Tag: Trump vanity project

Former senior national security officials issue declaration on national emergency

President Trump on Feb. 22 said he would veto a House-introduced resolution to block his national emergency declaration. (Photo: Oliver Contreras/The Washington Post)

A bipartisan group of 58 former senior national security officials issued a statement Monday saying that “there is no factual basis” for President Trump’s proclamation of a national emergency to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The joint statement, whose signatories include former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former defense secretary Chuck Hagel, comes a day before the House is expected to vote on a resolution to block Trump’s Feb. 15 declaration.

The former officials’ statement, which will be entered into the Congressional Record, is intended to support lawsuits and other actions challenging the national emergency proclamation and to force the administration to set forth the legal and factual basis for it.

View the complete February 25 article by Ellen Nakashima on The Washington Post website here.

Rep. Phillips Co-Sponsors Privileged Resolution to Terminate Pres. Trump’s Emergency Declaration

WASHINGTON, DC – Rep. Dean Phillips (MN-03) today announced that he has co-sponsored Rep. Joaquin Castro’s privileged resolution to end President Trump’s emergency declaration.

“The president’s emergency declaration is an end run around both chambers of Congress, the ideals of both parties and the Constitution itself,” said Phillips. “It is not up for debate: the power to appropriate funding sits with Congress. The President has overstepped the bounds of his office, and his unilateral approach to governing needs to stop. Both parties should be working hard to pull the plug on this dangerous precedent.” 

Today, nearly two dozen former Republican members of Congress wrote a joint letter urging Republicans to vote for the resolution. Continue reading “Rep. Phillips Co-Sponsors Privileged Resolution to Terminate Pres. Trump’s Emergency Declaration”

Using Old Video, Trump Claims ‘Wall Is Under Construction Right Now’

The video is footage of a repair procedure from Sept. 18, 2018. And it isn’t “the wall.”

Trump is pretending that video of a fence being repaired from 5 months ago is evidence of his “wall” being built right now. The lie is the latest humiliation for Trump, who has been repeatedly denied the ability to waste billions in tax dollars on the racist vanity project.

Trump posted video of the fence repair with the caption, “We have just built this powerful Wall in New Mexico. Completed on January 30, 2019 – 47 days ahead of schedule! Many miles more now under construction!”

In a subsequent, lying, all-caps tweet he added, “THE WALL IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION RIGHT NOW!”

View the complete February 22 article by Oliver Willis of the American Independent on the National Memo website here.

Dems introduce resolution to overturn Trump’s emergency to build wall

Democrats in the House introduced a resolution on Friday that would block President Trump‘s emergency declaration on the southern border, a step he took to free up as much as $8 billion in funding to build his proposed border wall.

The resolution sponsored by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) had 222 co-sponsors.

The measure is expected to pass the Democratic-held House but will need to win GOP support to get through the Senate.

View the complete February 22 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.

Dems face challenges to beating Trump in court

The Democratic states fighting President Trump’s emergency declaration face a rough road as they try to convince the courts that his order was unlawful.

But experts say the lawsuit won’t be a slam dunk for the president either.

“This is a hard case,” said Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. “It’s going to be a hard case for California to win and a hard case for Trump to defend.”

California is leading the coalition of 16 states suing Trump over an emergency declaration they argue was manufactured by a president who didn’t get what he wanted from Congress.

View the complete February 21 article by Lydia Wheeler on The Hill website here.

16 states sue Trump over his border wall national emergency

A coalition of 16 Democratic attorneys general, led by Xavier Becerra in California, filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s move last week to invoke emergency powers to access more money to build wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Details: The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California — whose judges have ruled against other Trump administration policies in the past — said that Trump does not have the power to circumvent Congress and divert funds for the construction of the wall. It said the legislative branch controls government spending and that Trump’s move is unconstitutional.

View the February 18 article by Khorri Atkinson on the Axios website here.

How President Trump came to declare a national emergency to fund his border wall

President Trump knew that lawmakers were unlikely to ever give him the billions of dollars he wanted to build a wall on the southern border, so in early 2018, he gave aides a directive: Find a way to do it without Congress.

It was hardly an easy assignment. The White House had some flexibility to spend money the way it wanted, but could not move the necessary billions at will. Trump could declare a national emergency, but White House attorneys repeatedly warned him the risk of failure in court was high.

On Friday, Trump did it anyway. Stepping to a microphone in the Rose Garden, the president told reporters he was invoking his powers to declare a national emergency, then acknowledged what his lawyers had been warning him: He will get sued and, at least initially, will probably lose.

View the complete February 15 article by Matt Zapotosky and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s wall words will be used against him

Protesters erect a cardboard wall in front of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in 2016. Credit: Bill Clark, CQ Roll Call file photo

President may have undercut his own argument that the border emergency is, well, an emergency

If there were a hall of fame of legal self-owns, there would be a spot of honor for a line Friday from President Donald Trump as he announced that he would declare a national emergency to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

To do so, Trump plans in part to use the National Emergency Act of 1976, but he undercut his argument that it was an emergency at all.

“I didn’t need to do this,” Trump said from the Rose Garden, “but I’d rather do it much faster.”

View the complete February 15 article by Todd Ruger on The Roll Call website here.

Trump wings it in feisty, combative Rose Garden emergency announcement

President Donald Trump speaks in the White House Rose Garden on Friday. Trump said he would declare a national emergency to free up federal funding to build a wall along the southern border. Credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

POTUS berates reporters, slams Dems as policy event morphs into campaign rally

ANALYSIS  — A testy and combative President Donald Trump winged it Friday in the Rose Garden, turning an often-rambling defense of his border security emergency into a 2020 assault on Democrats.

Trump has redefined the presidency around his unique style and penchant for unpredictable and unprecedented moves, as well as the sharp rhetoric he uses both at the White House and his rowdy campaign rallies. But there was something different during Trump’s remarks Friday, with the president leading off his remarks by talking about anything but the compromise funding measure and border security actions he signed later that day.

He lauded his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and touted their second denuclearization summit later this month, even talking up that country’s economic potential. On Chinese President Xi Jinping, again, Trump talked about their rosy relationship and predicted: “We’re a lot closer in this country than we ever were with having a real trade deal” with Beijing — yet he struggled to note specific things that might be in the potential deal.

View the complete February 15 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.