Newsom to Trump: ‘See you in court’
California gears up to sue over national emergency
SACRAMENTO — California is preparing to sue over President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency along the southern border, on the grounds that diverting money to build a wall would harm the state’s efforts to fight drug trafficking.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said at a news conference Friday that they expect to join several other states in challenging Trump’s action and that a lawsuit will be filed soon. Newsom dismissed the president’s emergency declaration as “political theater” to satisfy a campaign promise.
“He’s been embarrassed, and his base needs to be fed,” Newsom said. “Donald Trump, we’ll see you in court.”
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden earlier in the day, Trump argued that a surge of immigrants and drugs flowing across the U.S.Mexico border constituted a national emergency, which would allow him to draw on money to
pay for construction of the wall without obtaining congressional approval.
His acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said Trump would move roughly $6.6 billion from administration accounts to supplement the $1.375 billion that Congress approved in a government funding deal the president signed Friday.
Of the total funds, $2.5 billion will come from the Defense Department’s counterdrug operations and roughly $3.6 billion will come from military construction. Some $600 million will come from a Treasury Department forfeiture fund — a pot of money and assets that the government has seized in criminal investigations.
The military construction money consists of funding for “lower-priority” projects, according to White House officials, such as facility repairs and replacements that can wait a year or two. Trump said it “didn’t sound too important to me.”
“We had certain funds that are being used at the discretion of generals, at the discretion of the military, some of them haven’t been allocated yet, and some of the generals think that this (border wall) is more important,” Trump said.
California officials are still reviewing the exact effects of the emergency declaration, but Newsom said the funding diversions would hurt California more than any other state because of its sheer size.
He said Trump had pulled the rug out from under state and local law-enforcement agencies and put at risk antidrug-trafficking operations planned in cooperation with the federal government, “for a vanity project, for a monument to stupidity.”
“He is arguing to make the drug problem in America worse by this action, not better,” Newsom said.
Becerra suggested that California may argue in its lawsuit that Trump is violating the separation of powers by declaring a national emergency to get around Congress’ role in appropriating taxpayer funds. He pointed repeatedly to a comment Trump made in the Rose Garden: “I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.”
Becerra said, “This is not 9/11. This is not the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. This is a president showing his disdain for the rule of law and our U.S. Constitution.
“When the president himself says that this is not a real national emergency, that he didn’t have to do this, he’s our best witness in why he is acting outside the bounds of the law,” the attorney general said.
Several Democratic state attorneys general, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also announced plans to file lawsuits over the emergency declaration.
Congressional Democrats were also talking about possible legal action. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., issued a statement calling Trump’s move “a power grab by a disappointed president” that makes the nation “less safe.”
“The president’s actions clearly violate the Congress’ exclusive power of the purse, which our founders enshrined in the Constitution,” the Democrats said. “The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the courts, and in the public, using every remedy available.”
Legal challenges over the emergency declaration are expected to eventually come before the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has generally been deferential to Trump’s use of his executive authority. Becerra acknowledged that Trump may want a court fight because he believes “he can use that Supreme Court to get his will done.”
One area that the White House did spare in its search for wall funding was a San Francisco Bay restoration project and California floodcontrol efforts. The Chronicle obtained a document in January showing that the White House was looking at nearly $2.5 billion allocated for California projects overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers as a possible source of money.
The projects included $177 million for building up levees and converting 3,000 acres of former salt ponds in the South Bay back into marshlands, as well as nearly $1.6 billion for flood control on the American River in the Sacramento area.
Disaster recovery efforts in Puerto Rico were also examined as options.
The ideas drew swift condemnation from Democrats, and some Republicans also spoke out against the reallocation of disaster-related funds.
In an interview with The Chronicle on Thursday, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, a close ally of Trump, said there were “other places” the president could get money for his wall. McCarthy added that’s something he was willing to communicate directly to Trump “very often.”
Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Alexei.Koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff. Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent Email: tal.kopan@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan