The Trump presidency is the real emergency!
The Trump presidency is the real emergency! (Photo: Becker1999, reproduced under a Creative Commons license)

For the sec­ond time in the past twen­ty-four hours, the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Unit­ed States Sen­ate has vot­ed to rebuke Don­ald Trump.

By a vote of fifty-nine to forty-one, the Sen­ate con­curred with the U.S. House that Don­ald Trump’s fake nation­al emer­gency dec­la­ra­tion should be ter­mi­nat­ed, which means that Trump will soon be forced to issue his first veto.

The two suc­cess­ful votes in the House and Sen­ate are ground­break­ing. Nev­er before has Con­gress vot­ed to block a pres­i­den­tial nation­al emer­gency dec­la­ra­tion, but it was cer­tain­ly appro­pri­ate that the nation’s leg­isla­tive branch assert its pow­ers. The checks and bal­ances found in our Con­sti­tu­tion can’t work if they aren’t utilized.

Don­ald Trump is attempt­ing to abuse the pow­er of the office he occu­pies to get some­thing that Con­gress has­n’t giv­en him and won’t give him: mon­ey to build a wall on the bor­der with Mex­i­co, a ludi­crous idea he sim­ply won’t let go of.

That’s unac­cept­able and it must not stand.

“I believe the use of emer­gency pow­ers in this cir­cum­stance vio­lates the Con­sti­tu­tion,” said Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Jer­ry Moran of Kansas.

“This con­tin­ues our coun­try down the path of all pow­er­ful exec­u­tive — some­thing those who wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion were fear­ful of.”

Moran was one of twelve Repub­li­can sen­a­tors who put coun­try above par­ty today.

The oth­ers were Lamar Alexan­der of Ten­nessee, Roy Blunt of Mis­souri, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Lee of Utah, Lisa Murkows­ki of Alas­ka, Rob Port­man of Ohio, Mitt Rom­ney of Utah, Mar­co Rubio of Flori­da, Patrick Toomey of Penn­syl­va­nia, Rand Paul of Ken­tucky, and Roger Wick­er of Mississippi.

Cory Gard­ner of Col­orado and Martha McSal­ly of Ari­zona, who are both poten­tial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers in 2020, stuck with Trump.

So did Thom Tillis of North Car­oli­na, who had said weeks ago he would vote for the res­o­lu­tion, but changed his mind at the last minute, show­ing every­one that he’s a spine­less cow­ard who has no prin­ci­ples and can’t be trust­ed to do what he says.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Aye: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (OR), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Dan Sul­li­van (AK)

This post will be updat­ed with state­ments by Sen­a­tors as they become available.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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