Republicans Pressure Trump to Rescind National Emergency Declaration

His summit with Kim Jong-Un collapsed, he's taking heat for giving Kim a pass on the murder of American college student Otto Warmbier by Kim's thugs, Michael Cohen's testimony has dominated the news cycles, two of his children will be summoned for questioning before congressional committees and now Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer,  is facing a possible revolt of Senate Republicans against his fake national emergency declaration aimed solely at pleasing the worse knuckle dragging, racist elements of his base.  If it were anyone other than Trump, I might feel a very tiny ounce of sympathy, but since its Trump, the foulest individual to every occupy the White House, instead, it's almost reason enough for some champagne.  A piece in Politico looks at Senate Republican efforts to convince Trump to rescind his ridiculous declaration which could set a precedent that would allow future Democrat presidents to use similar ploys.  Here are excerpts:

Senate Republicans are offering a choice to President Donald Trump: Withdraw your national emergency declaration at the border or face a potential rebellion from the GOP.

The message was delivered clearly on Thursday by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), part of an effort by senior Republicans to avoid a direct confrontation with Trump on the Senate floor.

In a much-anticipated floor speech, the retiring senator declined to state whether he will become the deciding vote to block the president’s maneuver. But he signaled broad opposition to the emergency declaration and sought to convince Trump that he has other ways to collect $5.7 billion for the border wall — the precise amount of money he demanded during the government shutdown fight.

“He’s got sufficient funding without a national emergency, he can build a wall and avoid a dangerous precedent,” Alexander told reporters afterward, referring to billions from a drug forfeiture fund and anti-drug smuggling money at the Defense Department. “That would change the voting situation if he we were to agree to do that.”

Three Republicans have already said they would join Democrats in voting for a resolution to block Trump, and only one more is needed for the Senate to successfully reject Trump’s declaration. Alexander is just one of about 10 senators who are committed to blocking [Trump's] the president’s move or are considering doing so, suggesting the White House has a ways to go to avoid a public split in the party and a Trump veto. [Trump] The president can get way more money than he’s even asking for without setting the Constitution on its head,” said this undecided senator, who requested anonymity to speak frankly. “I am very, very skeptical about the precedent this makes.” If Trump doesn’t back down, there is still deep reluctance in the GOP to becoming the 51st vote for the disapproval resolution that the Senate is expected to vote on in March. So far, Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine are the only Republicans who have said they would support blocking Trump on his plans to seize billions from military projects. Despite his clear opposition to Trump’s national emergency declaration, Alexander deemed the looming vote on disapproval a hypothetical, since Trump could withdraw it or the House-passed resolution could be amended. Under current law, the House measure will come up by mid-March, and Alexander left little doubt that he’s just one of a large bloc of Republicans who could defy the president.

Trump’s national emergency declaration for border wall funding is “unnecessary, unwise and inconsistent with the Constitution,” Alexander told reporters. “And many Republican senators who can speak for themselves share that view.”

“We’ve never had a case where the president has asked for money, been refused the money by Congress, then used the national emergency powers to spend it anyway,” he added. “To me that’s a dangerous precedent.”

How Mitch McConnell Has Enabled Trump and Betrayed America

This blog - just like countless news articles and political commentary columns - has enumerated the many, many ways in which Donald Trump has harmed America's democracy and institutions. It Trump's not a Russian operative, he is nonetheless doing a great job of furthering Vladimir Putin's goals of destabilizing the west, causing disunity in the European Union (Putin's intelligence service interfered in the UK's Brexit vote), and dividing Americans into warring camps.   Often, however, focus is lost on the one man who has been key to aiding and abetting Trump in the infliction of harm on America and American interest: Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.  Should Mueller prove a conspiracy between Trump and Russia in flipping the 2016 presidential election, part of me cannot help but ponder whether McConnell was part of the conspiracy.  Let's not forget that McConnell cast doubt on CIA intelligence about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and threatened that if Barack Obama publicly challenged Russia, McConnell would disingenuously make it into a partisan issue.  A column in the New York Times lays out all of the harm McConnell has done to the nation. Here are highlights:

Among the casualties of President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build his border wall is the reputation of the majority leader Mitch McConnell as a Senate institutionalist. The evidence of the last few days has confirmed, if there were still any doubt, that he is no such thing.

