“This is an end run around legislative authority. And I think a quite dangerous precedent.”
Colorado AG joins lawsuit challenging emergency declaration
Colorado is among 16 states suing to challenge the legality of President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California on Monday, seeks a preliminary injunction, The Washington Post reported.
State Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who won office last year on a promise to protect Colorado from federal overreach, told The Denver Post he joined the lawsuit for two reasons: He thinks Trump taking money for the wall after Congress refused to give it to him “hijacks the principle of separation of powers,” and it could cost the state millions of dollars.
That’s because some of the state’s military construction projects are likely to be scaled back or cut as the Trump administration moves money around to pay for his border wall, he said.
“Our military bases play a critical role in our nation’s readiness and are economic drivers in several communities,” Weiser said in a joint statement with Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. “In this action, we are fighting for Colorado’s interests and defending the rule of law.”
Trump announced his decision to invoke the National Emergencies Act and divert money for a border wall on Friday — one day after Congress sent him a border security deal that was several billion dollars below the $5.7 billion he wanted for border barriers.
The White House has said it plans to take $3.6 billion of the money needed from the Defense Department’s military construction budget, although the Pentagon
hasn’t said what specific projects would be affected. Weiser’s office thinks Colorado “could lose tens of millions in military construction dollars” for projects at Fort Carson and the Space Command that have dollars allocated already.
The other states suing: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Virginia.
The National Emergencies Act, which Congress passed in 1976, doesn’t define what is and isn’t a national emergency. But Weiser said he can’t think of another president who tried to take more money than was offered by Con- gress for a specific project.
“This is an end run around legislative authority,” he said. “And I think a quite dangerous precedent. It could undermine the basic premise that Congress gets to appropriate funds.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, past presidents have issued 27 emergency declarations that are still in effect and 21 that are not. The White House points to those declarations, most of which dealt with America’s interactions with foreign countries, as proof that the president is well within his powers, and Trump’s allies are using statistics about the amount of people and illegal drugs apprehended annually by border patrol as evidence of a national crisis.
“The bottom line is this: You cannot conceive of a nation without a strong, secure border,” senior White House adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News on Sunday. “It is fundamental and essential to the idea of sovereignty and national survival to have control over who enters and doesn’t enter the country.”