THE WALL WINS: Trump’s Emergency Declaration STANDS

The U.S. House of Representatives has FAILED to overturn President Donald Trump’s declaration of an emergency to reprogram federal funds to finance the building of a border wall.

The building of the wall is already mandated by the Secure Fence Act of 2006.  Trump’s declaration of an emergency ONLY authorizes President Trump to repurpose federal funding to pay for the border wall according to the National Emergencies Act of 1976 (as later amended).  Using dishonest smear tactics, opponents of change have tried to suggest that a future president could use such powers to make purely legislative changes.   The declaration of emergency only activates certain powers already written into laws passed by Congress to redploy federal funds to meet the emergency.

Congress voted to terminate Trump’s declaration of an emergency with 12 pseudo-Republican U.S. Senators voting with the Democrats to keep the orders unsecured and open.

Note that the National Emergencies Act of 1976 gives either the President or Congress the power to “terminate” — not invalidate — a president’s declaration of an emergency.  That means that any actions taken before an emergency is terminated would remain valid.  The Congressional vote was to bring the emergency to a close, an end, not to over-turn actions taken during the course of a presidentially-declared emergency.

Under the amended version of the national Emergencies Act (following a U.S. Supreme Court decision in INS v. Chadha) Trump vetoed that resolution.

The U.S. House today tried to overturn Trump’s veto.   That would have required a 2/3rds vote, so that a minimum of 146 votes against the veto over-ride (in favor of Trump’s declaration of an emergency) were needed to sustain President Trump’s veto.

Republicans voted against overturning the veto by 181 in Trump’s favor to 14 traitors voting with the Democrats against border security.

ALL Democrats voted against building a border wall and against border security.  Those are votes which will be used in the 2020 election campaigns against those Democrats in districts that supported Donald Trump in 2016 and/or 2018.