16 states sue Trump administration
Sixteen states have sued US President Donald Trump to challenge his plan to invoke emergency powers to divert billions of dollars from Congress-approved projects to build a border wall along Mexico.
“Today, on Presidents’ Day, we take President Trump to court to block his misuse of presidential power...to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states ,” California attorney general Xavier Becerra said in a statement on Monday. “For most of us, the office of the presidency is not a place for theatre,” he added.
The lawsuit was filed in a district court in San Francisco, California. All but one of the 16 states are governed by Democrats and some of them had announced their intention to sue Trump within hours of his declaration of national emergency last Friday.
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Virginia are party to the complaint. All but Maryland have Democratic governors.
The Trump administration plans to raise nearly $8 billion to build 234 miles of a wall —or a physical barrier of steel slats — to prevent illegal immigration. $1.375 bn was allocated for it in a spending deal. The remaining $6.5 bn was to be diverted from Congress-approved appropriations of the defence department through the declaration of national emergency.
The first suit challenging the emergency was filed in a Washington DC court just hours after the declaration, by an NGO for south Texas landowners whose properties could be impacted by the wall. It asked that the emergency order be declared “in excess of presidential authority under Article II of the Constitution, an infringement on legislative authority, and invalid.”