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Comment by calibas | Hacker News Reader

If you're wondering why the President can essentially write his own laws when that's not how our system is supposed to work, it's because the President gets extra powers whenever we're in a state of national emergency.

We've been in a state of national emergency since 1979.

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States of emergency should at least go to congress for renewal every 3 months as a measure to be voted on individually (cannot be tied, for example, to budgets). If that's not enough to kill it eventually, it should automatically become a ballot measure on the next Presidential Ballot after some number of renewals.

There’s a lot of common sense “should” statements that are true and will never happen

Emergencies must be renewed annually by the President. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12170:

> The order was first declared on 14 November 1979 (EO 12170). At least 11 executive orders were based on this emergency state. The emergency, which was renewed in 2023 for the 44th time, is the "oldest existing state of emergency."

> Emergencies must be renewed annually by the President.

This is like agencies investigating themselves and inevitably finding themselves clear of any wrongdoing.

That's equivalent to emergencies being permanent and not subject to oversight.

There is very little difference between the president saying "there's an emergency until I say there isn't", and repeating every year, "there's an emergency for the next year".

Though that Wikipedia article does say that Congress is supposed to review emergency orders, but in practice they just let the president do whatever.

The national emergency declared in 1979, against Iran, was done under the IEEPA which grants the President the power to block transactions and freeze assets against foreign threats. It doesn't grant the power to make laws.

You're delegating powers to the President that would normally require an act of congress. The sanctions against Iran are a relatively tame example, there's 46 other national emergencies that give the President far more power.

Here's some good reading:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/27/democrats-biden-som...

They successfully argued the President can just attack other countries whenever he wants, so long as it's part of fighting "terrorism".

Wow thanks man for sharing! This is so unexpected, I thought you're trolling! But google search doesn't lie: https://www.history.com/news/national-state-of-emergency-us-....

Quoting from History.com: "When Donald Trump started his second term on January 20, 2025, the United States had around 40 active emergency declarations (no really, we are serious), including the national emergency George W. Bush declared in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks".

For anyone interested in some more reading about the exact nature of the powers and Congress's attempts at limiting it, I found this link to be a decent introduction: https://protectdemocracy.org/work/presidential-emergency-pow...

Yeah. Dude. I don’t like the outcome, but he has “extra” powers because Republicans won a lot of elections and are a majority in all three branches of government and in many statehouses.

> Republicans won a lot of elections

A lot of them thanks to the results of blatant gerrymandering.

My candidate winning reflects the legitimate will of the people, and your candidate winning is solely due to gerrymandering. Of course.

Both parties[0][1] in fact do engage in gerrymandering.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional...

[1]: https://thefulcrum.us/electoral-reforms/worst-gerrymandered-...

In your own link [1] all but 2 of the examples of worst gerrymanders are Republican...?

But uh yeah "both sides"... uh huh

That's a bad-faith argument. Yes, it's true that both parties engage in gerrymandering. But Republicans do it a lot more than Democrats do.

Out of the 25 examples in your second link, it seems like 23 of them are GOP gerrymanders?

It seems that way because Republicans control most of the state legislatures at the moment. The term itself refers to a Massachusetts governor, a member of the predecessor of the current Democratic Party, who started the practice.

The minute Democrats control more of the state legislatures, you'll see that more examples will be of them.

It's mostly the Republicans fault, but it didn't help that Biden supported it too, in spite of how other top Democrats felt:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/27/democrats-biden-som...

Would that be from Iran?

No, presidents can kind of claim national emergencies all the time. Usually they're used for sanctions, but they can also be for economic or security reasons (security being interpreted as times of war and in a very broad sense).

I guess I answered my own question. This is what I meant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12170

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