US HOUSE FAILS TO OVERRIDE TRUMP VETO ON BORDER WALL EMERGENCY
WASHINGTON— The Democrat-controlled US House of Representatives failed to override President Donald Trump’s veto of an attempt to lift the national emergency he declared to build a border wall.
Congressmen voted 248-181 to overturn the veto, but fell 38 votes short of the required twothirds majority.
The Republican-led Senate, on the other hand, said it would not even attempt its own override and Trump’s veto would stand.
Legislative finale
Tuesday’s vote was the legislative finale of a showdown that had been building for months.
Trump had sought $5.7 billion for more walls along the US-Mexico border but Congress refused to allot the funds until the US federal government was forced to partially shut down for 35 days.
Trump later agreed to a stopgap measure and Congress tried to compromise but, in the end, the budget bill allotted only $1.4 billion for border security and none for border barriers.
On Feb. 25, Trump declared a national border emergency under a 1976 law that allowed him to shift allocations during dire situations.
He planned to shift an additional $3.6 billion from military construction projects to work on border barriers, a list of which the Pentagon submitted to Congress last week.
On March 14, both houses of Congress passed a measure stopping the national emergency after 12 Republican senators crossed party lines and voted with Democrats to block him.
On Tuesday, the same 12 Republicans plus two others voted with Democrats to override Trump’s veto but were defeated.
In a separate development, the Senate leadership also forced a vote on the so-called Green New Deal proposed by Democrat senators who are also seeking their party’s nomination for president.
Mueller report
The vote to override Trump’s veto was made after Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his final report on a 22-month probe on whether Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 elections.
The Mueller probe resulted in dozens of federal indictments and at least eight guilty pleas or convictions—none of which were directly linked to the 2016 elections.
On Monday, Attorney General William Barr released a summary concluding that there was no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia.