McConnell warns Trump: We might vote to block your emergency decree on the wall, you know

It’s inevitable that immigration “negotiations” in Congress will deadlock and Trump will end up declaring an emergency on the 15th, if not sooner, to save face and try to get the wall built. We’ve been chattering for weeks about the court battle that would follow that but we should start paying attention to the congressional battle that will follow it too. POTUS is likely to find himself in a position similar to the one he found himself in the day before the shutdown ended, when Schumer’s bill to reopen the government got more votes in a Republican Senate than Trump’s compromise offer on immigration did. Namely, a critical mass of his own party in the Senate will turn against him.

Is he prepared to fight a legal and PR battle on his emergency authority to fund the wall if the GOP-controlled Senate votes to disapprove of that authority? We’ll know soon. A Friday leftover from WaPo:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cautioned President Trump privately this week about the consequences of declaring a national emergency to build his border wall, telling him the move could trigger political blowback and divide the GOP, according to two Republicans with knowledge of the exchange…

That would take place under provisions of the National Emergencies Act, which provides that a presidential declaration can be terminated if lawmakers pass a joint resolution to do so. House Democrats would be likely to move swiftly to approve such a resolution, and the law provides that it would come to the Senate floor, where it would require only a majority vote to pass.

At least a half-dozen Republican senators are fiercely opposed to the idea of an emergency declaration, generating enough opposition that a disapproval resolution could pass the Senate with the support of the 47 Democrats and a handful of GOP senators — the scenario about which McConnell warned Trump.

Read the rest of the story HERE.