From The White House: Bill Signed: H.J.Res. 7
On Monday, April 10, 2023, the President signed into law:
H.J.Res. 7, which terminates the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jaybird
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According Mr wiki* here are the current effective declared national emergencies. 41 active ones, if I’m counting the rows right.
Though most of them are either really specific – i.e. this person and their government did something bad during the Clinton, Bush Jr, or Obama admins, and now may even be dead, but we are still keeping economic pressure heirs and still living former officials.
There’s also a pile for Iran, Russia, and Syria, who have repeated bad things.
There’s possibly two or three that could be considered open-ended, with a not clearly defined maximum scope. e.g. the wiki itself says that the sanctions regimes used to go after specific support of the 9/11 attacks has been in practice used for all kinds of terrorism. There are cyber crime and election interference ones which have the potential to be similarly expansive, but it doesn’t look like they actually have yet.
* I’m guessing the actual authoritative source for current emergencies is buried somewhere in the Federal Register, I thought there was a government site that hosted a complete list, but I can’t find it. (HHS has only have the medical ones, of which Covid-19 was the last current active one)Report
I’m guessing the actual authoritative source for current emergencies is buried somewhere in the Federal Register, I thought there was a government site that hosted a complete list, but I can’t find it.
Emergencies are almost always declared by the President in an executive order, which then appears in the Federal Register. The Federal Register maintains lists of all executive orders, but doesn’t seem to split out the emergency declarations separately.
(I took the liberty of editing your comment to close the HTML anchor tag, the absence of which was making my browser do odd things about its scope.)Report
Thanks. I tried to edit it myself, but timed out. It was also automatically making that asterisk into a link on its own (like a footnote), which is a nice enough and unexpected feature, but I was trying to get it to *not* do that.Report
Wonder if it’s easier to draft a ‘meta-law’ that states that all declared emergencies have a default duration of, what, 3-months before they have to be re-declared and/or extended?
Or, do we already have that but every ’emergency’ simply overrides the duration meta?Report
Hard pass. Emergency declarations are mechanisms to open federal funds spigots that otherwise would remains closed. Take Hurricanes – at 3 months post event FEMA and USACE are just getting started sorting who really needs what, while wrapping up their short term assistance programs like Blue Roof. Debris removal can take up to a year post- storm, and counties and parishes can’t pay their debris removal contractors from federal funds AFTER the declaration is closed out.
Now we can debate the merits of FEMA and USACE helping coastal communities repeatedly clean up after ever more powerful – and thus more expensive – hurricanes. But screwing with that mechanism doesn’t make sense as to how these things actually work.Report
IIRC, the last major overhaul of emergency declarations was done in the 1970s and did impose default durations. Also that the President must report to Congress periodically on the status of active emergencies. Generally much longer than three months. As Philip noted, FEMA is often just getting wound up at the three month point. The ones that allow freezing certain foreign financial assets — eg, of countries that sponsor terrorism — are intended to last for very long times, pretty much until there’s some sort of major regime change.Report
The National Emergency Act itself does require a review every six months by Congress.Report
That is Dr. Wiki, Ph.D, than you very much.Report
I meant no disrespect; the Honolulu Airport inter-terminal buses are indeed proud of their child and I apologize to them.Report