The Sad, Sad Acceleration Of The Remaking Of Trump's GOP

On Thursday, by a large bipartisan majority, the Senate approved HJ 46, the resolution of disapproval for Trump's phony state of emergency declaration. A dozen Republicans voted with every single Democrat against Trump. The Republicans on Trump's shit-list today: Lamar Alexander (TN), Roy Blunt (MO), Susan Collins (ME), Mike Lee (UT), Jerry Moran (KS), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Randy Paul (KY), Rob Portman (OH), Mitt Romney (UT), Marco Rubio (FL), Pat Toomey (PA) and Roger Wicker (MS). But not two of the most vulnerable senators up for reelection in 2020, Thom Tillis (NC) and Cory Gardner (CO).

If you go by their 538 Trump adhesion scores, the biggest Trump suck-ups in Congress are Kevin Cramer and John Hoeven, both of North Dakota, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, David Perdue of Georgia, John Cornyn of Texas and Pat Roberts of Kansas. The 7 of them vote with Trump no matter what; they're like broken machines stuck on "grind America into the ground." (Only two Democrats get anywhere near Trump-suck-up status, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both of whom are with Trump more than they're against him. Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly were in that camp too-- and lost their seats for their efforts.) Thom Tillis and Cory Gardner, on the other hand, are pretty garden variety Republicans. Gardner's score is 90.3% and Tillis' is 94.6%-- far Trumpier than some of the senators who voted for the resolution, like Rand Paul (71.6), Mike Lee (77.7), Mitt Romney (70.0), Susan Collins (72.3) or Lisa Murkowski (78.9).



Friday, North Carolina media started dumping all over Tillis for his cowardly and hypocritical flip-flop. WRAL:

A month ago Sen. Thom Tillis was one of the first Republicans to say he'd oppose President Donald Trump's border emergency. It violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. He wasn’t going to cede the legislative branch’s constitutional responsibility.

Thursday with his vote to the contrary, he said “never mind.”

Looking at the likelihood of a difficult re-election campaign next year, the last thing his chances of returning to the Senate needed was the added possibility of a potent GOP primary challenger-- an open threat Trump promised Republicans who opposed him.

At about the same time Tillis was back-tracking, Republican Rep. Mark Walker, who represents the state’s 6th Congressional District and was rumored as a GOP primary challenge to the incumbent senator, had his office issue a brief statement. “Congressman Walker is humbled to have the support and consideration of conservatives across North Carolina but is not planning to primary Thom Tillis.”

After the vote, N.C. GOP Chairman Robin Hayes offered Tillis more reassurance. “We look forward to supporting President Trump and Senator Tillis as they work to secure our borders and fix the broken National Emergencies Act.”

So, Tillis kicked the Constitution into the back seat and drove into the sunset with the President. It was quite a turn-around for someone who’d taken to The Washington Post’s op-ed columns to declare there was "no intellectual honesty" in supporting Trump when he’d objected to what he considered presidential excesses during Barack Obama’s administration.

“Congress has allowed executive overreach to continue unabated from one administration to the next because both sides are fine with it as long as they agree with the policy goal,” Tillis said in a statement a month ago. “While I agree with President (Donald) Trump’s policy goal, I don’t believe in situational principles.”

What Tillis says he believes and what he does are now revealed to be VERY different things-- particularly when a re-election is on the line.

...If the senator goes looking for the definition of “situational principles,” now, he may find his picture beside it in the dictionary.

The New York Times dubbed him "Senator Hypocrisy (R-NC)" in a Friday morning editorial. Cory Gardner is faring just as badly back home in Colorado. The state's biggest newspaper, the Denver Post, which endorsed him in 2014, basically withdrew the endorsement on Thursday evening, blaring in an editorial Our Endorsement of Cory Gardner Was A Mistake. "We endorsed Sen. Cory Gardner in 2014 because we believed he’d be a statesman," they wrote. "We knew he’d be a conservative voice in Congress, to be certain, but we thought his voice would bring 'fresh leadership, energy and ideas.' We see now that was a mistake-- consider this our resolution of disapproval. Gardner has been too busy walking a political tight rope to be a leader. He has become precisely what we said in our endorsement he would not be: 'a political time-server interested only in professional security.'... Trump’s declaration is an abuse of his power, a direct overturning of Congress’ deliberate decision to pass a federal budget without funding for a wall. Put simply this is a constitutional crisis and one of Colorado’s two senators has failed the test."

