The controversy over President Donald Trump’s recent declaration of a national emergency over the supposed crisis at the southern border is continuing to escalate while — surprise surprise — no massive invasions of heavily armed criminals or whatever else march over from Mexico. This week, a full 13 House Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in voting to cancel the emergency declaration, which the White House has hoped to use to redirect billions in already appropriated government funding towards the wall project.
Michigan’s Justin Amash, who admittedly often diverges from the Republican mainstream thanks to libertarian tendencies, bluntly denounced the GOP caucus’s behavior in getting behind the president.
He asserted:
‘The same Congressional Republicans who joined me in blasting Pres. Obama’s executive overreach now cry out for a king to usurp legislative powers. If your faithfulness to the Constitution depends on which party controls the White House, then you are not faithful to it.’
Kentucky’s Thomas Massie — who voted to cancel the declaration — also tied his opposition to consistency with his past opposition to supposed executive overreach from Obama.
Other Republicans who voted with Amash and the House Democratic majority in shooting down the president’s national emergency declaration including Indiana’s Jim Banks and Washington’s Cathy McMorris-Rodgers tied their opposition to concern about what precedent the move could set for abuse of executive power by future Democratic administrations.
Congress has the power to cancel the declaration thanks to the same legislation that allowed for the move in the first place. From the House where the resolution sported literally hundreds of co-sponsors, with no shortage of those willing to get on board with opposition to the president’s power grab, the cancellation order will be moving to the Senate, where there’s a chance it could actually pass. Three Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), and Thom Tillis (N.C.) — have already said they’ll vote in support of the cancellation. More, like Florida’s Marco Rubio, have expressed a measure of disapproval for the declaration.
Even if the cancellation passes both houses of Congress — the president has to be willing to sign the measure, and he’s already insisted he’ll veto it (which would actually be the first time he used that presidential power while in office).
Still, he’s facing challenges from other fronts. Lawsuits have emerged from groups ranging from public advocacy organizations to a coalition of a full 16 states led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who’s faced off with the Trump White House in court numerous times before.
Becerra and his associates argue, quite simply, that the emergency declaration is unconstitutional because there’s no actual emergency so in reality, the move represents the president seeking to simply go around Congress’s legally mandated control of government funding.
The declaration is a last-ditch effort after Trump was unable to get Congress to approve funding for the wall. He pushed the federal government through a more than month-long shutdown including most of January via refusing to approve any funding without wall money to try and get Congress to hand it over.
It didn’t work.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
