Thom Tillis, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from North Carolina.

President Trump has few bigger allies than me when it comes to supporting his vision of 21st-century border security, encompassing a major investment in technology, personnel and infrastructure, including new physical barriers where they will be effective. It is a vision that will take many years and tens of billions of dollars to fully realize, and the president can count on me to help.

The president is rightfully frustrated with Congress’s inaction regarding the humanitarian and security crisis at the nation’s southern border. Even though Republicans and Democrats spent the past several decades in the halls of Congress and on the campaign trail promising the American people that they would work to secure U.S. borders, some of my colleagues seemingly made a politically calculated decision to block the president’s good-faith efforts to finally get it done. They have regressed to the point where a Democratic presidential contender such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and a possible candidate, former congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas, are even entertaining the possibility of tearing down existing physical barriers.

Although Trump certainly has legitimate grievances over congressional Democrats’ obstruction of border-security funding, his national emergency declaration on Feb. 15 was not the right answer.

From the perspective of the chief executive, I can understand why the president would assert his powers with the emergency declaration to implement his policy agenda. After all, nearly every president in the modern era has similarly pushed the boundaries of presidential power, many with the helping hand of Congress.

In fact, if I were the leader of the Constitution’s Article II branch, I would probably declare an emergency and use all the tools at my disposal as well. But I am not. I am a member of the Senate, and I have grave concerns when our institution looks the other way at the expense of weakening Congress’s power.

It is my responsibility to be a steward of the Article I branch, to preserve the separation of powers and to curb the kind of executive overreach that Congress has allowed to fester for the better part of the past century. I stood by that principle during the Obama administration, and I stand by it now.

Conservatives rightfully cried foul when President Barack Obama used executive action to completely bypass Congress and unilaterally provide deferred action to undocumented adults who had knowingly violated the nation’s immigration laws. Some prominent Republicans went so far as to proclaim that Obama was acting more like an “emperor” or “king” than a president.

There is no intellectual honesty in now turning around and arguing that there’s an imaginary asterisk attached to executive overreach — that it’s acceptable for my party but not thy party. ADVERTISING

Republicans need to realize that this will lead inevitably to regret when a Democrat once again controls the White House, cites the precedent set by Trump, and declares his or her own national emergency to advance a policy that couldn’t gain congressional approval.

This isn’t just conjecture. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other prominent Democratic elected officials have already hinted that emergency declarations will be part of the playbook for the left, with Pelosi musing, “just think about what a president with different values can present to the American people.”

Conservatives should take these warnings seriously. They should be thinking about whether they would accept the prospect of a President Bernie Sanders declaring a national emergency to implement parts of the radical Green New Deal; a President Elizabeth Warren declaring a national emergency to shut down banks and take over the nation’s financial institutions; or a President Cory Booker declaring a national emergency to restrict Second Amendment rights.

Those on the left and the right who are making Trump’s emergency declaration a simple political litmus test of whether one supports or opposes the president and his policies are missing the mark. This is about the separation of powers and whether Congress will support or oppose a new precedent of executive power that will have major consequences.

As a U.S. senator, I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress. As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know future left-wing presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms.

These are the reasons I would vote in favor of the resolution disapproving of the president’s national-emergency declaration, if and when it comes before the Senate.

A growing number of Palestinians want a ‘one state, equal rights’ model and think Trump may pave the way for it.

Some prominent Palestinian activists and politicians are quietly rooting for Jared Kushner as he prepares to unveil the first part of his Middle East peace plan next month.

They hope it will hasten the onset of a “one-state” solution they are coming to support.

The push for one state with equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis has gained steam in recent years as the Trump administration has been preparing its peace plan, which Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, is expected to unveil at a June conference in Bahrain. Kushner has signaled that his plan abandons America’s decadeslong official support for a “two-state solution,” in which the Palestinians are given a sovereign nation of their own.

Many Palestinian supporters of a single state — whose ranks now include Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Palestinian-American — wouldn’t necessarily mind seeing the creation of two independent, full-fledged states in the region. But they don’t consider that outcome realistic, nor do they believe that the international community ever truly backed the idea.