In our endorsement this November of former U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican from Aurora who was soundly defeated by Rep. Jason Crow, we stuck by someone who had shown a willingness to oppose that which he found morally reprehensible in his own party.

In contrast, Gardner was a never-Trumper in the primary who in recent months endorsed the president’s re-election campaign even as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation continues to unveil the worst of this administrations web of lies and deceit. Tuesday’s vote was the last straw.

We no longer know what principles guide the senator and regret giving him our support in a close race against Mark Udall.

Trump's bumpersticker tweet before the balloting: "A vote for today’s resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!" White House aides texted it to GOP senators to make sure they'd see it. The failed effort "was a reminder that White House aides have long acknowledged the futility of speaking for or negotiating on the president’s behalf, a position they now are openly conveying to lawmakers: passing along his tweets rather than attempting to twist arms or hash out a compromise themselves... The Republican revolt on the Senate floor followed a haphazard and erratic persuasion effort from Trump that offers a vivid encapsulation of how this White House has struggled to influence Congress. In the days before the vote, the president initially made few moves to try to stem GOP defections. Trump told senators that he knew they wouldn’t be able to override his veto and appeared to see little upside to cutting a deal on his signature issue. He made little effort to whip wavering GOP senators during a Wednesday afternoon meeting on trade, and said they could vote however they pleased. By Wednesday evening, however, he had grown disturbed by the brewing condemnation from his own party."

Friday morning, the NY Times ran a piece by Stead Herndon about how the quality of Republican candidates is changing in response to Trumpism. He wrote that "Far from the power centers of Washington, the early 2020 primary states or the money-rich coastal cities that fund many national campaigns, a shift in the political winds is growing stronger. The Republican Party and its candidates, particularly in state and local campaigns, are increasingly being reshaped in President Trump’s image, adopting his laundry list of political opponents and his willingness to go to great lengths to spite them. But the most common reflection of Mr. Trump’s brand of grievance politics… was the pervasive belief that the country is being undermined by undeserving outsiders and the Democrats who represent them." It'a an ultimately ugly, divisive message of Know-Nothingism. And Herndon uses last Tuesday's state House special election in northeast Pennsylvania, a Lackawanna County district north and west of Scranton.

The results weren't a shock. The district has been trending blue and Democrat Bridget Malloy Kosierowski beat Republican Frank Scavo III decisively. More interesting was what a Trump-like campaign Scavo ran. "Many of Mr. Scavo’s supporters," wrote Herndon, "were upset that he had drawn significant negative attention for his series of bigoted Facebook posts over the past four years, including ones that painted Muslims as 'infidels' and others that promoted conspiracy theories like 'Pizzagate,' the false story that Democrats ran a child sex trafficking operation out of a Washington pizza parlor."

“Democrats are rats!” yelled Mr. Scavo’s wife, Caren [drunk], a local hair stylist who had started crying. She and others contended that he should have doubled down rather than apologize for the posts, as he did in the closing days of the race.

“I’m furious,” said Laureen Cummings, an Old Forge resident who is also a county commissioner. “Our poor president is getting hammered and the same thing happened to Frank.”

Another man interjected: “This is our tea party!” Big applause followed.

Here, among Republicans in the northeastern Pennsylvania region that has suffered with the gutting of the steel industry and the ravages of the opioid crisis, Mr. Trump’s language is endlessly repeated. He is not ensnared in several investigations of possible wrongdoing, but the victim of a “witch hunt.” The discovery of Mr. Scavo’s anti-Muslim Facebook posts was the work of the “fake news media.” The federal bureaucracy is the scheming “deep state.”