First, he helped prolong the longest government shutdown in American history by insisting that the Senate would act only with explicit approval from the president. Now Mr. McConnell has fully acquiesced in President Trump’s power grab by supporting an emergency declaration, which he opposed just weeks before, aimed at addressing a crisis that Senate Republicans know does not exist.

This display of obedience from the leader of a supposedly coequal branch of government is shocking only if you ever believed Mr. McConnell was an institutionalist. But his defining characteristic has always been his willingness to do anything and sacrifice any principle to amass power for himself. What separates him from the garden-variety politicians — what makes him a radical — are the lengths he is willing to go. Seeing this with clarity should help us grasp the danger to which he is subjecting the Senate — and, more important, our democracy.

The signs of Mr. McConnell’s malign influence were always there. Before he became a Senate leader, he dedicated himself to opening the floodgates for corporate money to flow into our political system. Mr. McConnell chased the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law all the way to the Supreme Court; the 2003 challenge to the law bears his name. Mr. McConnell lost that one, but his cause prevailed six years later when the Supreme Court overturned restrictions on corporate contributions in Citizens United.
 In 2010, as minority leader, Mr. McConnell stated that his main goal was not to help our country recover from the Great Recession but to make President Obama a “one-term president.”
 The two forces that characterized Mr. McConnell’s career, obstruction and increasing the power of corporate money in our democracy, have worked hand in hand to diminish the Senate and paralyze American politics.
 Republicans actually took the Senate majority in 2014 in large part on claims to restore the Senate. Unsurprisingly, they broke their promises. Under President Trump, Mr. McConnell continued to run roughshod over Senate traditions, jamming the $1.5 trillion tax bill through without so much as a proper hearing. The one place the Senate has functioned efficiently is in judicial confirmations, but even here Mr. McConnell has cast aside bipartisan norms and reduced the Senate to a rubber stamp for some unqualified, extremist judges, including those rated “unqualified” by the American Bar Association.  Mr. McConnell is not playing three-dimensional chess. There is no grand strategy or long game — there is only what best serves his narrow interest.

Mr. McConnell has rigidly adhered to whatever the base wants, institutions be damned. When the base wanted Judge Merrick Garland blocked, he obeyed. When the base wanted Mr. Trump embraced, he obeyed.
 The crass self-interest at so many turns now poses a danger to our democracy. With Mr. Trump increasingly erratic and Robert Mueller’s investigation advancing, there is simply no reason to believe he will stand up for American institutions when it counts. He has already demonstrated a willingness to put his self-interest above America’s national security: In a classified briefing in 2016, Mr. McConnell reportedly cast doubt on C.I.A. intelligence about Russia’s interference in our election and threatened that if President Obama publicly challenged Russia, he’d twist it into a partisan issue. And when the four congressional leaders drafted a bipartisan letter to the states urging them to take action to protect our election infrastructure against Russian interference, Mr. McConnell categorically rejected all efforts to strengthen the letter.

Last week, Mr. McConnell had a choice. He didn’t have to acquiesce to the emergency declaration — he could have asserted the Senate’s independence at a critical time by passing the spending bill without validating Mr. Trump’s emergency declaration. If that prompted a veto, Mr. McConnell could have overridden it. That would be real leadership, and a clear assertion of the Senate’s independence. Instead, he meekly acquiesced in another presidential power grab.

Under a strong leader, the Senate could provide a critical counterweight to an out-of-control executive. Instead, we have a man who will put his self-interest first, every single time. We should enter this chapter with clarity and finally see Mr. McConnell for what he is. He’s not an institutionalist. He is the man who surrendered the Senate to Donald Trump.

Not only is he not an institutionalist, but if he aided the Trump/Russia effort in any way, he is also likely a traitor. 

Conservatives Will Live to Regret Trump's Emergency Declaration

Republicans now engaged in prostituting themselves to Donald Trump and his racist base will likely come to rue the day that Trump, out of political desperation, invoked the pretense of a national emergency to try to take funds from other programs and the military to build his southern border wall to please his foul, racist base. The move, if not blocked by the courts will set a precedent that future Democrat presidents will likely invoke to push much more real emergencies such as gun control or climate change that will see "conservatives" witness the gutting of resistance to some of their sacred cows of dogma.  One body that might block Trump's dangerous move is the U.S. Senate, but do not count that to happen with Mitch McConnell, a man who after Trump has perhaps done the most harm to America's democracy, as a majority leader. A column in The Atlantic looks at the Republican's likely support of Trump's illegal act and how it will come to haunt them.  Here are highlights:

[Trump] The president seems to think he’s found a way out of the crisis. No, not the “crisis” at the border—if the word still has any universally accepted definition, there is no crisis at the border.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 2018’s apprehensions along the southwestern border were the fifth lowest in nearly half a century. Last year’s records show modest growth from 2017, when apprehensions were lower than at any point since 1972.

