Trending: ‘national emergency’

Lookups spiked 51,700% on March 13, 2020

Why are people looking up national emergency?

National emergency topped our lookups on March 13th, 2020, after President Trump declared one in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he is declaring the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, as Washington struggles with providing Americans with relief and officials race to slow the spread of the outbreak.
— Andrew Taylor, Lisa Mascaro, Jill Colvin, and Zeke Miller, The Baltimore Sun, 13 Mar. 2020

President Trump: "To unleash the full power of the federal government for this effort today I am officially declaring a national emergency. Two very big words."

Full video here: https://t.co/bTZ8eza3pA pic.twitter.com/8MkMOSZ1gU
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 13, 2020

What does national emergency mean?

We define national emergency as “a state of emergency resulting from a danger or threat of danger to a nation from foreign or domestic sources and usually declared to be in existence by governmental authority.” The term spiked in lookups twice in the beginning of 2019, following reports that Trump was planning on declaring these types of emergencies. It should be noted that what constitutes a national emergency varies from nation to nation, and that our definition is not necessarily the same as that envisioned by the government of the United States, or any other nation.

Citations

As the first counsellors of the crown, it is out peculiar province to advise and direct his Majesty on every national emergency like the present.
— Great Britain, Parliament, The Parliamentary register, 1775

Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.