But the most common reflection of Mr. Trump’s brand of grievance politics-- and the reason Mr. Scavo’s loss was treated as an existential threat in that Old Forge banquet hall-- was the pervasive belief that the country is being undermined by undeserving outsiders and the Democrats who represent them.

Herndon didn't see fit to mention that Lackawanna County has not exactly embraced Trump, despite the crackpot Republicans getting drunk and addicting themselves to opioids while nursing their racist grievances. In 2016 more voters cast ballots for Bernie (17,265) than for Trump (14,406) in the primaries. In the general election, Lackawanna went for Hillary 50.2-46.8%. Even the disastrous Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Katie McGinty-- an EMILY's List concoction-- beat GOP incumbent Pat Toomey 52.9% to 39.8% in Lackawanna. And in 2018 Lackawanna gave Democrat Bob Casey at 61.1-37.9% landslide victory over Republican Lou Barletta in the Senate race and Democrat Tom Wolff and 64.6-34.1% win over Republican Scott Wagner. And in the House race, Matt Cartwright won all 3 of the biggest counties in the district but completely crushed it in Lackawanna. So... not everyone in this part of the state is a KKK sympathizer. Still, Herndon wants to lead his readers into believing Lackawanna County is a racist bastion and emphasized that "In conversations with Mr. Scavo and his all-white supporters, this was not a race-blind anxiety, but a conscious fear around what they see as the replacement of traditional, white American culture. The message was constantly amplified by ominous reporting and commentary from conservative, pro-Trump media outlets."

He asserts that "to many in Lackawanna County, which has long trended Democratic but only narrowly went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, such feelings are integral to the worldview of local Republicans." Yeah, Hillary was a terrible candidate-- who still won-- but Lackawanna went heavily for Casey, Wolff and Cartwright. Presumably Herndon's editor's had no idea. He wrote that in "In Old Forge, the region’s most conservative bastion... mayor, Robert Legg, is currently embroiled in scandal after he posted on Facebook that the New York governor, Andrew M. Cuomo; the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi; and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, are treasonous and 'should be shot.'"

The Republican National Committee and its affiliates have long insisted that they remain a big tent, open to people of all races and backgrounds. However, some former Republican leaders, pollsters and former candidates say Mr. Trump has brought formerly fringe sentiments of explicit nativism and racism to the fore-- and the result is a party that is growing more racially monolithic in an increasingly diverse age.

During last year’s midterm elections, Republicans fielded a nearly all-white slate of candidates for governor. In the House, 90 percent of the Republican caucus is now white men, while about two-thirds of the Democratic caucus is not.

But locally, Mr. Scavo’s supporters-- many of whom vocally supported Mr. Trump’s re-election-- are unsure such a dichotomy is a problem. Mr. Scavo said his fatal election mistake was taking the advice of outside Republican groups and not going with his gut, which would have focused less on eliminating taxes and promoting smaller government and instead prioritized more Trumpian issues such as the wall on the southern border and MS-13 gang violence.

Across the country, other Republican state officials have gone further, including an Arizona state representative, David Stringer, who said this year that “there aren’t enough white kids to go around” in the state’s public schools.

Daniel Squadron, the former New York state senator who leads Future Now, a national organization to help elect Democrats to state legislatures, said he cautioned people against thinking the wave of overt white identity politics is simply an offshoot of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Squadron pointed out that, in the Pennsylvania race, Mr. Scavo’s controversial social media posts began before Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Other candidates in this mold, such as the Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, won support of local Republicans even though Mr. Trump had endorsed Mr. Moore’s opponent.

“It’s not about Trump,” Mr. Squadron said. “It’s about a mind-set, a conspiracy theory, an ethnonationalism that Trump reflects.”

“We should stop thinking of these races as ‘Trump-ized’ because they’re about ‘Pizzagate’ and racial and ethnic division and fear-mongering,” he said. “That’s just how races are run on the Republican side these days.”

