TRUMP PREDICTS LEGAL BATTLES OVER WALL ORDER.
ACLU sues over invocation of ‘emergency’
WASHINGTON • Let the lawsuits begin.
President Donald Trump declared a national emergency along the southern border Friday and predicted his administration would end up defending it all the way to the Supreme Court.
The American Civil Liberties Union announced its intention to sue less than an hour after the White House released the text of Trump’s declaration that the “current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several Democratic state attorneys general already have said they might go to court.
In a press conference in the Rose Garden, Trump framed his move as an effort to block illegal migration, which he insisted brings a steady flow of drugs, violence and crime.
“It’s been signed many times before. It’s been signed by other presidents,” Trump said. “They signed it for far less important things, in some cases — in many cases. We’re talking about an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers, with all types of criminals and gangs.”
The move had congressional Democrats on a war footing.
“The president’s unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist does great violence to our constitution and makes America less safe, stealing from urgently needed defence funds for the security of our military and our nation,” Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
“The president is not above the law. The Congress cannot let the president shred the constitution.”
The coming legal fight seems likely to hinge on two main issues: Can the president declare a national emergency to build a border wall in the face of Congress’s refusal to give him all the money he wanted and, under the federal law Trump invoked in his declaration, can the Defence Department take money from some congressionally approved military construction projects to pay for wall construction?
The broad grant of discretion to the president could make it hard to persuade courts to rule that Trump exceeded his authority in declaring a border emergency. “He’s the one who gets to make the call. We can’t second-guess it,” said John Eastman, a professor of constitutional law at the Chapman University School of Law.
But other legal experts said the facts are powerfully arrayed against the president. They include government statistics showing a decades-long decline in illegal border crossings as well as Trump’s rejection of a border deal last year.