в невиконанні угод Україну.

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Росія не збирається визнавати відповідальності за збиття MH17 – МЗС

Росія в перебігу майбутніх консультацій навколо розслідування збиття 2014 року над окупованим Донбасом пасажирського літака рейсу MH17, внаслідок якого загинули 298 людей, не має наміру визнавати свою відповідальність за це, заявила речниця Міністерства закордонних справ Росії Марія Захарова.

За її словами, в осередді уваги консультацій, що мають відбутися ближчим часом у Відні, буде не визнання юридичної відповідальності Росії, а «весь комплекс питань, пов’язаних із цим інцидентом, які мають принципове значення для встановлення істинних причин».

Москва, серед іншого, хоче пояснень про те, як у перебігу розслідування використовуються і враховуються дані, що їх надавала і надає Росія, заявила вона.

У Нідерландах 7 лютого заявили, що «все більше упевнені» в тому, що Росія погодиться на офіційні переговори про результати міжнародного розслідування щодо юридичної відповідальності Москви за збиття літака «Малайзійських авіаліній». Міністерство закордонних справ Нідерландів повідомило, що початкові дипломатичні контакти з Росією відбулися в «позитивній атмосфері», і є сподівання, що обговорення призведуть до офіційних переговорів з цього приводу. А міністр закордонних справ Нідерландів Стеф Блок заявив журналістам про «дипломатичні контакти, щоб подивитися, чи зможемо ми почати офіційні переговори про державну відповідальність за знищення MH17».

Літак «Боїнг-777» авіакомпанії Malaysia Airlines, що виконував рейс MH17 із нідерландського Амстердама в малайзійський Куала-Лумпур, був збитий над зоною російської гібридної агресії на сході України 17 липня 2014 року. Загинули 298 людей – усі, хто був на борту. За згодою України, на території якої сталася трагедія, міжнародне розслідування – як технічне, так і кримінальне – очолили Нідерланди, громадян яких було найбільше серед загиблих.

Перше з них, технічне, Ради розслідувань у справах безпеки Нідерландів, встановило, що літак був збитий ракетою зенітно-ракетного комплексу «Бук», запущеною з підконтрольної на той час російським гібридним силам території Донбасу. Друге, кримінальне розслідування міжнародної Спільної слідчої групи, також дійшло висновку: пускова установка ЗРК «Бук», ракетою з якої збили літак рейсу MH17, належала 53-й зенітній ракетній бригаді зі складу Збройних сил Росії, була доставлена з Росії на окуповану частину Донбасу, звідти здійснила пуск ракети, а після збиття з неї авіалайнера повернута назад до Росії. Але конкретних винних осіб у групі наразі ще не називали, розслідування триває. У світі вже не раз закликали Росії визнати свою відповідальність за збиття літака.

Росія постійно заперечує всі результати розслідування. У Москві з його висновками не згодні і стверджують, що воно ігнорує інформацію, надану російською стороною. У Спільній слідчій групі натомість відкидають ці твердження і наголошують: група від початку розслідування «завжди ретельно аналізувала й обробляла інформацію, надану Росією», і завдяки цьому встановила, що інформація російської сторони не раз «неточно викладала факти».

У російських ЗМІ і численних заявах офіційних осіб, зокрема з Міноборони Росії, називалися цілком різні, часто взаємовиключні, версії катастрофи, що мали б зняти вину з Росії – в ній звинувачували, зокрема, українських військових. Проте в перебігу розслідування всі вони були спростовані.

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Palestinians Ask Arabs to Boycott Mideast Summit in Poland

The Palestinian foreign minister is asking Arab countries to boycott or downgrade their representation at the upcoming U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit in Poland.

Riad Malki says that, at the very least, Arab nations should have low-profile delegations, below the ministerial level, at the conference. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are sending foreign ministers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be at the summit.

Malki says the Palestinians “view the Warsaw conference as a plot against the Palestinian cause.”

He spoke on Monday to the Voice of Palestine as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was to visit Saudi Arabia.

Most Arab nations have refrained from establishing relations with Israel without significant progress being made toward peace with the Palestinians. But many Gulf states share with Israel concerns over Iran’s growing influence.

 

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Norway, Poland to Expel Diplomats in Tit-for-Tat Exchange

Norway will expel a Polish diplomat who had clashed with local officials after Warsaw declined to recall him, the Norwegian foreign ministry said on Monday.

Poland said it would expel a Norwegian diplomat in exchange, in a rare spat between the two countries which have strong economic links.