Mr. Scavo and his supporters largely agree. Mr. Scavo called himself “pro-wall, not pro-Trump,” and Mr. Bolus said he worried the Republican establishment fails to understand how fiercely Mr. Trump’s supporters are committed to their cultural ideals.

They especially hate Hispanics and Muslims and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are driving them out of their minds. They came up in Herndon's interviews with the local yahoos. A new Gallup poll shows that hard core Republicans-- especially males-- are being driven crazy by Ocasio. Overall, Democrats like her and so do women, millennials and people of color but by a huge 68% margin, Republicans just hate her. Old white conservative males seem to be making her the bane of their existence. Ocasio isn't the first Democratic Socialist who old white conservative males have hated:

How Far Will The Unpopular And Desperate Queens-Born Casino Operator Go To Hold Onto His Power?

I'm going to start with some polling from yesterday. Gallup first. They show Trump sinking below 40%-- 4 points down since the end of February. Republicans like him; everyone else hates him. Now a less known poll from Navigator Research, "a project designed to better understand the American public’s views on issues of the day and help advocates, elected officials, and other interested parties understand the language, imagery and messaging needed to make and win key policy arguments." This particular poll is mostly about Climate Change but they also have some Trump findings: "This month, just 38% believe the president generally does what’s best for the country, a new low and a 6-point decline from December. 62% now tend to say the president puts himself first. Perception of Trump as self-interested has grown more rapidly than overall disapproval. As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia’s possible involvement winds down, support for the probe has reached an all-time high of 58%."

And that leads right to yesterday's House vote on Jerry Nadler's Resolution 24-- "Expressing the sense of Congress that the report of Special Counsel Mueller should be made available to the public and to Congress." Nadler is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and is cosponsors included the chairs of 5 other top committees: Maxine Waters (Financial Services), Adam Schiff (Intelligence), Elijah Cummings (Oversight), Eliot Engel (Foreign Affairs), Richard Neil (Way and Means). It passed with 420 votes. Florida Republican Matt Gaetz pulled his head out of Trump's ass long enough to vote "present." He was joined by 3 other Republicans refusing to go on-record favoring the public release of the report.

It also leads to yesterday's Senate vote that Trump lost badly when a large bipartisan majority of senators approved HJ 46, the resolution of disapproval for his phony state of emergency declaration. A dozen Republicans voted with every single Democrat (including right-wingers Sinema and Manchin) against Trump. The Republicans include Lamar Alexander (TN), Roy Blunt (MO), Susan Collins (ME), Mike Lee (UT), Jerry Moran (KS), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Randy Paul (KY), Rob Portman (OH), Mitt Romney (UT), Marco Rubio (FL), Pat Toomey (PA) and Roger Wicker (MS). Publicly Trump says he'll veto it; there are reports that privately, he's furious and looking for revenge.

Thursday morning, rejecting Trump's insistence that he can't be sued in state court, a New York appellate court ruled that Summer Zervos, a former Apprentice contestant, who Trump sexually harassed, can move forward with her defamation suit against Trump now, while he's still "president." In their statement, the justices explained that they "reject defendant President Trump's argument that the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution prevents a New York State court-- and every other state court in the country-- from exercising its authority under its state constitution. Instead, we find that the Supremacy Clause was never intended to deprive a state court of its authority to decide cases and controversies under the state's constitution."

Looking bad for what Spy Magazine editor Graydon Carter long, long ago referred to as a "short fingered vulgarian?" He struck back with a veiled threat that it's unimaginable any legitimate president would have ever uttered, "armed pushback," reported Daniel Dale, "against his political opponents." Breitbart News was interviewing Trump when he stopped attacking Paul Ryan long enough to mention "it would be very bad, very bad" if his supporters in the military, police and a motorcycle group were provoked into getting "tough." Trump was arguing that "the left" plays politics in a "tougher" and more "vicious" manner than the pro-Trump right even though "the tough people" are on Trump’s side.

“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump-- I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough-- until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,” Trump said.

...The quote prompted criticism and alarm when The Star tweeted it.

