Pelosi Stuns Trump & Wrangles 11 GOP Defectors To Win Vote 236-134

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Despite lots of attention remaining at present on the impeachment inquiry that House Democrats have launched against President Donald Trump in the face of him trying to get Ukraine to help his re-election bid, there remain other issues with his administration’s activities too. As this past week drew to a close, Congress again approved a measure overturning a national emergency declaration that Trump signed earlier this year in an attempt to use the subsequent executive power to redirect government money towards a southern border wall blocking off Mexico.

Like the first Congressional measure overturning the declaration, Trump is sure to veto this one. Still, also like before, it garnered a small number of Republicans in support, making the effort a bipartisan one, even if only in a limited way. In the Senate where the measure passed earlier this past week, 11 Republicans voted along with all Democrats against Trump’s declaration, while in the House the same number did so, along with one recent but now former Republican, Michigan’s Justin Amash.

Congress can produce measures regarding a presidential emergency declaration once every six months, which they’ve now done.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denounced Trump’s declaration, sharing:

‘The President’s decision to cancel $3.6 billion for military construction to pay for his wasteful wall makes America less safe. The administration is stealing funds from 127 initiatives in 21 countries, 23 states and three territories… The Administration’s decision also dishonors the constitution by negating its most fundamental principle, the separation of powers. It’s an assault on our power of the purse.’

Some of the most high-profile military construction projects whose funding Trump is taking away to build his wall include a middle school in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where locals have long been waiting for new facilities to replace the dilapidated ones they currently have — and they’re now going to have to keep waiting so that Trump can build a wall to block off innocent men, women, and children fleeing persecution and violence and trying to build a better and safer life.

There’s no crisis in the terms that Trump has cast it. Trump has claimed there’s an “invasion” ongoing at the southern border, but to call this a false characterization would be an understatement. There are large groups of people seeking help, and the best Trump can come up with is a wall, which so far, Trump has gotten about $6 billion in funding for via the executive power granted to him by the emergency declaration in question.

And there are real-world consequences to the kind of rhetoric Trump spews. It wasn’t that long ago that a racist gunman attacked a Walmart in the immigrant community of El Paso, Texas, where they killed 22 people and wounded many others following spouting Trump’s exact same rhetoric about a supposed invasion of Hispanic people in the state. Following that incident, Trump refused to denounce the rhetoric.

House Democrats are now trying to hold Trump in check with an impeachment inquiry, which they’ve launched following revelations he tried to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens.

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