Norway had decided to expel Polish consul Slawomir Kowalski because his behavior was not compatible with his diplomatic status, the Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman said.

She said the ministry had received numerous complaints from officials that the consul has obstructed their work.

Norwegian media said Kowalski had been involved in several cases where Polish citizens were disputing decisions by Norwegian child protection services.

“This is an extremely unjustified decision,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek said on Twitter.

“The only possible decision in this situation is mutual action, which will be carried out immediately,” he added.

Poland’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that a Norwegian diplomat had been declared “persona non grata” in Poland, following Norway’s decision.

Norway’s Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for comment.

Poles account for the largest immigrant group in the Nordic country of 5.3 million people, estimated at around 98,000 in 2018, according to Statistics Norway.

Poland is also the top export market for Norwegian seafood and an important buyer of Norwegian defense-related products.

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В Естонії засудили за шпигунство на Росію колишнього офіцера і його батька

В Естонії засудили за шпигунство на Росію колишнього офіцера Збройних сил країни і його батька. Суд визнав їх винними у державній зраді.

Як встановив суд у столиці Естонії Таллінні, 38-річний Денис Метсавас, колишній майор естонської армії, і його батько, 65-річний Петро Волін, продавали таємну інформацію російській військовій розвідці, відомій як ГРУ.

Як повідомила Державна прокуратура Естонії, суд встановив, що Метсавас передавав таку інформацію протягом десяти років. Його засудили до 15 з половиною років позбавлення волі.

Волін співпрацював із російською розвідкою приблизно половину цього терміну і засуджений до шести років позбавлення волі, ухвалив суд.

Обидва пішли на співпрацю зі слідством і через це отримали менші терміни, ніж їм загрожували спершу, повідомили у прокуратурі.

Метсавас служив у Збройних силах Естонії на різних посадах, зокрема, брав участь у місії сил під проводом НАТО в Афганістані, – а також у головному штабі Збройних сил Естонії, де був причетний до оборонного планування.

У Силах оборони (збройних силах) Естонії після арешту Метсаваса і Воліна заявляли, що їхня діяльність завдала Естонії й НАТО значної шкоди, конкретний обсяг якої не розголошували.

Від часу відновлення незалежності Естонії 1991 року між Таллінном і Москвою сталася ціла низка «шпигунських скандалів»: Естонія звинувачувала своїх і російських громадян у наданні Росії делікатної інформації, Росія арештовувала і судила естонців, звинувачуючи їх у роботі на Естонію.

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US Steel Cites Trump in Resuming Construction Project

U.S. Steel Corp. will restart construction on an idled manufacturing facility in Alabama, and it gave some of the credit to President Donald Trump’s trade policies in an announcement Monday.

Trump’s “strong trade actions” are partly responsible for the resumption of work on an advanced plant near Birmingham, the Pittsburgh-based company said in a statement. The administration’s tariffs have raised prices on imported steel and aluminum.

The manufacturer also cited improving market conditions, union support and government incentives for the decision.

Work will resume immediately, the company said, and the facility will have an annual capacity of 1.6 million tons (1.5 million metric tons).

U.S. Steel said it also will update other equipment and plans to spend about $215 million, adding about 150 full-time workers. The furnace is expected to begin producing steel in late 2020.

The 16,000-member United Steelworkers praised the decision to resume work, which followed an agreement with the union reached last fall.

“This decision paves the way for a solid future in continuing to make steel in Alabama and the Birmingham region,” Leo W. Gerard, the president of the international union, said in a statement.

U.S. Steel shut down its decades-old blast furnace at Fairfield Works in 2015, idling about 1,100 employees, and said it would replace the operation with an electric furnace.

The company then blamed conditions in the steel, oil and gas industries as it suspended work in December 2015 on an electric arc furnace at its mill in Fairfield, located just west of Birmingham. The project stalled until the announcement Monday.

Trump imposed tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on imported aluminum on June 1, 2018. The move was to protect U.S. national security interests, he said, but other countries said the taxes break global trade rules, and some have imposed tariffs of their own.

 

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Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar Enters Crowded Democratic Presidential Race

Another candidate has entered the crowded Democratic 2020 presidential sweepstakes.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar formally announced her candidacy Sunday at a freezing and snowy rally in Minneapolis.

“I don’t have a political machine. I don’t come from money. But what I do have is this: grit,” Klobuchar said, seemingly proving it by speaking for nearly a half hour in a snowstorm with the temperature at minus 9 degrees Celsius.

