News
Narjas Zatat
Feb 19, 2019
Getty Images and Twitter
Hillary Clinton responded to Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency over the Mexico southern border wall by outlining what she called "real national emergencies".
Last week Trump declared the national emergency, prompting vicious blowback that includes calls for impeachment and criticisms of his mental health.
He said:
Today I'm announcing several critical actions that my administration is taking to confront a problem that we have right here at home. We fight wars that are 6,000 miles away, wars that we should have never been in, in many cases, but we don't control our own border. So we are going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border. And we're going to do it one way or the other. We have to do it -- not because it was a campaign promise, which it is.
So I'm going to be signing a national emergency. And it's been signed many times before. It's been signed by other presidents. From 1977 or so, it gave the presidents the power.
Taking to Twitter, Clinton wrote: “The real national emergencies [are]:”
- Relentless gun violence.
- Children separated from their families at the border.
- Climate change.
- Americans dying for lack of health care.
Let's take a look at Hillary's national emergencies.
1. Relentless gun violence.
In the first month of 2019 in America, there were 1,209 gun deaths including 49 children and 195 teenagers shot, according to statistics from the Gun Violence Archive.
More shocking still, it's been a year since the Parkland massacre and, in that time, 1,200 children under the age of 18 have been killed by guns in the United States, according to a reporting project with The Miami Herald and the McClatchy newspaper group.
2. Children separated from their families at the border.
In 2018, Donald Trump’s administration launched a “zero tolerance” immigration policy that forcibly separated thousands of asylum-seeking families. According to figures provided by Customs and Border Protection to Amnesty International:
8,000 'family units' – more than US authorities had previously admitted to separating. Those statistics still seemed to omit hundreds – if not thousands – of families separated at official ports-of-entry, or with non-parental relationships (including grandparents, among others).
A number of children have died in US border patrol detention centres.
3. Climate change.
The effects of climate change are well documented and a source of anxiety for many (especially young people who recently took to the streets across the world to rally their governments to do more to combat climate change).
A new interactive map was launched to show people in very visual terms, the impact of climate change on North America.
It shows how cities around the US will experience dramatic change with locations in southern states looking more like Mexico.
Picture: Matt Fitzgerald/ University of Maryland Centre for Environmental Science
4. Americans dying for lack of health care.
It is well documented that many Americans often can’t afford their medical care.
A report on the Economic Well-Being of US Households, an annual survey conducted by the Federal Reserve, found that “44 per cent of adult Americans claim they could not come up with $400 in an emergency without turning to credit cards, family and friends, or selling off possessions,” The Atlantic reported.
Donald Trump is being sued by a coalition of 16 states led by California over his decision to declare a national emergency over illegal immigration on the southern border.
His choice means he can bypass Congress to secure funds to get the wall built, something that was a campaign promise.
“We are suing president Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states,” California’s Democratic attorney general Xavier Becerra said. “For most of us, the office of the presidency is not a place for theatre.”
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