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Senate votes again to end Trump's emergency border declaration

Senate votes again to end Trump's emergency border declaration

For the second time, the United States Senate has voted to end President Donald Trump's emergency declaration regarding the southern border with a 54-vote majority.

While 11 Republicans joined with the chamber's Democrats in voting to terminate the state of emergency, the measure failed to gain the two-thirds majority necessary to be veto proof.

One of the Republicans who voted to end the declaration, Mike Lee (Utah) later was quoted as saying, "Congress is supposed to be the first among the federal government’s three co-equal branches. For decades, Congress has been giving far too much legislative power to the executive branch."

The Senate also voted to end the emergency declaration in March, but that effort failed to overcome the president's veto. Then, 12 Republicans voted against the declaration. That dozen included Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who didn't vote on Wednesday.

President Trump's national emergency declaration, which he issued in February at the conclusion of a government shutdown, has allowed the administration to redirect Pentagon funds in order to construct physical security along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Supreme Court undid a lower court injunction blocking the administration from doing so in July.

The redirection of those federal monies, however, has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks after the Pentagon announced that $3.6 billion in funds would be cut from various D0D construction projects and used instead for border security.

"A vote for the president today is a vote in favor of cutting money for our military and slashing support for critical military projects in red states as well as blue," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who pledged to force the vote earlier this week, said Wednesday.

Under the National Emergencies Act, Democrats are able to force votes to end the emergency declaration every six months.

During his remarks Wednesday from the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., dismissed the effort as a "show vote" forced by chamber Democrats.

“Unwilling to work with the president and Senate Republicans on a long-term bipartisan solution for border security, Senate Democrats are making us repeat the same show vote again,” McConnell said, urging his fellow Republicans to vote against the resolution.

"It is shameful that our lawmakers have refused to act to fix the [border] crisis," Heritage Action executive director Tim Chapman told Blaze Media after the vote, "and today's Senate vote to overturn the President's declaration has endangered our nation and prevented our law enforcement from doing its job."


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