Trump declares emergency over wall
Critics call it a power grab, end run around Congress
— President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the border Friday to access billions of dollars for building a wall that Congress refused to give him, transforming a highly charged policy dispute into a fundamental confrontation over separation of powers.
In a televised announcement in the Rose Garden, Trump said he would sign the declaration to protect the country from the flow of drugs, criminals and unauthorized migrants coming across the border from Mexico, which he characterized as a profound threat to national security.
“We’re going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border, and we’re going to do it one way or the other,” he said. “It’s an invasion,” he added. “We have an invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country.”
But as he sought to deny that he was taking action because he could not persuade Congress to give him the money, he may have undercut his own argument that the border situation required urgent unilateral action. “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it faster,” he said. “I want to get it done faster, that’s all.”
The border emergency declaration, which Trump signed later in the day, enables him to divert $3.6 billion budgeted for military construction projects to the border wall, White House officials said. Trump will also use more traditional presidential budgetary discretion to tap $2.5 billion from counternarcotics programs and $600 million from a Treasury Department asset forfeiture fund.
Combined with the $1.375 billion authorized for fencing in a spending package passed by Congress on Thursday night, Trump would then have about $8 billion in all to advance construction of new barriers and repairs or
replacement of existing barriers along the border this year, significantly more than the $5.7 billion he initially said he wanted.
White House officials want to rush to approve projects and reallocate money as quickly as possible, but no timeline has been given.
Part of their strategy is to try to use eminent domain to seize private property along the border, particularly in Texas, where they want to install parts of the barrier. That is expected to open another round of legal challenges from private landowners.
The president’s decision, previewed Thursday, incited instant condemnation from Democrats and some Republicans, who called it an unconstitutional abuse of his authority.
“This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed president, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York said in a joint statement.
The two vowed to try to overturn the decision, appealing to Republicans to join them. “The president is not above the law,” they said. “The Congress cannot let the president shred the Constitution.”
House Democrats plan to introduce legislation to block the president’s move, which could pass in both houses if it wins the votes of the half-dozen Republican senators who had criticized the planned declaration. That would put the president in the position of issuing the first veto of his presidency.
ACLU VOWS TO SUE
In addition to a legislative effort to stop Trump, the issue will almost certainly be taken to court.
Within hours of Trump’s statement, the American Civil Liberties Union announced that it would file suit challenging his emergency powers declaration.
“By the president’s very own admission in the Rose Garden, there is no national emergency. He just grew impatient and frustrated with Congress, and decided to move along his promise for a border wall ‘faster,’” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. Some Democratic state attorneys general have also threatened to go to court over the decision.
Legal experts have said the administration can make serious arguments to justify its move, but added that courts may decide that it is stretching the intent of the law. The Supreme Court in recent years has reined in Republican and Democratic presidents who were judged to be exceeding their authority.
Presidents have declared national emergencies under a 1970s-era law about five dozen times, and 31 of those emergencies remain active, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. But most of them dealt with foreign
and involved freezing property, blocking trade or exports, or taking other actions against national adversaries, not redirecting money without explicit congressional authorization.
White House officials cited only two times that such emergency declarations were used by presidents to spend money without legislative approval — once by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War and again by his son President George W. Bush in 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S..
In both of those cases, the presidents were responding to new events — the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and al-Qaida’s assault on America — and were moving military money around to use for military purposes. Neither was taking action specifically rejected by Congress.
The spending package that was passed by Congress on Thursday after a two-month showdown with the president included $1.375 billion for about 55 miles of border fencing, far short of the $5.7 billion Trump demanded for 234 miles of steel wall. Trump agreed to sign the package into law anyway to avoid a second government shutdown after the impasse over border wall funding closed the doors of many federal agencies for 35 days and left 800,000 workers without pay.
White House officials said Trump signed that spending package later Friday.
PRECEDENT CONCERNS
For weeks, Republicans led by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, urged Trump not to declare a national emergency, but this week he privately told the president he would support the move despite his own reservations. McConnell warned Trump that he had about two weeks to win over critical Republicans to avoid having Congress vote to reject the declaration.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who faces re-election next year, suggested that it would be hypocritical for Republicans to support an emergency declaration after criticizing former President Barack Obama for “executive overreach” and suggested that future Democratic presidents might follow Trump’s precedent.
Tillis described a future “President Bernie Sanders declaring a national emergencrises cy to implement the radical Green New Deal” or a “President Elizabeth Warren declaring a national emergency to shut down banks and take over the nation’s financial institutions.”
“I don’t believe in situational principles,” he said.
Other Republicans lodged an even more straightforward objection: Declaring a national emergency might prompt Trump to shift funds from other desperately needed projects.
Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, warned against tapping Defense Department and military construction accounts to build the wall.
“Doing so would have detrimental consequences for our troops,” he said in a Thursday statement. “And it would undercut one of the most significant accomplishments of the last two years — beginning to repair and rebuild our military. I hope that the president will pursue other options.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Thursday that he did not consider an emergency declaration to be “a practical solution” for Trump because litigation could keep any potential wall funding on hold for months or years while the lawsuits resolve themselves.
“I thought there were other, better alternatives,” he said.
White House officials rejected critics who said Trump was creating a precedent that future presidents could use to ignore the will of Congress.
“It actually creates zero precedent,” Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told reporters Friday morning. “This is authority given to the president in law already. It’s not as if he didn’t get what he wanted and waved a magic wand to get some money.”
Information for this article was contributed by Peter Baker of The New York Times; by Damian Paletta, Mike DeBonis, John Wagner, Josh Dawsey, Erica Werner, Seung Min Kim and Rachael Bade of The Washington Post; and by Jonathan Lemire, Colleen Long, Alan Fram, Catherine Lucey, Jill Colvin, Zeke Miller, Darlene Superville, Deb Riechmann, Andrew Taylor and Lisa Mascaro of The Associated Press.