Some argue that due to Israeli actions on the ground, including the construction of settlements in the West Bank, Palestinians already live in a de facto single state, but one in which they lack the same rights as Israeli Jews. Many liken the situation to apartheid South Africa and say Trump’s policies are simply exposing that reality.

“Trump is now not only burying the two-state solution, which was not viable anyway, but he’s gladly dancing on its grave, thus forcing people to end their denial,” said Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. “It’s important for us to respond very clearly that we need equal rights in one state.”

Surrendering the fight for two states could mean short-term pain for Palestinians, one-staters admit. But they hope to draw the world’s attention over time to the implications of one Israeli state in which Palestinians lack full voting and freedom-of-movement rights, bolstering their demands for one state with equal rights for all citizens.

The push for one state with equal rights is also fueled by a series of other strongly pro-Israel actions by Trump, including recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel despite its contested status. If the Palestinians are not given sovereignty, an Israel that absorbs millions of them indefinitely may ultimately be forced to choose between its democratic character and its Jewish identity — especially if demographic growth favors Palestinians.

“I don’t think it’s the intention of Mr. Trump to help Palestinians, but indirectly I think it is [helping],” said Hamada Jaber of the One State Foundation, an organization that launched last year to argue that a single state is actually in the Palestinians’ interest. “There is no two-state solution. It’s pushing us as Palestinians to think about an alternative.”

The growing calls among far left Palestinians and other advocates for “one state, equal rights” comes as Israeli and Palestinian officials acknowledge that the decadeslong efforts at achieving a political solution has stalled, and that the two sides’ respective positions on issues like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees may be irreconcilable.

Even so, many close observers of the conflict say, a one state, equal rights approach may prove an even more impractical goal.

“It’s not a real-world solution,” insisted Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of J Street, the left-leaning Jewish advocacy group that supports the two-state model. “It may sound nice in an academic hall. In a real world, this is not going to become one democratic state with equal rights.”

Israeli politicians won’t stand for an outcome in which they could lose political power, critics of the one-state idea say. Then there’s the fact that Palestinian leaders still say they want two separate states. Tensions between Palestinians and Israelis run so deep, some two-staters argue, that they could not coexist peacefully under one government.

Israeli leaders have long blamed the lack of progress in past peace talks on Palestinians, saying they’ve repeatedly refused generous offers that would have helped them create their own state while supporting violence against Israel. The militant group Hamas’ control of the Gaza Strip — from which it launches attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians — hasn’t helped inspire Israeli confidence in a potential peace deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered only tepid support for the creation of a Palestinian state in the past, and more recently, he’s made statements that seem aimed at derailing that possibility, including reportedly telling Trump that he will not evacuate “a single person” from any West Bank settlements and saying that he might move to annex parts of that territory. The conservative Israeli’s recent reelection led to headlines such as, “Netanyahu won. The two-state solution lost.”

But Israelis say they’re not worried the Trump-Kushner plan will hasten a one-state, equal rights model. “We have confidence in the Trump administration to try and present a plan that will enable Israel to maintain its security interests and on the other hand help improve the life of Palestinians and put an end to this conflict,” an Israeli official told POLITICO.

Officials with the Palestinian Authority did not respond to requests for comment, but they have repeatedly said the Trump administration is not an honest broker. The White House did not provide a comment for this story.

Meanwhile, there are signs that even people traditionally linked closely to the pro-Israel camp are worried about what the Kushner-led proposal will contain.

For instance, Rob Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has urged the administration to scrap the proposal, arguing it could spur a chain of events that leads to adverse long-term repercussions for Israel’s global standing.

In an interview, Satloff told POLITICO: “It would be a shame if any American initiative advances the idea or contributes to the idea that a single binational state is the solution for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Satloff’s stance has drawn attention across Washington.”It’s an interesting world in which people such as Rob Satloff urge the administration not to release a plan that almost certainly will be heavily tilted toward Israel’s position and others more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause are far less alarmed,” noted Rob Malley, president of the International Crisis Group.

Malley agreed that the one-state, equal-rights idea is gaining traction in various corners, especially younger Palestinians who seek a more “rights-based discourse.” “I don’t want to overstate it, but there is a shift,” he said.

One prominent supporter is Rashida Tlaib, a newly elected Democratic congresswoman from Michigan who is of Palestinian descent.

