House Democrats are nervously scrambling to stop President Donald Trump’s national emergency announcement — but Trump can put an immediate halt to it all with one simple word.
Veto.
It’d be the first-ever veto by the president. It’s bad news for the Democrats.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is leading the charge to stop the border wall construction, in tow with House Democrats, to draft a resolution with the goal of blocking Trump’s national emergency.
Billions of dollars for the U.S. southern border wall hang in the balance over the resolution that Democrats are drawing up Thursday. The legislation will be aimed at establishing a vote on the matter. Given that Democrats control the House, it should breeze by. But the measure arriving in the Republican-controlled Senate will be a different story. There’s never been an effort to block a national emergency declaration; lawmakers are waiting with baited breath to see how the procedure unfolds.
A few key Republicans in the Senate will be put to the test. Of the few among many GOP members who’ve said they may oppose when the vote is scheduled — Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
Paul’s defiance is no surprise here: He’s never been shy to butt heads with the president.
But of all the potential defections, Sen. Murkowski has been the loudest, sharpest critic of the national emergency.
“I’ll be very direct. I don’t like this. I don’t like this…I think it takes us down a road and with a precedent if it’s allowed, that we may come to regret,” Murkowski said, reported by the Associated Press.
It’s a dangerous game for these select GOP members. If they break with Trump on the border issue, it may put their popularity with Republican voters in danger.
Meanwhile, this isn’t necessarily the worst thing for Trump. In a worse-case scenario, if the legislation passes through the House and Senate, it’d need two-thirds majorities in both chambers to override the veto — something that’s highly unlikely.
No matter how far the Democrats get, Trump will be waiting from the Oval Office with his ace card.
A simple veto.
—The Horn editorial team