I haven't heard the press conference, are they literally saying it was their work which led to her escape and rescue? Or are they thanking the piles of investigators/police that worked on this in the interim? The first would be shitty, the second would be routine.
Either way I don't see the problem with acknowledging a belief in prayer. Maybe they think they finally prayed enough for God to open a window of escape, I don't know. Taking vocal offense about them mentioning their beliefs to the point where you start broadly painting all religious people everywhere as stupid and self-centered is.... stupid and self-centered.
The press conference was not thanking people for their hard work; it was very much an extensive listing of all the people whose efforts were utterly fruitless, and crediting them for the girl's escape because they also happened to be praying.
The prayer thing is firstly absurd. I'm not trying to pass judgement on faith in the supernatural here; I am saying that the act of thanking and praising a deity who just allowed a 13 year old girl's family to be murdered and her to be held and abused for three months is ridiculous. They should not be praising, but cursing this wretched god they choose to believe in.
Secondly, implying that prayer was directly linked to this girl's release is justification for their own inadequacy. All of these people failed to find the missing girl. They need to be figuring out how they can do better next time, not praising themselves for a job well done.
That's a great idea! A national emergency is, if anything, an understatement of Global Warming, so I think that's fair.
And will it still be fair when the next president unilaterally declares the emergency over and reallocates those funds to the Wall 2.0 or something equally asinine? Will it continue to be fair when Congress reasserts its power of the purse and the bureaucracy bloats under the weight of increasingly specifically appropriated funding, cutting back on needed services? Will you still think it's a great idea when it becomes funded purely at the pleasure of those presently in power?
If national emergency protocols are used build a wall, we lose a relatively small chunk of monies and get a monument to our own stupidity.
If national emergency protocols are used to address global warming, we just might manage to narrowly avoid a continent that is half underwater, and half scorched earth.
We shouldn't be afraid to invoke the national emergency in a real emergency, just because it might later be used for non-emergencies.