President Trump on Friday issued the first veto of his presidency, rejecting a resolution passed with bipartisan support that nullified his declaration of a national emergency to pay for a wall at the southern border.
“Today I am vetoing this resolution,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office where he was flanked by law enforcement and “angel” family members whose loved ones were killed by illegal immigrants. “Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution, and I have the duty to veto it.”
The president’s action comes after a dozen Republican senators on Thursday joined their Democratic colleagues in passing a resolution of disapproval that terminated Trump’s Feb. 15 emergency declaration, which had allowed him to bypass Congress and redirect federal dollars for the wall along the southern border. The White House said it would divert $3.6 billion from the Defense Department’s military construction fund to build the border barrier.
Trump called the resolution “reckless” and “dangerous” and characterized the vote by Congress as “against reality.”
The 59-41 vote was an embarrassing rebuke to the president, who had vowed to veto the resolution if it passed both chambers of Congress. The House approved the measure with support from 13 Republicans last month.
Still, it is unlikely Congress will be able to override the president’s veto due to a lack of votes to support such an effort.
[Related: Democrats plan March 26 vote to override Trump’s first veto]
The White House sought to limit the number of defections by GOP senators, and the president himself took to Twitter in the run-up to Thursday’s vote to urge Republicans to remain united. The emergency declaration, Trump argued, is crucial to ensuring the security of the southern border and combating what he has described as a national security and humanitarian crisis. He also characterized a vote in favor of the resolution as a vote for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and open borders.
But Democrats and some Republicans believe Trump exceeded his constitutional authority in invoking his emergency powers to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly since Congress had refused to allocate funding for the wall. The order, they argue, is unconstitutional.
In an effort to keep the number of Republicans voting for the resolution at a minimum, some GOP senators floated a deal under which they would support Trump’s emergency declaration to build the border wall in exchange for a promise from the president to sign legislation from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that would rein in the president’s power to declare a national emergency in the future.
Trump rejected the measure, but tweeted Thursday that he would support future efforts from Congress to amend the National Emergencies Act, the 1976 law the president used to issue his emergency declaration.
