Trump’s wall emergency is seeing pushback from Trump’s own party.
GOP Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina wrote Monday that he will support a resolution to block Trump’s national emergency declaration that would see him procure funding to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
“I would vote in favor of the resolution disapproving of the president’s national-emergency declaration, if and when it comes before the Senate,” Tillis wrote in the Washington Post. Tillis’ announcement came a day before the House votes on a resolution to block Trump’s declaration. With Democrats firmly in control of the house after midterm elections, the resolution is expected to pass with little meaningful resistance.
Tillis added that his Republican peers would lack :”intellectual honesty” for supporting Trump’s executive action over the U.S. border with Mexico while chiding Obama for executive action taken during his two terms in office. “[Republicans] should be thinking about whether they would accept the prospect of a President Bernie Sanders declaring a national emergency to implement parts of the radical Green New Deal; a President Elizabeth Warren declaring a national emergency to shut down banks and take over the nation’s financial institutions; or a President Cory Booker declaring a national emergency to restrict Second Amendment rights,” Tillis said.
While Tillis reiterated his support for Trump on border security more generally, he disagreed with the President decision to blur the separation of power between the executive and the legislative branches.
“As a U.S. senator, I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress,” Tillis said. “As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know future left-wing presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms.”
With Tillis’ vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, things could get dicey for Trump’s wall. In the event all 47 Democrats vote against the national emergency, they would need to enlist four Republican senators to pass the resolution, a simple majority. With the likes of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski and Maine Senator Susan Collins expected to vote yes, and with Tillis and Collins up for re-election in 2020 in races Democrats feel they can win, the magic number may be one.
Murkowski told an Alaskan TV station that she would likely support the resolution. “If it’s what I have seen right now, I will support the resolution to disapprove,” she said.
Trump has said he will veto the resolution if it makes it to his desk.