National emergency sets another fight

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By BRIAN BENNETT and W.J. HENNIGAN 1:29 PM EST

Congress gave President Donald Trump funding to build just 55 miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but he believes he’s found a way to stretch it into 234 miles.

In a rambling, 50-minute speech Friday in the White House Rose Garden, Trump declared a national emergency — a move that may allow him to access billions in federal funding without receiving Congressional approval.

... If the President’s decision stands, future presidents of both parties will be able to invoke a national emergency to avoid Congress’s primary constitutional check on unilateral executive action: the power of the purse ...

... top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, decried Trump’s decision as “unlawful,” and described it as an unprecedented use of presidential authority. Past U.S. presidents have declared national emergencies to address wars or foreign crises, not to redirect federal funds after being stymied by Congress ...

http://time.com/5530606/donald-trump-national-emergency-legal-fight/

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1. Democrats vow to fight

By John Wagner, Josh Dawsey and Damian Paletta
February 15 at 1:38 PM

... Trump is seeking to secure about $6.5 billion more in funding through executive action than Congress approved in a bill passed Thursday to avert another partial government shutdown. In a Rose Garden news conference, Trump did not mention of signing the bill, but his acting chief of staff told reporters he intends to do so.

Many of Trump’s Republican allies have called a national emergency ill-advised, and Democrats immediately called the move unconstitutional and vowed to fight it legislatively or in court. Trump also faced criticism for seeking to divert money from military construction and drug interdiction programs to pay for the border barriers.

The emergency declaration is expected to face an array of other legal challenges ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-border-emergency-the-president-plans-a-10-am-announcement-in-the-rose-garden/2019/02/15/f0310e62-3110-11e9-86ab-5d02109aeb01_story.html?utm_term=.5d9714fb5e36

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2. National emergency would shred Constitution

... “We are mobilizing nonviolent rapid-response events to stand up against Trump’s #FakeNationalEmergency to defend our democracy and immigrant, Muslim, black, and brown communities from Trump’s dangerous national emergency power grab,” MoveOn said ...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/feb/15/trump-national-emergency-news-live-latest-updates-border-wall-mexico-us-politics-today

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. I need a national emergency declared

Congress hasn't procured funds to replace the failing tire on my tractor. The cracks in the sidewall have gotten pretty bad over the last few years and I'm afraid it won't hold many more years. There should be a national emergency declared so I can get funding to replace that tire in the next 5 - 10 years.

Thank you all for your tax donations.

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4. Declares national emergency to bipartisan skepticism

By Jeremy Diamond, Priscilla Alvarez and Kevin Liptak, CNN
Updated 12:39 PM ET, Fri February 15, 2019

... According to federal data, Customs and Border Protection apprehended nearly 400,000 people along the Southwest border in fiscal year 2018, an increase from 2017 but a decrease from 2016. Many of those apprehended were claiming asylum.

Trump on Friday reiterated his claims of an "invasion" of drugs and undocumented immigrants at the southern border, but offered little factual or statistical evidence to back up his claim that a national emergency exists ...

But at the same time, the President undercut his case about the existence of a national emergency and the urgency of building new barriers on the US-Mexico border.

"I didn't need to do this," Trump said. "But I'd rather do it much faster" ...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/15/politics/donald-trump-border-national-emergency-immigration/index.html

[Squinch]

5. Let us also NEVER let it be forgotten that ALL of this is over NOTHING!

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6. Bizarre, Rambling Announcement

DAVID A. GRAHAM
12:22 PM ET

... It was one of the least coherent appearances Trump has made in a presidency noted for its incoherence. Yet the circus in the Rose Garden threatened to distract from a major policy announcement.

During a briefing Friday morning, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said that Trump would take $600 million from a Treasury Department forfeiture fund, $2.5 billion from a Defense Department counter-drug fund, and another $3.6 billion from Pentagon military-construction money. Only the construction funds require an emergency declaration. Trump will not take money from disaster-relief funds, an idea that had been discussed.

