House Democrats on Tuesday failed to garner the votes needed to override Trump’s veto of a bill blocking his emergency border wall funding.
Only a handful of Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats on the 248-181 vote. That deprived the measure of the two-thirds majority needed to revoke Trump’s February emergency declaration that authorized him to move $3.6 billion in military funds to a southern border wall project.
The defeat, which was widely anticipated, kills the effort in Congress to block Trump’s wall funding grab, but numerous court challenges to the declaration are now pending and could ultimately stop the president.
Democrats accused the president of violating the Constitution, which provides Congress with the power to appropriate federal funds.
“The bottom line is that this emergency declaration is nothing more than an end run around a bipartisan majority of both the House and the Senate, in complete disregard of our Constitutional separation of powers,” Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the national emergency declaration “a lawless power grab” that both Republicans and Democrats oppose.
Both Republicans and Democrats said they opposed Trump moving funds lawmakers assigned to the military construction budget.
[Opinion: Trump issued his first veto. Watch out for his second]
Most Republicans, however, agreed with Trump’s reasoning that the surge in illegal immigration on the southern border constitutes a crisis that could be abated with new border wall construction. And most in the GOP believe the National Emergencies Act provided him with the power to shift that funding.
Republicans on Tuesday pointed to the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border every month, the influx of illegal drugs, and the increase in gang violence perpetuated by illegal immigrants as the legitimate rationale for Trump’s action.
“He’s very clearly laid out the case for the declaration of a national emergency,” Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., said. “There is a crisis at the border.”
Democrats argued the border wall is ineffective and that the surge on the border is a humanitarian crisis and not a national emergency requiring more physical barriers.
Illegal drugs, they argued, are smuggled by water or through other official ports of entry.
The Senate cleared a measure earlier last month terminating the national emergency after it passed the House. In both chambers, about a dozen Republicans voted with Democrats.
Trump quickly vetoed the measure, which was the first of his presidency.
The veto override measure will not be taken up in the Senate.
But Senate Republicans, who control the majority in the upper chamber, are working on legislation to rein in the act, written in 1976. Many lawmakers believe it cedes too much authority to the executive branch.