While she did not mention President Donald Trump by name, she said the country is tired of what she called “foreign policy by tweet” and said Americans are “worn down by the petty and vicious nature of our politics. We are all tired of the shutdowns and the showdowns, the gridlock, and grandstanding.”

Klobuchar is a three-term senator known for her generally centrist demeanor and ability to negotiate with opposition Republicans.

She said she hopes a successful presidential campaign would bring Midwestern states that Trump won in 2016 back into the Democrats’ column in 2020.

Klobuchar is entering a very crowded race for the Democratic nomination.

According to a count by The New York Times, 11 candidates have so far announced that they are running.

The newspaper says former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper is almost certain to declare his candidacy, and three others – former vice president Joe Biden, Montana Governor Steve Bullock, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – are listed as likely to run.

 

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Report: Finnish SS Volunteers Likely Killed Jews in WWII

An Israeli Holocaust historian praised authorities in Finland on Sunday for publishing a report that concluded Finnish volunteers serving with Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS “very likely” took part in World War II atrocities, including the mass murder of Jews.

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center lauded the determination of the National Archives of Finland to release the findings even if doing so was “painful and uncomfortable” for Finland.

Zuroff called the decision an “example of unique and exemplary civic courage.”

Finland’s government commissioned the independent 248-page investigative report, which was made public Friday. It said 1,408 Finnish volunteers served with the SS Panzer Division Wiking during 1941-43, most of them 17 to 20-years-old.

“It is very likely that they (Finnish volunteers) participated in the killing of Jews, other civilians and prisoners of war as part of the German SS troops,” said Jussi Nuorteva, director general of the National Archives.

A significant part of the study was based on diaries kept by 76 of the Finnish SS volunteers. Eight of the Finnish SS volunteers are still alive, Nuorteva said.

Finland was invaded by Moscow in November 1939. The fighting in what became known as the Finnish-Soviet Winter War lasted until March 1940, when an overwhelmed and outnumbered Finland agreed to a bitter peace treaty. The small Nordic country lost several territories but maintained its independence.

Isolated from the rest of Europe and afraid of another Soviet attack, Finland entered into an alliance with Germany, receiving weapons and other material help from Berlin.

As part of the pact, Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler insisted that Finland dispatch soldiers to the SS Wiking division, similar to the volunteers it demanded from Nazi-occupied Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and elsewhere.

Reluctantly, Finland complied and covertly recruited the first group of 400 SS volunteers to be sent for training in the spring of 1941. The vast majority of them had no ideological sympathies with the Nazi regime, the report said.

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 under Operation Barbarossa, Finnish regular army troops fought independently alongside Wehrmacht soldiers on the northeastern front. In 1941, the Finns advanced in the Karelia region outside Leningrad.

The Finnish soldiers were not under Nazi command, and the country’s leadership was mainly motivated by the desire to take back the territories lost to Moscow.

“At the beginning of the attack (on the Soviet Union), Finns were unaware of the Germans’ goal of eradicating the Jews,” Nuorteva said. “Finns were, above all, interested in fighting against the Soviet Union” due to their brutal experiences in the Winter War and the perceived threat from Moscow.

In this way, “the starting point for Finns’ involvement was different compared to most other countries joining SS foreign volunteers,” he said.

Finnish SS volunteers with the SS Wiking division operated on the eastern front until 1943, entering deep into Ukraine.

The leading Finnish military historians who undertook the study of the country’s wartime role wrote that the Finnish SS volunteers likely took part in killing Jews and other civilians, as well as witnessed atrocities committed by the Germans.

The volunteers returned to Finland after the Finnish government sensed the tide of the war had turned against the Germans. Many of them then served in the Finnish military until the end of World War II.

A copy of Friday’s report was given to Paula Lehtomaki, a state secretary with the Finnish government, who said it was a valuable contribution to existing research “on difficult and significant historical events” during Finland’s complex World War II history.

“We share the responsibility for ensuring that such atrocities will never be repeated,” said Lehtomaki.

The historical probe was launched following Zuroff’s request in January 2018 to Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.

Finland’s move contrasts with the attitude of some eastern European nations that have sought to diminish their culpability in the Holocaust.

 

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Trump Retains Explosive Wildcard in Battle Over Border Security

President Donald Trump’s planned trip Monday to the border city of El Paso, Texas comes days before U.S. government funding is due to lapse once again and as suspense builds over Trump’s vague but persistent threat to declare a national emergency if Congress declines to pay for wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The president really does believe that there is a national security crisis and a humanitarian crisis at the border, and he will do something about it,” White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press program. “He’s going to do whatever he legally can to secure that border.”

