Tariffs, crime, now housing — Trump pushes ‘emergency powers’ to the max

No matter what dictionary you consult, the definition of “emergency” is never “a chronic situation that the leader of a country would like to address using powers not otherwise available to him.” This, though, is how the Trump administration tends to define the term. A national emergency is British troops winning the Battle of Bladensburg and heading toward the White House in 1814. A national emergency is Iranian radicals breaching the US embassy in Tehran and taking 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage in 1979. A national emergency is a pandemic reaching our shores, killing the particularly vulnerable and sickening...