House Democrats Want to End Trump's National Emergency – and They Could Succeed

Congressional Democrats have the means to potentially prevent Trump's national emergency declaration from going to court, and they are considering using it.

Under the 1976 National Emergency Act, which defines the president's ability to make emergency declarations, legislative oversight has also been delegated to the Congress. Once the president has declared an emergency, the Congress can pass a resolution that cancels it. The House Democrats, led by Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX), plan to introduce this measure on Friday, with a vote in the House scheduled in the coming weeks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fully supported the resolution. CNN's Clare Foran reports. In a letter that she sent Wednesday, Pelosi said the Democrats would "quickly" pass the resolution to a committee and send it to the Senate. The measure requires a simple majority of votes in both Houses (51 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House).

As stated in the letter, Ms. Pelosi expects the resolution to leave the committee within 15 calendar days and to the House within three days.

Democrats argue that Trump's national emergency declaration – which he had done to try to secure funding for his border wall after these funds had already been cleared for other projects – completely bypasses Congress and its ability to allocate funds, as provided for in the Constitution.

Presidents have always had a lot to do to use the powers they are given in national emergencies. However, it is relatively unprecedented that the president explicitly uses one to get money for a project after Congress refused to finance this specific effort.

Pelosi underlined this point in his letter of Wednesday, stressing that the declaration of urgency "undermines the separation of powers and the power of the Treasury of Congress, exclusively reserved by the text of the Constitution to the first branch of the government, legislative power, one – equal to the executive. "

The Castro measure has already attracted over 90 co-authors to the House, according to a tweet that he posted earlier this week.

Once the House adopts it, as its Democrat majority expects, the resolution goes to the Senate, where its fate is a bit more risky. The Senate must also vote quickly on the measure, but it is not certain that it will get the vote. Because the Democrats in the House present the measure as a "privileged resolution," the Senate "would be required by law to vote on the measure within 18 days," says Michael Warren of CNN.

What remains unanswered is whether enough Republicans will join the 47-member Democratic caucus (or even if all Democrats will remain united, some have broken in favor of Trump's version of the spending bill more early in the month) to reach the 51-threshold threshold that must be advanced. Given the outcry over the president's statement from some Republicans, it is possible that at least four Republican senators are willing to confront him directly on this issue.

Senate Republicans who have expressed concern over the national emergency declaration, including Thom Tillis (R-NC), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), could be among those are allied with the Democrats to advance the resolution forward. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has already stated that she would be willing to vote for a resolution blocking the emergency declaration. It remains to be seen how many Republicans will sign.

Legislative oversight of the national state of emergency, however, has another major drawback: it is a resolution that the president has yet to sign.

If both the House and the Senate adopt it, Trump would be forced to sign a bill to cancel his own national emergency declaration – something that White House chief Stephen Miller has already left behind. to hear that he would not do it.

"It will protect its national emergency statement, it is guaranteed," Miller said in an interview with Fox News last weekend with Chris Wallace.

There is a good chance that 51 senators will support the resolution, but it is unlikely that the Senate will have a majority under the veto.

It should be noted that this is not the first time that Trump has issued a veto threat, but it would be a real test of whether he is really willing to accept a veto, which would be his first time. (As evidenced by past spending conflicts, it has happened on many occasions that Trump has finally given in despite the threat of a veto.)

Democrats could fight against the courts

If the resolution fails, Democrats could meddle with the growing number of lawsuits already filed against the Trump administration about the national emergency.

Earlier this week, 16 US states led by California filed a lawsuit against the Trump government, saying the government was suffering by diverting funds that would otherwise have been spent on key projects. Groups such as the ACLU and the Sierra Club have also filed lawsuits and landowners along the southern border should also rise to the challenge.

In the same sense as the congressional Democrats, these lawsuits argue that what Trump does is simply unconstitutional and a unilateral gesture to bypass the legislature. Democrats could eventually join one of these lawsuits or file theirs.

Mr Pelosi and the leader of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, announced last Friday their intention to look into all possible ways to block this national emergency. "The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in Congress, before the courts and in front of the public, using all possible remedies," they said in a statement.

Pending the outcome of the Congress resolution, the courts could be next.

Interestingly, Democrats could potentially use a 2014 lawsuit that Republicans in the House have filed against the Obama administration as a useful precedent. The Republicans then argued that the Obama administration's attempt to pay subsidies to different health insurers under the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional because Congress had not allocated these funds. A district court judge said the concern allowed Republicans to sue.

House Democrats could take advantage of this logic to argue against the Trump administration this time around. For now, they are tackling the emergency using their legislative tools first.