February 16, 2019:
On Friday, a non-profit sued to block President Donald Trump from diverting funds from the federal budget to spend about $8 billion on his promised border wall, hours after he declared a national emergency.
Public Citizen, a consumer rights think tank, filed the complaint Friday evening on behalf of a nature preserve and 3 landowners in Southern Texas who’ve been told the Government will seek to build sections of the wall on their property once funding becomes available.
The case was the first among many expected legal challenges to the President’s authority to circumvent Congress as he seeks to fulfill a campaign promise to build a barricade along the U.S. border with Mexico.
State attorneys general in California, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and elsewhere are poised to bring more suits. Congress is considering taking its own action against the president.
Public Citizen claims Trump violated the Constitution’s separation-of-powers doctrine when he invoked the National Emergencies Act, sidestepping the decision by Congress not to authorize more than $1.35 billion for the wall.
Trump signed the declaration Friday after approving legislation to fund the Government and avoid yet another shutdown.
Trump’s gambit combines an emergency declaration with ordinary executive actions. He plans to redirect $3.5 billion Congress approved for the Defense Department’s military construction budget and reprogram $2.5 billion from the military drug interdiction efforts and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture program, a senior administration official said on Thursday.
Public Citizen alleges that Trump’s declaration isn’t a response to an emergency, but instead reflects a “long-running disagreement” between the president and Congress about whether to build a wall.
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