House Democrats Take First Step to Thwart Trump Emergency Decree

2/22/2019 – Bloomberg

(U.S. Air National Guard)

By Anna Edgerton and Billy House

Democrats in the U.S. House filed a resolution on Friday seeking to block President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration to build a wall on the southern U.S. border.

The Democratic-led House will consider a resolution to disapprove of the emergency declaration quickly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said, and it will be sent over to the Senate as a privileged resolution, which means it will have to get a vote on the Senate floor within 18 days of House passage.

The resolution is the opening salvo in the next phase of conflict between a Republican president and Democrats who capitalized on Trump’s unpopularity to take back the House last November. While Democrats have expressed the desire to get started on their policy agenda, they have also been eager to act as a check on Trump.

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House Democrats to File Resolution on Trump’s Border Emergency

2/21/2019 – Bloomberg

Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

By Billy House

Democrats in the U.S. House plan to file a resolution on Friday seeking to block President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration to build a wall on the southern U.S. border.

Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas outlined plans to introduce the measure in an email circulated to colleagues that was obtained Wednesday by Bloomberg News. The resolution has 92 co-sponsors in the Democratic-controlled House.

The resolution is likely to pass the House and may get enough Republican support to pass the GOP-led Senate. Trump has vowed to veto it.

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Border wall, bullet train: California vs. Trump escalates

2/20/2019 – The Washington Post

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Disputes over President Donald Trump’s border wall and California’s bullet train are intensifying the feud between the White House and the nation’s most populous state.

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it plans to cancel or claw back $3.5 billion in federal dollars allocated to California’s high-speed rail project, a move Gov. Gavin Newsom called “political retribution” for the state’s lawsuit against Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. California led a 16-state coalition in filing the suit Monday, challenging Trump’s power to declare an emergency to earn more money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It’s no coincidence that the Administration’s threat comes 24 hours after California led 16 states in challenging the President’s farcical ‘national emergency,’” Newsom said in a statement. “This is clear political retribution by President Trump, and we won’t sit idly by.”

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Beto’s call to remove part of the wall provokes Trump’s ire

2/20/2019 – Politico

Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images

EL PASO, Texas — The feud between President Donald Trump and Beto O’Rourke over immigration resumed at a distance Tuesday, driving the politics of a border wall further into the 2020 presidential campaign.

After O’Rourke said on MSNBC last week that he would “absolutely” remove an existing stretch of border wall from his hometown of El Paso, Trump told reporters in Washington on Tuesday that the statement marked “probably the end of his political career.”

The opposite of that assessment appeared to be true nearly 2,000 miles away in the border town of El Paso, where O’Rourke did not announce his run for president on Tuesday — but might as well have.

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Trump confident he will prevail against lawsuits over emergency declaration

2/20/2019 – Reuters

(REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez)

By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump expressed confidence on Tuesday that he would prevail against a lawsuit filed by 16 U.S. states seeking to block his declaration of a national emergency to fund a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

The group of states, including California and New York, has charged the president and top officials in his administration with taking away taxpayer funds for their communities to fulfill a promise from his 2016 campaign to curb illegal immigration and the flow of drugs.

Trump’s remarks to reporters in the Oval Office suggested he was not concerned or surprised by the states’ legal challenge.

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Mexico Closes Temporary Migrant Shelter Near US Border

2/19/2019 – The New York Times

By the Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — Officials in the northern Mexico border state of Coahuila say an empty assembly plant used to house about 1,600 Central American migrants during the past two weeks has closed.

Jose Borrego, a state spokesman, confirmed the closure of the Piedras Negras shelter Tuesday, a day earlier than scheduled. He said additional information would be made available later.

The shelter’s population had been steadily falling since last week as migrants who had obtained humanitarian visas were given bus rides to other cities where they could have a better chance of finding work.

The migrants arrived at the border hoping to request asylum in the United States, but Mexican authorities corralled them in the shelter and only about a dozen were allowed to request asylum each day.

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Trump criticizes California over lawsuit against border wall

2/19/2019 – The Washington Post

(Evan Vucci, File/Associated Press)

By the Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is criticizing California’s lead role in a multistate lawsuit challenging his emergency declaration to pay for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

On Twitter Tuesday, Trump noted last week’s decision by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to cancel a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Trump claims the “failed Fast Train project” was beset by “world record setting” cost overruns and had become “hundreds of times more expensive than the desperately needed Wall!”

Trump complained about the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco. He incorrectly identifies the plaintiffs as “16 cities.” California and 15 other states are parties to the suit filed Monday that alleges that Trump’s declaration is unconstitutional.

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