“I do expect the president to take some kind of executive action, a national emergency is certainly part of that … if we [lawmakers] don’t reach a [border security] compromise,” North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows said on CBS’ Face the Nation program. “This president is going to build a wall one way or another.”

Democrats insist there is still time for a politically divided Congress to forge and pass a spending bill that strengthens America’s southern border.

“Nobody wants a shutdown, nobody wants the president to use some kind of emergency powers,” Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester said on Fox News Sunday. “We just need to do our job, and we can do it.”

‘I’ll get it built’

Trump was resolute at last week’s State of the Union address to Congress.

“Where walls go up, illegal crossings go way down,” the president said. “I’ll get it built.”

So far, no deal has been reached by a bipartisan bicameral conference committee tasked with finding a compromise on border security before U.S. government funding expires on Friday. But Trump holds a wildcard – his authority as commander-in-chief to declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether.

“I don’t think anybody questions his legal authority to declare a national emergency,” Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said late last week.

“That would be a gross abuse of power, in my view,” Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen told VOA. “It’s pretty clear you can’t declare an emergency just because you can’t get your way 100 percent in the Congress. So let’s try and work this out through the normal process.”

In the abstract, the president’s authority to declare a national emergency is not in question.

“It turns out that the federal statute books are actually littered with hundreds of places where a president can declare national emergencies in various contexts,” George Washington University law professor Paul Schiff Berman said, who added that some statutes do allow a president “to move around money within the federal budget to address the emergency.”

The catch

But there is a catch: the very concept of an emergency as a sudden and dire situation.

“All of these statutes were written it appears with the idea that every once in a long while, there would be a true crisis—could be a natural disaster, could be a foreign invasion, something like that—where the need to act quickly was so important that the president would need these national emergency powers because there just wouldn’t be enough time for Congress to convene,” Berman said. “None of those [envisioned situations] would apply in a case like building a wall which is going to take many, many years, if it ever happens at all.”

A national emergency declaration from Trump would almost certainly trigger swift lawsuits as well as congressional action to overturn it.

“There is, within the law, the ability of Congress to stop a national emergency,” political analyst John Hudak of the Washington-based Brookings Institution said. “It requires both houses of Congress to vote to say that the national emergency is over. Now Democrats can certainly do that alone in the House. They cannot, however, do it alone in the Senate; it would require several Republican votes.”

‘Serious constitutional question’

Already, some Republicans have expressed unease about Trump suggesting he might act on his own.

“The whole idea that presidents — whether it’s President Trump, [hypothetically] President [Elizabeth] Warren or [hypothetically] President [Bernie] Sanders – can declare an emergency and somehow usurp the separation of powers and get into the business of appropriating money for specific projects without Congress being involved, is a serious constitutional question,” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn told reporters last week.

By contrast, Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott warmed to the prospect.

“[House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi said there is not going to be funding for a wall. I think the president ought to use his emergency power to try to secure the border and, if he’s going to do that, I think he ought to look at trying to get a permanent fix to DACA [protections for undocumented immigrants brought to America as children] and TPS [protected status for refugees and others fleeing hardship].”

Democrats, meanwhile, are united in opposition.

“Declaring a national emergency, particularly when there is no national emergency, would be a significant mistake. It is clear that a growing number of Republicans share that view, and I hope the president doesn’t go that route,” Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden told VOA.

Trump appeared undeterred, tweeting on Saturday, “The Wall will get built one way or the other!”

Urgency questioned

The president has argued that America’s safety is imperiled as a result of illegal narcotics and migrants entering the United States. Some observers note that America’s border security deficiencies are hardly new or sudden.

“I think a lot of Americans look at this skeptically and say, ‘What has changed between the beginning of the president’s term and now that makes this such a dire emergency?’” Hudak said.

Some see grave potential risks if Trump goes forward with an emergency declaration.

“[I]f it is misused, it essentially becomes like a president declaring martial law and taking over the powers of Congress. It’s the sort of thing that we would look at another country doing and say that’s a big problem,” Berman said.

Nevertheless, the president faces intense pressure to deliver on his border wall promise, according to Brookings Institution political analyst William Galston, who says, politically, Trump is “in a box.”

“The president has used the issue of the wall to cement the bond between himself and his core supporters and he would probably incur significant political damage if he were seen by them to be standing down, surrendering, or accepting a compromise that they don’t think he should,” Galston said.

 

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