“This is how an authoritarian talks. Happening right in front of us,” Brendan Nyhan, a University of Michigan public policy professor who co-founded an initiative monitoring the state of U.S. democracy, said on Twitter.

“We can’t sugar-coat this. The President of the United States is encouraging the military, police, and bikers to violently attack his critics on the left,” liberal journalist Judd Legum tweeted.

“In which the president of the United States threatens street violence against his political opponents,” the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen tweeted. “What happens if Trump loses in 2020? Is that the ‘certain point?’”

Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who has been convicted of several crimes, testified to Congress in February: “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

Trump made another veiled suggestion of retribution from the military, police and Bikers for Trump at a midterm campaign rally in Georgia in November. After mocking Antifa protesters as weaklings-- “you see these little arms,” he joked-- he said, “And then you see the clubs in their hands. You know, they’re tough guys, right. Where are the Bikers for Trump? Where are the police? Where are the military? Where are the ICE? Where are the Border Patrol? No. No. We’ve taken a lot. We’ve taken a lot, folks.”

Bikers for Trump, which has more than 300,000 followers on Facebook, is not a criminal biker gang.

Bikers for Trump founder Chris Cox, a chainsaw artist described in one 2017 newspaper profile as “exceedingly polite,” offered in advance of Trump’s inauguration in 2017 to form a “wall of meat” between the president and protesters. He said, though, that he expected a peaceful gathering. While group members have had verbal confrontations with anti-Trump protesters, there have not been reports of major violence.

Trump met with some of the Bikers for Trump at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey in August. In November, Cox travelled to Florida and made unfounded allegations of election fraud. In December, Cox and his German shepherd stood outside the courthouse where former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn was to be sentenced for lying to the FBI, with Cox telling Mother Jones Magazine he was “here to make sure [Flynn’s] family is not assaulted or intimidated.”

Trump also endorsed violence against protesters at some of his rallies in 2016. At one rally in Iowa, he urged his supporters to beat up anyone getting ready to “throw a tomato,” saying, “Knock the crap out of them…I promise you I will pay for the legal fees.”

Rand Paul And Justin Amash-- Sticking It To Trump?

Rand Paul frequently makes constitutional arguments against Trump's behavior and huffs and puffs about voting against them... but in the end, he's a pretty dependable Trump enabler. Murkowski and Collins have bigger balls than he does. Yesterday the Bowling Green Daily News in his home state that reported that Paul announced at the Southern Kentucky Lincoln Day Dinner that he "can’t vote to give extra-Constitutional powers to the president."

In a speech that started off praising Trump's supposed accomplishments to the crowd of nearly 200 Republican officeholders and supporters, Paul surprised the room by interjecting his opinion that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border is a dangerous precedent. He said "I can’t vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress. We may want more money for border security, but Congress didn’t authorize it. If we take away those checks and balances, it’s a dangerous thing."

Since Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have already announced they're voting for the Resolution of Disapproval, Paul's vote would pass it-- as long as Schumer can force Arizona Democratic Trump ally Kyrsten Sinema to vote with the Democrats for a change.

Justin Amash (R-MI) already voted for the same bill in the House, one of just 13 Republicans who did:

• Justin Amash (R-MI)
• Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
• Mike Gallagher (R-WI)
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA)
• Will Hurd (R-TX)
• Dusty Johnson (R-SD)
• Tom Massie (R-KY)
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
• Tom Rooney (R-FL)
• Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
• Elise Stefanik (R-NY)
• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• Greg Walden (R-OR)

Amash is a pretty strict constitutionalist. On State of the Union, Jake Tapper asked him if there's a national security crisis on the border, which is what Trump is claiming.

Amash: I think there's a fair debate that there are big problems on the border. Some people would call it a crisis.

But that has to go through Congress. So, we have a legislative branch, Congress, that handles these issues. And the president doesn't get to decide that he can override Congress simply because Congress doesn't do what he wants.

I know that there are a lot of people in the country who agree with the president, and that's why we have Congress, so we can debate these issues. And if there were an emergency in the sense that the president is describing, there would be a lot more consensus.

