WASHINGTON, D.C. (NBC) – With the threat of a government shutdown over, Washington is now bracing for a new battle over President Trump’s national emergency declaration.
The president signed the order Friday to reallocate billions of dollars for his border wall. The move is already facing criticism and promises of legal challenges.
The president says he is not doing this for political reasons. Democrats call it a fake national emergency. And all of this will likely be tied up in courts for months to come.
In an off-script news conference stretching nearly an hour, President Trump announced his national emergency declaration to funnel money toward his border wall. “It’s an invasion!” he said. “We have an invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country.”
President Trump called it a crisis while at the same time undercutting the urgency. “I could do the wall over a longer period of time,” he said. “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”
The president signed an executive order certain to face immediate legal challenges. “We will possibly get a bad ruling. And we’ll get another bad ruling. And then we’ll wind up in the Supreme Court and hopefully, we’ll get a fair shake.”
Friday, the top two Democrats in Congress called the move a “power grab,” vowing to use “every remedy available” to fight it.
The plan would allocate $8 billion for the wall in addition to the nearly $1.4 billion from Congress. The president is moving $3.5 billion from the military construction budget, another 42.5 billion from the Pentagon’s drug-fighting program, and $600 million from the country’s drug forfeiture fund.
Redirecting taxpayer dollars to fund a wall he promised Mexico would pay for is a move upsetting some – in his own party Republican Senator from Maine, Susan Collins, stated, “I do not want any president, regardless of who that president is, to circumvent the process that we have in Congress.”
Around the country, several state attorney generals are already threatening legal action.
House Democrats are preparing to pass a resolution to disapprove this emergency declaration. But once it goes to the Senate it will likely pit Republicans against each other as members are split on the issue.
If tied up in legal challenges, it’s possible the president won’t even see that money until well into 2020.
© 2024 KOBI-TV NBC5. All rights reserved unless otherwise stated.