Tlaib has been accused of anti-Semitism for some of her remarks, a charge she vehemently denies, and she declined to comment for this story. But in comments last year to In These Times, a progressive publication, Tlaib compared the push for one-state, equal rights to the American civil rights movement.

“It has to be one state,” she said. “Separate but equal does not work.”

Other Middle East observers are not confident that the one state, equal rights camp will prevail.

“The idea that you’ll end up with [an] apartheid state and it’ll eventually raise sympathy: This is too linear a view of history,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian Authority official now with the Washington Institute. He and others stressed that they’re trying to keep an open mind about the Trump peace proposal given that very few people know its contents.

Early on in his presidency, Trump casually tossed aside decades of official U.S. support for a two-state solution, declaring that he “can live with either” a one-state or two-state solution so long as Palestinians and Israelis agree.

More recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when pressed by lawmakers, declined to say whether the U.S. still supports a two-state solution. Kushner, meanwhile, said the peace proposal will not include the phrase “two-state solution.”

 “If you say ‘two-state’, it means one thing to the Israelis, it means one thing to the Palestinians,” Kushner said during an event hosted by Satloff and the Washington Institute. “We said, ‘You know, let’s just not say it. Let’s just say, let’s work on the details of what this means.’”

From what little Kushner and his team have revealed, the specifics appear focused more on economic matters than political rights. The first phase of the plan is expected to be rolled out in Bahrain in late June at an “economic workshop” that will convene business leaders among others to discuss ways to help improve Palestinian lives materially.

Trump administration officials say the plan will also cover political issues, including sensitive topics such as borders, but have not offered a time frame for revealing those details.

The release of the plan, which at one point was around 50 pages, according to a Western diplomat, has been delayed several times.

During that time period, Trump has taken several steps that appear to undercut Palestinian hopes for their own state while pressuring them to come to the negotiating table, including by declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a cutoff of financial aid to the Palestinians and recognition of sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Trump administration officials have also not contested Netanyahu’s recent suggestion that he will move to annex parts of the West Bank, home to millions of Palestinians.

Palestinian activists say that move would clearly signal that Israeli leaders have given up on a Palestinian state.

4 thoughts on “Why I support Trump’s vision on border security”
  1. Tillis only supports Trump when he thinks it is convenient for himself. Hope a true conservative beats him in the next election. As for not exercising executive power when Congress refuses to act in the Americans best interest so as not to give Dems a precedent when they retake the Presidency … Dems already overexercised executive power. Obama did it constantly. Remember his “pen and a phone”.

  2. We can not support the world here in our country. We need to help these folks to help themselves in their own countries.
    Yes, I remember Obama’s “pen and phone” strategy. I really started to feel he hated this country and was giving it away! Thank God for our President Trump! He is not a perfect hutbut he does love the USA.

  3. This country needs Border Security for decades, there are way too many Illegal aliens in the USA with and without their kids, there is too much Illegal drugs in the USA, . This country has been ruined and the cause of it has been past admiinistraions, Congress, Senate & the House of representative, No American should be living in poverty, No Veterans should be lving in the streets/ Homeless, there should be more low income housing for Seniors & disabled, & no infestation entering our country, right now there is a Mexican blood flu entering all ready killed over 8,ooo people there is no cure for it. The Mexican President think he owns the USA this has to end for good. Americans paid for his wall around his country so nobody steals from him but he thinks he is the king of the USA, now it is time for American to tell him it is over. he no longer tells the USA what to do. I would never visti, vaation, thre for free. give him that message.

  4. I understand Senator Tillis’ concern over Executive Action abuse. Obama certainly was guilty of abusing this power; the circumstances leading to DACA did not qualify as a crisis – merely as an opportunity! However, we need to ask WHETHER OR NOT WE HAVE A TRUE “CRISIS” AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER. And Senator Tillis needs to give us his answer. If his answer is YES, then his concern for future abuse is invalid; if we have a crisis, that crisis must be addressed by any legal means necessary. If, on the other hand, or southern border does NOT constitute a crisis, Senator Tillis should tell us at what point would it become a crisis. Then, we the people of NC, can determine whether or not he truly represents us – and take appropriate action to replace him with someone who does represent North Carolinians.

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