When a house is on fire, nobody is debating whether they should go into save people or whether they should put out the fire. Everyone understands that's an emergency.

The fact that there's a debate going on here, and there is not consensus, indicates it's not an emergency in the sense that the president is describing, and he can't just go around Congress.

Tapper: You tweeted this week-- quote-- "If you think my job is to support the president 100 percent, then you don't understand what it means to be a representative in Congress. My job is to support the Constitution 100 percent" -- unquote.

Do you think that Republicans who are supporting this national emergency are abdicating their responsibilities to the Constitution?

Amash: I think so, yes.

I don't think that they are all intending to do that. I think many of them are making arguments. They're trying to make legal arguments. They say, well, Congress has passed legislation giving the president this power. So I don't think that they are thinking to themselves, oh, I just want the president to violate the Constitution.

But I think the president is violating our constitutional system. And I don't think Congress can grant legislative powers to the president by statute. You can't just pass a statute that says, the president now has appropriations power and bypass Congress.

I don't think that's-- that's allowed under our constitutional system. And the best check on the president's action is Congress. It's not the courts. Our system is not designed so that the courts are going to resolve these disputes all the time between the legislative branch the executive branch.

We have to protect our own power. And that's what I'm doing. And I'm hopeful many Republican senators will agree.

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Could Pass The Resolution Of Disapprove-- Unless Kyrsten Sinema Moves To Save Trump

Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), the furthest right Democrat in the Senate, has, according to ProgressivePunch, been voting far less progressively than any other Democrat in the Senate and less progressively than Kentucky and Louisiana Republicans Rand Paul and John Kennedy! He crucial vote score is exactly the same as Susan Collins' (R-ME), Mike Lee's (R-UT) and Ted Cruz's (R-TX). She tends to never disappoint Trump. But say for a moment that when McTurtle brings up the Resolution of Disapproval, she can somehow be forced to vote for it with the Democrats. In that case, only 4 Republicans will be needed to pass it. At this point, that looks like it's in the bag. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) have all said they are yes votes.

Any number of Republicans may provide that 4th vote but by the end of the week Politico was reporting that Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is retiring next year, i willing o cast the deciding vote if he can't get Trump to back down and withdraw the phony state of emergency. Burgess Everett reported on Thursday that he's one of the senior Republicans offering Trump a choice: Withdraw your national emergency declaration at the border or face a potential rebellion from the GOP.

In a much-anticipated floor speech, the retiring senator declined to state whether he will become the deciding vote to block the president’s maneuver. But he signaled broad opposition to the emergency declaration and sought to convince Trump that he has other ways to collect $5.7 billion for the border wall-- the precise amount of money he demanded during the government shutdown fight.

“He’s got sufficient funding without a national emergency, he can build a wall and avoid a dangerous precedent,” Alexander told reporters afterward, referring to billions from a drug forfeiture fund and anti-drug smuggling money at the Defense Department. “That would change the voting situation if he we were to agree to do that.”

...[Trump] told Sean Hannity that Republicans who oppose him “put themselves at great jeopardy” and said it’s “very dangerous” to vote against border security. Some GOP senators shrugged off that sentiment.

“I always do what I think is the right thing to do,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), who is undecided. “As long as I’m satisfied with myself, that’s the person I’m going to satisfy.”

Republicans spent all week debating how to deal with the political headache of seeing a president from their party use some of the same unilateral tactics they panned under President Barack Obama.

After introducing her own resolution of disapproval directly on the Senate floor Thursday, Collins said her “Republican colleagues are very uneasy about the precedent.”

“I don’t think emergencies are a good way to run the government. And the president needs permission from Congress to get money,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Thursday. Despite those words, he hasn’t made a “final decision” on his vote.

...Despite his clear opposition to Trump’s national emergency declaration, Alexander deemed the looming vote on disapproval a hypothetical, since Trump could withdraw it or the House-passed resolution could be amended. Under current law, the House measure will come up by mid-March, and Alexander left little doubt that he’s just one of a large bloc of Republicans who could defy the president.

