On Presidents’ Day, nearly 100 people turned out at the federal courthouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale to denounce President Donald Trump and his national emergency declaration to build a border wall.
“We need to make a lot of noise!” Laurie Woodward, a volunteer organizer wearing a “Resist” T-shirt, told the crowd. She said she’s affiliated with the progressive activist groups MoveOn and Indivisible.
Those who showed up were mostly middle age or older and included seasoned activists and others simply motivated to speak out against what they see as an outrageous power grab by Trump to fulfill a campaign promise, not address a true crisis.
The event was part of a national rally across Florida and most other states, billed as a show of support for immigrants and asylum seekers and a push to get Congress to overrule Trump’s national emergency declaration. The courts also are being asked to intervene.
On Friday in the Rose Garden, Trump declared a national emergency to enable him to use billions of dollars to build a wall along the border with Mexico without congressional approval.
“It’s very simple: We want to stop drugs from coming into our country. We want to stop criminals and gangs from coming into our country,” Trump said.
The move, however, has alarmed many government officials and political observers who see it as a violation of the Constitutional separation of powers. Congress has the power to tax and to spend public dollars.
Outside the federal courthouse along Broward Boulevard, protesters shouted, whistled loudly and waved signs saying “Trump is the Emergency” and “Reject Trump’s Fake Crisis.” Some passing cars and trunks honked their horns in support.
One of the protesters, Nigel Mann, 54, of West Palm Beach, scoffed at the idea that there was an immigration emergency at the border.
“He states it’s an emergency, but you don’t declare an emergency five days before the emergency and you don’t continually say ‘Well, I’m going to go take a break at Mar-a-Lago because it is an emergency,’ ” Mann said of Trump. “So it’s just ridiculous. I mean the whole country’s had enough of this guy.”
Mann was toting a balloon depicting Trump as an angry orange baby.
For sale among the crowd: “Worst President Ever” buttons.
Maria Lamas, 72, of Pembroke Pines came carrying a cardboard sign referring to Trump as a “con man.” “I feel all he wants to do is enrich himself. He doesn’t care about the American people,” she said.
A centrist, Lamas said she suspects Trump is just using the presidency to “maybe build some condos in Russia” afterwards. Or in North Korea.
“He can’t be trusted,” she said. “Everything he says is a lie.”
Lamas came to the United States at age 13 from Cuba and said she feels for immigrants facing tough hurdles, especially those with children. She said she put herself through college as a single mother with a young son and worked as a senior editor for packaging at Johnson & Johnson.
“Immigrants are not necessarily bad,” she said.
Gilda Simpkin, a snowbird who lives in Hallandale Beach, had a harsh assessment of the nation’s 45th president.
“I think Trump is basically a petty dictator and is destroying everything America stands for,” she said. “He is not a joke. He’s a serious threat to democracy.”
momatz@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4518