For Donald Trump, the crisis isn’t humanitarian but political. It is a crisis of confidence. He staked his reputation on constructing a wall along the southern border, and he’s not going to get one. Republicans in Congress had two years to appropriate the $25 billion Trump initially sought for a contiguous partition along the border, and they passed on it at every available opportunity. Trump transformed the 2018 midterm elections into a referendum on the notion that a humanitarian disaster was unfolding at the border and the wall was the only answer. Voters were not convinced.
 Having lost face at the polls, Trump sought to demonstrate who’s still the boss by demanding tribute from ascendant Democrats—a mere $5.7 billion, not for a wall per se, but for “steel slats” along a few miles of the border. He didn’t get it. Indeed, Trump will sign a compromise today that appropriates only $1.375 billion for fencing and border-security enhancements—less than what the GOP-led Congress was prepared to allocate at the end of 2018.
 Amid this unambiguous series of defeats, Trump resolved to get his border-wall funding by other means: He said in a rambling press conference today that he would invoke the National Emergencies Act, under which he plans to circumvent Congress and reallocate approximately $8 billion apportioned to the Treasury and Defense Departments to construct his barrier along the border with Mexico. This is a staggeringly cynical maneuver not because it will finally hand Trump the MacGuffin on which he campaigned in 2016, but because it most likely won’t.

Legal observers expect the courts to impose an injunction on this national-emergency declaration as soon as it is made. Indeed, the president made the judiciary’s work easier on Friday when he admitted that he “didn’t need to do this,” a confession that there is, in fact, no ongoing national emergency. A judicial quagmire is the GOP’s fondest hope. . . . And all without ever having to expropriate private property along the border or prove the dubious efficacy of a physical wall. Everybody wins!

This is an especially dangerous game, in part because it further degrades the Madisonian scheme in which each branch of government is supposed to be a jealous steward of its constitutional prerogatives. . . . [Trump] The president will radically expand the definition of what constitutes an emergency, the relevant statutes of which are supposed to be applied only when Congress cannot be consulted on the matter in a timely fashion. By appealing to the military to resolve a domestic policy dispute, Trump is actively eroding America’s sense of civic propriety.

Even if Trump’s decision to invoke national security to erect his wall is stopped indefinitely by the courts, we may look back upon this moment as the crossing of the Rubicon. Congressional Democrats aren’t even being coy about their desire to expand on this precedent when their party regains control of the White House. “Want to talk about a national emergency?” asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The epidemic of gun violence in America. That’s a national emergency.” There is no shortage of Democrats who are similarly convinced that climate change also represents an existential crisis, to say nothing of a national emergency. Many have endorsed draconian anti-industrial policies that are unlikely to pass in Congress as the only rational remedy to the crisis. The next president will undoubtedly face pressure from his or her core constituents to apply the precedent Trump is setting to their domestic policy priorities.

Maybe the most pernicious effect of the president’s extraordinary maneuver here is how he will drag complacent Republicans along with him into the abyss. Once invoked, 50 U.S. Code § 1622 on national emergencies sets into motion a series of events, including an almost immediate vote by the House of Representatives ratifying the president’s decision. The House will certainly reject Trump’s national-emergency declaration, sending that motion to the Senate, where it cannot be tabled. And that GOP-controlled chamber will be compelled to support Trump’s transparently political debasing of constitutional norms, not because of support for Trump, but because of pressure from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Let’s not mince words: Backing Trump in this moment is not the prerogative of an institutionalist, which the majority leader claims to be. It is the prerogative of a partisan operator motivated, above all, by deference to a fleeting political imperative: avoiding another government shutdown.

This is a moment of extreme national cowardice. America’s governing institutions are abdicating their authority in pursuit of expedience and amid a craven scramble to save face. A precedent has been established that all Americans, but conservative Americans in particular, will long regret.