Yesterday’s House vote in favor of a resolution blocking President Trump’s unconstitutional, unpopular, and entirely fake national emergency was a sharp rebuke to Trump that sets up the resolution for Senate passage and amps up pressure on Senate Republicans to do the right thing.
As America’s Voice Deputy Director Pili Tobar noted yesterday, Senate Republicans must:
…decide whether to side with constitutional checks and balances or blind party loyalty to a weak and unhinged President Trump. As leading conservative voices are reminding us, there remains zero justification for Trump’s decision to override the explicit wishes of Congress and issue the emergency declaration. The only real emergencies along the border are those inflicted by this administration, such as the ongoing trauma of their family separation policy and the hundreds of children who remain separated from their parents months after the courts ordered the administration to terminate the policy.
It’s time for the Senate to join the House and pass the resolution blocking President Trump’s power grab and to get back to real work – not political theatre designed to assuage Trump’s fragile ego and presidency.
Today, Politico reports that Senate Republicans are indeed feeling the pressure and had a contentious lunch yesterday with Vice President Mike Pence that featured open disagreement about Trump’s declaration and whether to support the resolution:
Vice President Mike Pence faced a wall of resistance from Senate Republicans on Tuesday as he tried to sell President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration on the southern border, according to multiple GOP sources. The pointed reception at the GOP lunch raised further doubts among Senate Republicans that the administration will be able to hold down defections on a crucial vote to block the president in the coming weeks.
…As many as 10 Senate Republicans could support a resolution of disapproval if a vote were held today, according to four GOP senators who attended the lunch and heard Republican senators’ complaints. That’s far more than the four needed to pass the legislation on a simple majority and force Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency.
And a blistering USA Today editorial blasts the vast majority of House Republicans who voted against yesterday’s resolution and in the process delivers a strong message to the Senate. The editorial states:
In siding with Trump in Tuesday, after mounting such a stink about Obama, House Republicans have, in what can only be called pathetic fashion, violated their oaths to the Constitution and failed to stand up for Congress as a co-equal branch of government.
