GOP senators wavering

Trump warns GOP senators wavering on emergency declaration

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

President Donald Trump issued a warning Monday to GOP senators considering voting to block his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, suggesting that those who do have fallen into a “trap” set by Democrats.

“I hope our great Republican Senators don’t get led down the path of weak and ineffective Border Security,” he wrote on Twitter. “Without strong Borders, we don’t have a Country - and the voters are on board with us. Be strong and smart, don’t fall into the Democrats “trap” of Open Borders and Crime!”

The House is set to vote on Tuesday on a resolution of disapproval that would block the president's national emergency declaration. The measure is expected to easily pass the House before heading to the Senate, which will be forced to vote on the measure.

Though Republicans have a slight majority in the Senate, the resolution requires only a simple majority to pass, meaning only a small handful of GOP votes would be needed to join with Democrats in order to send the measure to the president's desk. Trump would be almost sure to veto the resolution if it were to pass both houses of Congress, all but killing it, since the measure would not likely have sufficient support to override that veto.

While Republicans have been nearly unanimous in their support for Trump’s border wall, they have expressed concerns about the tactic of issuing an emergency declaration to advance a political goal, arguing that it would set a precedent that the GOP would come to rue under a Democratic president.

Some of Trump’s own national security officials have declined to label the situation at the southern border an emergency, and the declaration has already been challenged in court by advocacy groups and state attorneys general.

There has also been opposition to the president’s bypassing Congress — which has the constitutional authority to appropriate funds — in order to redirect Pentagon funding to his wall.

Over the weekend, groups of former national security officials and former GOP members of Congress urged lawmakers to pass the resolution blocking his national emergency.

While Trump appeared to claim Monday that “voters are on board with us,” recent polling shows that there is bipartisan resistance to his invocation of emergency powers to build his border wall.

And though he appeared confident Republicans would side with him on the vote, last week he said he was completely prepared to veto the resolution, and predicted his declaration would survive a veto.

“We have too many smart people that want border security so I can't imagine it will survive a veto,” he told reporters Friday.