Thom Tillis says he will vote against the national Trump emergency

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Tillis wrote that, while promoting security at the border, he feared that the President had spread too much with the declaration of national emergency.

"As a US Senator, I can not justify giving the executive more ways to bypass Congress," he wrote. "As a Conservative, I can not subscribe to a precedent that I know future left-wing presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms."

Senator Susan Collins of Maine also announced her intention to vote against the national emergency, while other Republicans voiced their concerns last week. Only four Senate Republicans must vote for the resolution condemning the urgency for it to be passed, which could lead Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency.
The House is scheduled to vote on the resolution on Tuesday, which should be passed by the Democrat-controlled chamber. The measure would prevent the president from accessing funds to build a wall on the southern border.
Trump promised to veto the resolution. To override that, two-thirds of both houses of Congress should vote in favor of the resolution after Trump vetoed it.

Tillis argued that the vote on the resolution should not be a matter of support for the president and border security. Instead, he said, it's a matter of separation of powers, and he warned Republicans not to "look away" because the same tactic could be used by a democratic president in the future.

He likened his opposition to the national emergency to his opposition to the executive action of President Barack Obama creating the Deferred Action program for child arrivals.

"There is no intellectual honesty in turning around and asserting that there is an imaginary asterisk associated with the excessive dominance of executive power – that it is acceptable for my party but not for your party, "wrote Tillis.

The national emergency also faces legal challenges after 16 states filed lawsuits to block it last week.
Opposition to the national crisis was also expressed Monday in a letter signed by a bipartisan group of former national security officials.

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