The Senate could block Trump's national emergency. Would he veto?

last updated 17 February 2019

Enough senators are unhappy with President Trump's Friday declaration of a national emergency to obtain funding for border wall construction, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said on ABC's This Week Sunday, that the Senate could pass a resolution to block Trump's plan.

"Now, whether we have enough for an override of veto, that's a different story," Duckworth said. "But frankly, I think there's enough people in the Senate who are concerned that what he's doing is robbing from the military and the [Defense Department] to go build his wall, that it's really not the best way to fight the crisis that he's talking about at the border."

Per an accounting from The Bulwark, a conservative commentary site, 14 GOP senators have criticized the emergency declaration, albeit with differing rationales. The Senate currently seats 45 Democrats plus two independents who caucus with the Democrats. If all 47 plus those 14 Republicans voted to block Trump's declaration, their combined 61 votes would fall short of the 67 needed to override a presidential veto.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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