Civil liberties advocates are raising alarms the president is planning to use our crisis to call for controversial policy changes.
Many of those changes are unnecessary, though.
Trump has sweeping emergency authority he could legally employ immediately.
Norman L. Reimer, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers executive director, told Politico's Betsy Woodruff Swan:
"You could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government."
Tahirih Justice Center CEO, Layli Miller-Munro, added:
"I think it's a humanitarian tragedy that fails to recognize that vulnerable people from those countries are among the most persecuted and that protecting them is exactly what the refugee convention was designed to do."
In February, co-Executive Director, of @IndivisibleTeam, Leah Frances Greenberg, tweeted a timeline of abusive actions Trump took immediately after being acquitted:
"Just to recap: 2/5: Trump is 'acquitted'
2/6: Trump uses National Prayer Breakfast to promise vengeance
2/7: Trump starts firing witnesses
2/11: Career officials resign in protest as Trump administration intervenes in sentencing to protect Stone.
It's been less than a week."
As linguist and activist Noam Chomsky wrote inInternationalism or Extinction:
"As the COVID-19 pandemic turns the global political and economic order on its head, two vastly different futures appear possible. At one end of the spectrum, societies facing the toll of the virus may collapse into authoritarianism. But at the other end of the spectrum, we have the possibility of learning the lessons of this disasteranother colossal market failure enhanced by a neoliberal assault and now Trump's wrecking ball."
If Trump gets another term, this is going to be the norm.
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