Trump’s Fake Emergencies are Straight Out of the Authoritarian Playbook

Five (other) instances when President Trump used baseless "emergencies" to seize unwarranted power

On Monday, President Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C. Trump claims that “rising violence in the capital” and an “increase in violent crime” have compelled him to deploy the D.C. National Guard, dispatch FBI agents, and – perhaps most ominously – federalize the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

Let us be clear: Violent crime is a serious, ongoing problem in Washington – but there is no “crime emergency.” Trump is lying to justify his own authoritarian desire to deploy the military on the streets of America’s cities, while also commandeering a police force from a Democratic mayor. This isn’t the first time Trump has manufactured a fake “emergency.” It is one of his favorite tactics.

In declaring a crime emergency, Trump cited Washington’s high murder and carjacking rates. But Jeff Asher, a leading expert on crime data statistics, highlighted that after a sharp increase in 2023, murders in Washington “began falling in 2024” and “have been steadily falling through July 2025,” and is “exactly” the same as “was reported through July 2019.” Per Asher, carjackings in D.C. have followed a similar pattern, surging in 2023 before falling “to levels consistent with the start of the pandemic.” Murders and carjackings remain far too common—but the trend line is going down, not up.

Not long ago, the Trump administration itself was bragging about Washington’s falling violent crime rate. In late April, Ed Martin, Jr., a Trump loyalist who was then the Interim U.S. Attorney for D.C., credited Trump with “a 25 percent drop year-to-date in violent crime across the District.” Martin credited Trump’s “leadership” and the “Make D.C. Safe Again” initiative. On May 7, Trump repeated that same statistic, boasting that violent crime was down by 25 percent in D.C.

Multiple media outlets quickly debunked Trump’s abuse of D.C.’s violent crime statistics, leaving little need to fully rebut the president once again. But there is a bigger lesson worthy of emphasis: Trump is using fake emergencies to seize power.

According to the Brennan Center, Trump has declared 11 emergencies under the National Emergencies Act of 1976 (and other statutes) since beginning his second administration. As in this case of his “crime emergency” in D.C., the president has regularly ignored statistics showing that his “national emergencies” are not crises at all. He has also used blatantly false claims to justify his exercise of emergency powers.

These are just five such examples, beginning with three of Trump’s manufactured “national emergency” declarations on Inauguration Day. First, Trump declared a “national emergency” at the southern border. “America’s sovereignty is under attack,” Trump proclaimed. “Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans.” Trump ordered the Secretary of Defense to deploy “as many units or members of the Armed Forces,” including the National Guard, as needed “to support the activities of the Secretary of Homeland Security in obtaining complete operational control of the southern border.”

Trump’s declaration was based on xenophobic paranoia. Just three days earlier, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had announced the lowest level of border encounters since August 2020, with a “more than 60% decrease in encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border from May 2024 to December 2024.” Simultaneously, the DHS “completed over 685,000 removals and returns, more than any prior fiscal year since 2010,” meaning that more people were removed or returned to their country of origin in 2024 than during any of the years in Trump’s first term. And drug cartels did not control the border when Trump reassumed office. The DHS did. Yet Trump portrayed it as being under an “invasion” that would necessitate emergency executive action.

In a related order issued on January 20, Trump declared that criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua (TdA) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), had created another “national emergency.” There’s no question that such violent groups cause great harm. But again, Trump’s overstepped his bounds. The order created a process by which the TdA and MS-13 could be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs). Both groups (along with others) were designated as such one month later. Then, on March 15, Trump announced that he was invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798 to deal with the TdA’s “invasion.” In doing so, Trump relied on a completely fabricated claim – that the TdA is “closely aligned” with Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela and supports “the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States.”

U.S. intelligence agencies had already concluded that this was not true, which the National Intelligence Council reiterated in an Apr. 7 memo. That is, U.S. intelligence rejected Trump’s basis for invoking the AEA.

