If Trump declares a national emergency, COULD our lives be ruined (completely) by economic, military etc. means?

You mean, like marshal law?

*martial law

Yes, it is a serious worry and it should be alarming to everyone in the US.

If Trump can declare an emergency on the flimsiest of reasons, then he can declare an emergency to exterminate blacks, Jews, muslims, and and anyone else he dislikes.

Declaring an emergency is, historically, the first step in fascism. Read your history; Hitler started out by declaring an emergency as a rational for rounding up jews, homosexuals, and gypsies. And so on.

This is a VERY dangerous game Trump is playing.

What your question needs is MORE topic titles!

Trump does not have the military backing of many tyrants. I think there would be revolution, rather than shooting US citizens.

“Trump does not have the military backing of many tyrants.”
That remains to be seen.

Pretty sure Putin has his back.

The US has been in a state of national emergency since the day he took office, just look how everyone carries on like demented headless chickens.

So far, most of the damage (of which we’re aware) achieved by Trump can be easily rescinded. There are of course time critical exceptions, such as the numbers who will either die or suffer needlessly through lack of affordable healthcare, or the irreversible consequences from the idiotic denial of global warming. For the most part, the world has adjusted better than any of us had any right to expect to the reality of a certifiably first class fool at the helm of the United States. The world took a look, and soberly declined to react to the idiot in the manner he so richly deserves. It’s as though there is near universal agreement that the aberration be recognized for what it is, and the embarrassment of a drunken America at the party not be accepted as representative of what they should expect. As with most of us here, they’re looking forward to the end of the long “time out”.

The National Emergency can be challenged, and will be. Talking about a national emergency but not taking real action or defining what the emergency is means he could not defend it in court.

And, other than the border regions, a declaration of a national emergency will mean little to those of us away from the Southwest, until the disruption to the economy carries through. And then we will go into recession.

If Congress votes against it, Trump will vetoes. Then, Trump will bribe courts to favor him, and that’s that: the end.

@Pandora: Sorry to butt in, but you’re writing for over 10 minutes. Must be the longest answer I’ve seen in my threads.

@luigirovatti naw, she in Fluther limbo, meaning she was in the middle of composing something then she went out to dinner or something.

I honestly don’t think Trump can bribe the courts. They have overturned executive action after executive action.

You mean to build the wall? In my opinion it’s doubtful that our lives will change drastically. He just wants the money for the wall. Will it lead to him invoking other crazy restrictions on the American people? Let’s hope not. For now I’m saying it won’t. I hate taking the risk though with Trump. I battle in my head about how much to worry about him. It’s like a seesaw. Up and down.

@luigirovatti Do you live in the USA?

@Dutchess_III was right. I was in fluther limbo. .

@luigirovatti I was typing a response and then I stopped to read @elbanditoroso response and realized my answer would’ve been similar. I walked away to think about my answer a little and forgot I had started typing a response. Later I came back and closed everything to clean my computer because it was running slow

Trump has the power to cause a lot of harm to the country through acting as dictator and undermining confidence in democratic institutions. The founding fathers spent sleepless nights worrying about this and that’s why they gave us the power to stop him.

How? You mean with the courts?

Not only with the courts, but with the way the entire system is set up. It’s designed so that no one branch / person can have supreme power, not even the Executive branch, which the president is the head of.

And through our votes.

Well, our votes didn’t seem to count for much in 2016, did it.
It worked in 2018, though. Yay.

Trump has declared national emergency. We’re in a bigger crisis now (besides the possibility of the shutdown).

Overall, the really big damage from Trump’s declararation is that as with the shutdown in the previous weeks, and the myriad jumble of other noxious abnormalities defining the Trump reign-all of it serves to further degrade public respect for or confidence in its government.