To give you all a short history of the national emergency declaration, the first one was issued by President Woodrow Wilson in February 1917, a few weeks before the U.S. entered World War I. Wilson was concerned about the lack of tonnage being shipped and addressed the problem.

It is indeed fascinating that 27 presidents before Wilson, including Lincoln who oversaw a civil war, didn’t need to declare a “national emergency”.

The next declared national emergency didn’t happen until 1933 when Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a “bank holiday” on his third day as President to stop the runs on banks. And though FDR navigated America through the Great Depression and most of World War II, he only declared three national emergencies. Truman, who followed him, had one and then somehow we got through presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson without having another one.

Then starting with Reagan, the national emergency declaration has come en vogue a bit more. But our current President has taken it to next-level status.

Trump declared 13 national emergencies in his first term and some of them are technically still ongoing, surviving even Biden’s term. In just 19 months of his second term, Trump has declared 11 national emergencies, ranging from safeguarding Venezuelan oil and securing the southern border, to — of course — economic sanctions and tariffs.

And yes, these declared national emergencies do give the Executive Branch and the President broader powers which arguably have been abused.

Yet somehow in all of this, the President hasn’t seemed to notice that a good chunk of the western United States is on fire. Or that if Lake Powell was completely drained (I’m up with Edward Abbey on this one) and all that water was sent to Lake Mead, that reservoir would still be barely half full. And it seems like a lot of the northeast is underwater while tornados ravage the Midwest.

And while the President entertains making Canada, Cuba, Greenland, or Venezuela the 51st state, an actual U.S. territory in Puerto Rico is in the most serious drought in its history, and the infrastructure to provide running water to its citizens faces many challenges. Meanwhile, members of the Puerto Rican national guard are guarding the Reflecting Pool instead of assisting their friends and family back home.

As far as these wildfires go, the fact that nearly 6.5 million acres (so far) have been scorched doesn’t qualify as a national emergency seems to many to be mind boggling. The brave men and women fighting these fires could use some help and support.

It is indeed sad to see firefighters lose their lives. And it’s even sadder to see their sacrifice go basically go unnoticed by our leaders. And having the skies filled with smoke, and sometimes raining down ash, is getting old for a lot of us.

As the popularity for the President continues to wane, there are the obvious reasons behind it. The war (or whatever one might officially call it) in Iran is unpopular, persistent inflation, weak job reports, unfettered corruption, and the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor have all contributed to the President’s plummeting poll numbers. But I suggest here that there are other factors to also consider.

For one, Trump’s fixation with the Reflecting Pool while some of our cities and towns flood and burn is beyond silly at this point. When U.S. District of Columbia attorney Jeanine Pirro dropped the charges against former Olympian David Hearn for “vandalism” it seemed like the issue was case closed, providing a great time to move on. But instead Trump wants to double down and have the charges refiled.

I’m sure the end result will again be “charges dismissed” but perhaps this time “with prejudice” meaning they can’t be filed again. Then Hearn will rightly sue Trump, Pirro, and the U.S. government generally and walk away with some settlement with quite a few zeroes and some commas involved.

For the rest of us living in Planet Reality, Pirro actually came up with the correct conclusion that the lining job done by Atlantic Industrial Coating was botched. But beyond that, it is just plain moral depravity to try to put Hearn behind bars for this nonsense, making him a scapegoat for their shoddy workmanship. The amount of lives touched by these weather-related disasters demands attention but our President continues to be fixated on the Reflecting Pool, or his other favorite thing to whine about, the 2020 election.

The President should play an important role in leading the country through challenging times. FDR used the radio to do his weekly fireside chats to give comfort to the American people during some of the darker times of the Great Depression and World War II. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded and when over 200 American servicemen and women died in a plane crash in Canada, President Reagan’s words of solace comforted a nation in mourning. But with Trump all we seem to get are unhinged social media posts forged in the wee hours of the night providing great examples of how some thoughts should be kept to oneself.

This summer has been a difficult one for a lot of reasons and there seems to be a lot of things we could or should call a national emergency. We need a leader who, at the very least, is cognizant of the agony people are going through but, more importantly, will unleash the necessary tools to bring hope and restore livelihoods.

Brian E. Preece is a retired social studies educator and coach. As a wrestling coach, he was named as the 2006 Utah Coach of the Year by the National Wrestling Coaches Association. He has also co-authored three books and has been a sports journalist for parts of five decades.