Senate Dems Seek To Block Trump’s Wall “Emergency”

The Daily Beast reports:

A group of Senate Democrats are aiming to block President Donald Trump from building his proposed border wall by declaring a national emergency—an announcement the president could make as soon as Tuesday during his State of the Union address.

One of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), said that Congress must “assert its role as a co-equal branch of government” and block Trump from raiding these accounts—which could contain as much as $35 billion for emergency projects—for a “politically-motivated, unjustified national emergency declaration that isn’t based in reality.”

We’re introducing the RAIDER Act to stop the president from using a national emergency declaration to raid disaster relief funds for his border wall.
Congress is a co-equal branch of gov’t. We can’t let @POTUS go around us to build his wasteful wall. https://t.co/w9RCVyn77v

— Tom Udall (@SenatorTomUdall) February 4, 2019

President Trump shouldn’t be raiding essential funding from Americans recovering from natural disasters or from our critical military infrastructure to pay for his vanity project. Cosponsored the RAIDER Act so this, and any future president, is prohibited from doing so. https://t.co/RfSx8zYse8

— Senator Cortez Masto (@SenCortezMasto) February 4, 2019