Proclamation 7463
You never know what you might learn from reading a literary magazine. I was doing just that, and a book reviewer stated that every US president since G. W. Bush in 2001 have every year re-signed something called Proclamation 7463.
So, I went looking and indeed found in the US National Register, Proclamation 7463, proclaimed and signed by President George Bush on September 14, 2001. Here is what the first two paragraphs of that proclamation say:
A national emergency exists by reason of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, and the Pentagon, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby declare that the national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001, and, pursuant to the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), I intend to utilize the following statutes: sections 123, 123a, 527, 2201(c), 12006, and 12302 of title 10, United States Code, and sections 331, 359, and 367 of title 14, United States Code.
Now the actual meaning and impact of this declaration that a national emergency exists presumably arises from whatever is said in that string of acts and statutes listed in paragraph two. I may follow those up in a future post. For now my interest is in the claim that every US president has re-issued and signed this declaration every year since 2001.
Could that possibly be true? Again, I went looking, and I found a story from USA Today – hardly my favourite source for credible information – dated Sept 14, 2017, that said this:
President Trump has become the third president to renew a post-9/11 emergency proclamation, stretching what was supposed to be a temporary state of national emergency after the 2001 terror attacks into its 17th year.
But the ongoing effects of that perpetual emergency aren’t immediately clear, because the executive branch has ignored a law requiring it to report to Congress every six months on how much the president has spent under those extraordinary powers, USA TODAY has found.
Taking USA Today at its word, then, this means that G W Bush and Barack Obama had indeed re-declared it every year prior to this. And, by now, they have stopped obeying the law that says they must report any related spending to Congress. Huh.
Then, I found a story in Courthouse News Service dated Sept 8, 2023, that said:
Biden penned his signature to a one-year extension of President George W. Bush’s 7463, retaining broad powers over the organization of the military. The proclamation is officially titled “The National Emergency with Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks.”
It also said this:
Most emergencies are used to impose economic sanctions. But Proclamation 7463, along with the broad 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, gives the president the power to call up the National Guard, alter the size and shape of the military’s top officers and hire or fire commissioned officers — even ordering them out of retirement if necessary.
I am going to go out on a real limb here and say that Biden did the same a year later in September of 2024, and that Trump will do it again next month. The literary magazine writer was absolutely right about Proclamation 7463. So, the US has been in a perpetually renewed state of emergency since September of 2001, ‘by reason of the terrorist attacks at the WorldTrade Center….and the continuing and immediate threat of future attacks on The United States’.
It is amazing the things you can learn reading a literary magazine.
Those folks participating in the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations down in the US the last month or two – seems they are more than 20 years too late.