State of Permanent Fake Emergency
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
theatlantic.comOtherstory
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Emergency PowersAuthoritarianismDemocracy
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Emergency Powers
Authoritarianism
Democracy
The article discusses how the normalization of emergency powers threatens democracy, with commenters debating the systemic issues and potential consequences of such powers.
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Sep 2, 2025 at 1:57 PM EDT
4 months ago
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4 months ago
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ID: 45106697Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:49:46 PM
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To be honest, I am hoping that the federal nature of the US and State's Rights will be the what prevents this administration from fully achieving its goals.
It's not the villain. It's the system.
As long as this is about an individual abusing a system and not the system itself, we will never be able to stop this.
https://www.history.com/articles/national-state-of-emergency...
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/98-505
While Biden had 9 emergency declarations, worth noting that every single one (one arguably) was targetted at very bad actors engaged in creating international strife & suffering. Ditto for Obama, +1 on bird flu.
For example COVID emergencies were kept in effect long after it was appropriate. As a recently example, an election observer from the GOP in Washington state was charged and later convicted of a felony for not wearing a mask when serving as an election observer in the 2024 election (https://nypost.com/2025/02/16/us-news/washington-election-ob...), long after the pandemic ended.
I also read that the same state’s legislators often mark their bills as an “emergency measure” because it prevents voter initiatives (which I guess are like propositions in California) from changing the law. This happens elsewhere too for other procedural reasons. Like governors or whoever declaring an emergency because it allows them to unlock funds and spend, or it allows them to take some action that is otherwise prevented by law.
But setting these types of situations aside, there has been casual overuse of the words “emergency” or “crisis” everywhere. Climate emergency. Housing emergency. Homeless crisis. Drug crisis. And so on. None of these fit the definition of an emergency unless you contort things.
COVID didn't get the memo.
This one [0]? It seems a rather normal response to things like terrorist attacks, etc.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigipirate#History_of_alert_le...
When emergency powers are granted to the same person that has the power to declare the emergency, those powers are effectively no longer restricted to emergencies.
The exception will eventually swallow the rule.
But taking over Washington DC police for a few weeks is evil.
I really hate these people