Hold Fast: The Power and Dangers of Emergency Authority
Seven questions voters should ask about presidential emergency power.
Emergency power may begin in the White House, but Constitutional government does not. Voters can ask candidates where they draw the line—and whether they would accept the same rule when the other party holds power.
Democracies are rarely lost in a single dramatic moment. More often, they are weakened incrementally, as actions justified by extraordinary circumstances become accepted as ordinary governance. That is why one of the most important questions voters can ask of anyone seeking public office is also one of the simplest:
When the emergency ends, will the extraordinary power end with it?
America needs leaders capable of acting decisively in a crisis. I spent nearly four decades in national security, including service during military operations and periods of international instability. I have seen circumstances in which decisions could not wait for a leisurely process. Lives can depend on speed, intelligence will be incomplete, and leaders will always need to act before every uncertainty has been resolved.
Emergency authority exists for a reason. The danger is not that the government possesses emergency powers. The danger is permanence.
I am part of a group of volunteers from The Steady State, that have a grave sense of importance to provide our decades of expertise working and gaining the experience of how to assess a candidate who not only upholds our oath to the Constitution, has a particular skill set that sets them apart, and most importantly, has the best interest of the people at heart. I am sharing my personal experience in going through that process. I will use my “lucky 7” points for you to consider.
The Necessary Power, and the Necessary Restraint
Throughout American history, genuine crises have required presidents and governments to exercise extraordinary authority.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus. During World War I, the federal government imposed sweeping restrictions affecting speech and dissent. During World War II, more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forcibly relocated and incarcerated, an action now recognized as a profound constitutional injustice. The Cold War produced a vast and enduring national-security infrastructure. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act, surveillance authorities expanded, and entirely new institutions and security structures emerged. My office at the Defense Intelligence Agency was one of those formed as a result of these authorities. During COVID-19, federal, state, and local governments invoked emergency public-health authorities and undertook extraordinary economic interventions.
These events involved different threats, different presidents, different political parties, and different historical circumstances. Yet they reveal a recurring pattern: Crises expand governmental authority more easily than governments surrender it afterward. Some emergency measures disappear when the crisis passes. Others survive in law, bureaucracy, precedent, institutional practice, or simply in the political understanding of what the government may do the next time an emergency occurs. That is the lesson voters should remember.
Why Temporary Powers Become Permanent
In a crisis, certainty is rare. Risk is constant. Leaders naturally want more information, greater flexibility, centralized decision-making, and sufficient authority to accomplish the mission. Those instincts are both understandable and often essential. But expanded authority also creates institutional momentum. New missions generate offices. Offices acquire personnel. Personnel require budgets. Procedures are developed. Legal interpretations are established. Precedents accumulate. Eventually, something created as an exception can become part of the normal machinery of government.
Institutions rarely volunteer to surrender authorities they have learned to use. That observation is not an accusation against any president, administration, political party, or government agency. It is a recognition of how institutions behave. And that is precisely why constitutional safeguards matter.
Ask About the Next President
Political debate about executive power often becomes trapped by the personalities of the moment. Supporters of a president may be comfortable granting that president broad authority because they trust the person exercising it. Opponents may resist the same authority because they distrust that individual.
But that is the wrong constitutional test. Instead of asking: Do I trust this president with this power? Ask: Would I trust every future president with this power? That single question changes the discussion. Presidents leave office. Precedents remain.
Every expansion of executive authority potentially becomes part of the inheritance passed to the next administration, and the one after that. A power considered necessary when exercised by a leader we support, may look very different when exercised by someone we oppose. Constitutional limits exist precisely because the rule of law cannot depend upon whether we happen to trust the person temporarily holding power.
The Warning Is in the Pattern
My background in intelligence taught me to look not only at individual events, but at patterns. One indicator rarely tells you everything. A series of indicators can. The same principle applies to democratic institutions. An emergency declaration by itself does not establish democratic erosion. Neither does a dispute between branches of government, an aggressive assertion of executive authority, or a controversial court case.
But citizens should pay attention when multiple developments begin moving in the same direction. Are emergency declarations becoming increasingly routine? Is legislative oversight becoming weaker or bypassed? Are independent institutions losing influence? Are courts and other constitutional checks coming under sustained pressure? Is political disagreement increasingly characterized as an emergency requiring extraordinary governmental action? Are temporary measures becoming normalized? The warning lies in cumulative normalization and is an indications-and-warning concept to which every citizen should take heed and respond.
Strong Government and Accountable Government Are Not Opposites
There is sometimes an assumption that insisting upon constitutional restraints means favoring a weak executive. My experience taught me the opposite. Effective national-security institutions require clear missions, lawful authorities, disciplined command structures, professional expertise, congressional oversight, and public trust. Accountability does not prevent the government from acting. It helps ensure that the government retains legitimacy when it acts. The Constitution was not written only for peaceful times or when decisions are easy. Its protections matter most when fear, uncertainty, anger, and urgency create powerful incentives to bypass normal restraints. That is when constitutional discipline becomes hardest. And most important.
The Oath Matters
The oath I took and to which every member of congress swears, is not to a president, a political party, an administration, a particular policy or even to the voter. It is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath becomes particularly meaningful during national emergencies, because those are precisely the moments when fear and urgency can make constitutional safeguards seem inconvenient when they are, in fact, the guardrails.
A healthy democracy must be capable of doing two things simultaneously: giving its leaders sufficient authority to defend the nation and requiring those leaders to remain accountable to the constitutional system they are defending. The choice should never be between our national security and constitutional government; Constitutional government is the critical foundation of our national security.
The Responsibility Ultimately Belongs to Us
Emergency powers will always be part of governing a nation as large, complicated, and globally engaged as the United States. There will be wars. There will be terrorist threats. There will be natural disasters, pandemics, cyberattacks, economic emergencies, and crises we cannot yet anticipate. Presidents will sometimes need extraordinary authority to protect the country. The question is whether the citizenry will insist extraordinary powers remain extraordinary, and whether those powers return to normal constitutional limits when the emergency has passed.
That responsibility does not belong only to judges, members of Congress, inspectors general, journalists, intelligence professionals, or historians. It belongs to voters.
Voters do not need to be constitutional scholars to evaluate how candidates think about executive authority. They can ask straightforward questions:
Does the candidate acknowledge that executive authority has constitutional limits, even during emergencies?
Can the candidate explain what conditions justify invoking extraordinary powers?
Does the candidate explain when those powers should end?
Does the candidate support meaningful congressional oversight of emergency authority?
Does the candidate respect the role of courts in reviewing executive action?
Can the candidate distinguish between a genuine national emergency and an ordinary policy desire or disagreement?
Does the candidate believe extraordinary governmental power requires extraordinary accountability?
And perhaps most importantly:
Would the constitutional standard the candidate advocates today still be acceptable if exercised tomorrow by a political opponent?
These are not Republican questions. They are not Democratic questions. They are constitutional questions that must be asked.
Democracies are strongest not because they never face crises. They are strongest because they know how to return from them.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 500 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.