Nevertheless, in mid-March, the Trump administration deported 261 people to El Salvador. 137 were Venezuelans deported under the claim that they belonged to the TdA. As we’ve written at length, these removals violated the Venezuelans’ due process rights. Indeed, the Supreme Court ruled that migrants have due process rights under the AEA, while some lower courts ruled that Trump’s invocation of the AEA was improper because there is no “war,” “invasion” or “predatory incursion.”

Trump also declared a “national energy emergency” on that first day in office. He claimed that Biden’s policies had “driven our Nation into a national emergency, where a precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply, and an increasingly unreliable grid, require swift and decisive action.” Trump’s order did not even attempt to justify these claims with data, evidence, or proof.

Contrary to Trump’s made-up claims, the United States produced record levels of crude oil and natural gas during the Biden administration. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) found that the North American bulk power system, which covers the entire United States, “remains highly reliable and resilient, and underlying key performance metrics (e.g., frequency response and misoperation rates) continue to improve or remain stable.” The electrical grid “remained reliable and resilient in 2024.” While NERC has warned that “new challenges” lie ahead, there was no crisis when Trump assumed office.

Nevertheless, he directed all federal executive agencies to “identify and exercise any lawful emergency authorities available” to generate and transport “domestic energy resources.”

Critics–including the Attorneys General from 15 states who sued the administration over the order–environmentalists and experts warned that Trump is using this phony energy emergency to boost the fossil fuel industry at the expense of clean energy sources. Trump’s order does not even mention wind or solar energy.

On April 2, Trump declared an economic emergency, proposing that America’s trade deficits with countries around the world were the result of unfair economic policies that exploited American companies. Trade deficits are a complicated economic matter with room for reasonable disagreement. But there was no emergency at hand. Trump’s order infringed on Congress’s constitutional powers, and the new tariffs were anything but reasonable.

As explained in a Brookings study, the “United States has run a deficit in every quarter, except one, since the second quarter of 1976,” including Trump’s entire first term. Trump’s tariffs were premised on his claim that “foreign trade and economic practices” had again created a “national emergency.” But among the territories targeted for economic retribution were Heard Island and McDonald Islands, a “group of barren, uninhabited volcanic islands near Antarctica, covered in glaciers and home to penguins.” The president did not explain how these penguins contributed to America’s state of emergency.

The administration’s calculated tariff rates were supposedly “reciprocal” – that is, the president claimed they were intended to offset unfair trade practices by other countries. But even according to their own “logic,” the “reciprocal” tariff rates make no sense. Their formula, intended to calculate the supposed economic harm being done to Americans, was based on a basic mathematical error that grossly inflated the rate levied on foreign countries. By declaring an emergency, Trump sought to usurp Congress’s constitutional power. He also tried to get around Congress’s powers by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which no other president has ever used to impose tariffs. Multiple lawsuits have challenged Trump’s power grab, causing him to delay the imposition of some. Still, it stands as another instance when the president’s “national emergency” only exacerbated economic uncertainty and contributed to rising costs for Americans.

Finally, on July 30, Trump declared a “national emergency” in response to the “policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Brazil” in an attempt at pouring fuel on the fire of an ongoing crisis faced by the democratically-elected Brazilian government.

On Jan. 8, 2023, followers of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed federal government buildings in an attempt to overturn the presidential election’s results. Of course, these events paralleled the actions of Jan. 6, 2021. And naturally, Trump sympathizes with fellow aspiring autocrat, Bolsonaro.

Trump hollered that the Brazilian government is “politically persecuting” Bolsonaro, and “contributing to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Brazil.” The opposite is true: Brazil is attempting to preserve the rule of law by prosecuting a far-right leader who seeks to upend its democracy.

The pattern is all too clear: Trump lies, declares emergencies based on fallacies, and then uses those bogus emergencies to increase his own power. He did so in Washington, D.C. earlier this week. He has done so throughout his second presidency on issues ranging from security at the border to energy to the economy to Brazil’s democracy.

No one should be surprised when he does so again. And no one should believe him when he utters the word “emergency.” This is the authoritarian playbook.