The move is sure to draw legal challenges, and might not take effect exactly as Trump described. But the fact remains that the president has declared a national emergency in order to save face with anti-immigration members of the conservative media and his base, having been roundly defeated in a joust with Congress over funding. In essence, the president has created a new crisis to get himself out of a previous crisis—which he also created. And the timing of Trump’s announcement, after months of equivocating and congressional debate, hardly supports the idea of an acute crisis ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/trump-emergency-declaration/582904/

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7. Newsom says California plans to sue

BY SOPHIA BOLLAG
FEBRUARY 15, 2019 10:32 AM,
UPDATED 57 MINUTES AGO

... “President Trump is manufacturing a crisis and declaring a made-up ‘national emergency’ in order to seize power and subvert the constitution,” Newsom said in a statement Friday following the president’s announcement earlier that morning. “Our message back to the White House is simple and clear: California will see you in court” ...

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article226333740.html

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8. Ocasio-Cortez, Joaquin Castro plan bill to block emergency declaration

By Emma Kinery and Shira Stein

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she will introduce a bill with fellow Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro to stop President Donald Trump’s planned emergency declaration ...

“If President Trump declares a national emergency to fund his border wall, I’m prepared to introduce a resolution to terminate the President’s emergency declaration,” Castro of Texas said in a statement Thursday. The National Emergencies Act gives Congress the authority to do so by enacting a joint resolution, according to Castro ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-15/ocasio-cortez-plans-bill-to-block-trump-s-emergency-declaration

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9. Want to Challenge 'Emergency'? Get in Line

By Kartikay Mehrotra and Andrew M Harris
February 15, 2019, 4:00 AM EST
Updated on February 15, 2019, 3:53 PM EST

... all that stands between President Donald Trump and the money he wants to pay for his promised border wall is the American judiciary. And the Constitution. And the attorneys general of California, Nevada, New Mexico and New York. And a vast array of land owners and local governments.

Oh, and Congress ...

“It’s hard to imagine a more clearly illegal action by the president than this,” Berger said. “He asked for the funds and didn’t get them” ...

Central to the arguments against the emergency declaration will be the separation-of-powers doctrine that affords Congress the right to allocate or not allocate money for certain discretionary programs ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-15/want-to-challenge-trump-s-border-emergency-get-in-line

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10. Several lawsuits planned

Alan Gomez and Christal Hayes, USA TODAY
Published 3:35 p.m. ET Feb. 15, 2019 | Updated 6:35 p.m. ET Feb. 15, 2019

... Within hours, the American Civil Liberties Union, the state of California and a number of political groups announced plans to file lawsuits challenging Trump, something the president said he was prepared for. Trump said he expects the legal battle to make its way through the courts and end up at the Supreme Court, where he said he hopes his administration will get a "fair shake."

The ACLU said on Friday that it planned to file a lawsuit early next week challenging Trump's use of his executive powers to go around Congress. The organization, which has challenged the Trump administration on many legal fronts over the last two years, argued Trump's order violates the Consitution.

The organization said no other president has attempted to use emergency powers to fund a project and pointed to remarks Trump made from the White House in announcing the order, where he said of his emergency declaration: "I didn't need to do this. But I'd rather do it much faster" ...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/15/donald-trump-national-emergency-border-wall-lawsuits/2882729002/

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11. Already sued

Rafi Schwartz
Today 3:29pm

... In a statement issued Friday afternoon, the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington announced it had filed a motion against the Department of Justice demanding its Office of Legal Counsel “provide documents concerning the legal authority of the president to invoke emergency powers to declare a national emergency to build a wall along America’s southern border.”

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, does not specifically demand that the national emergency declaration be rescinded. Rather, it accuses the DOJ of failing to comply with a lawful request to see just how the OLC claims Trump has the authority to issue the declaration in the first place ...

https://splinternews.com/trump-has-already-been-sued-over-the-national-emergency-1832658479