Trump’s national emergency declaration for border wall funding is “unnecessary, unwise and inconsistent with the Constitution,” Alexander told reporters. “And many Republican senators who can speak for themselves share that view.”

“We’ve never had a case where the president has asked for money, been refused the money by Congress, then used the national emergency powers to spend it anyway,” he added. “To me that’s a dangerous precedent.”

Collusion by Nancy Ohanian

Can Trump's Phony Emergency Declaration Be Stopped?

A new poll from YouGov for HuffPo taken last week showed that most registered voters oppose Trump's fake emergency, 57-39%. Among independents, 30% approve and 55% disapprove. So what's next?

The House-- 235 Democrats and 197 Republicans-- will pass a resolution of disapproval-- which can't be blocked by McTurtle. The national emergency law requires the Senate to take up the resolution within 18 days of the House passing it. But would a Republican-majority Senate pass it?

We'll get to that in a moment. Are there House Dems who would vote against the resolution? And are there Republicans who would vote for it? Probably and yes. The likeliest Democrats to cross the aisle on a high-profile vote like this are hard-core right-wing Blue Dogs. The two worst in the House are Jeff Van Drew (NJ) and Joe Cunningham (SC). I'm not certain who else would dare but maybe Kendra Horn (OK), Elaine Luria (VA), Anthony Brindisi (NY), Daniel Lipinski (IL) and Stephanie Murphy (FL).

On the other side, there are probably more Republicans who want to be seen as not backing Trump on this unconstitutional declaration. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) would be a sure NO. Justin Amash MI) will make a decision based on constitutionality, which Tom Massie (KY) may do as well. Other Republicans I would watch closely include 5 New Yorkers--John Katko, Elise Stefanik, Peter King, Tom Reed and Lee Zeldin. Then there are some Republicans in very close races coming up in which independents will decide whether or not they will have another term in Congress: Fred Upton (MI), Greg Walden (OR), Chris Smith (NJ), Rodney Davis (IL), Mario Diaz-Balart (FL), Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA), Tom McClintock (CA) and Brian Mast (FL).

In the Senate, there are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats and the resolution can't be filibustered-- so just 4 Republican defections would pass it... or at least a net of 4 Republicans. That caveat is there because it isn't unlikely that two Democrats, Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) will vote against it. If both do, the Dems will need 6 Republicans. 8 Republicans have already said they oppose the declaration:

• Susan Collins (ME)
• Lamar Alexander (TN)
• Rand Paul (KY)
• Lisa Murkowski (AK)
• Marco Rubio (FL)
• Thom Tillis (NC)
• Pat Toomey (PA)
• Ben Sasse (NE)

Just because these Republicans say they oppose the declaration doesn't mean they will vote with the Democrats. Look at the record of Sasse, Rubio and Rand Paul, for example, making noise and then folding and sticking with Trump at the first sign of trouble. But... there are several other Republicans who have serious doubts and could vote no. The senators who have already gone on record that they agree with Trump and think he made the right decision: Mike Braun (IN), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Bill Cassidy (LA), Kevin Cramer (ND), Mike Crapo (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Nan Fischer (NE), Lindsey Graham (SC), Josh Hawley (MO), John Hoeven (ND), James Inhofe (OK), John Kennedy (LA), McTurtle (KY), David Perdue (GA), James Risch (ID), Rick Scott (FL), Tim Scott (SC), Richard Shelby (AL). Everybody else, in theory, is up for grabs. Cory Gardner (CO) is a maybe. So are John Cornyn (TX), Ron Johnson (WI), Mike Lee (UT), Mitt Romney (UT) , Pat Roberts (KS) and Martha McSally (AZ). Hey imagine if McSally votes against the state of emergency and Sinema votes for it!

If it passes, Trump will veto it-- at least according to Steven Miller Sunday. Then the Senate would need 67 votes to override. That seems like quite a stretch, especially if Sinema and Manchin stick with Trump.

Meanwhile 16 states are suing Trump over his emergency declaration-- California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Virginia.

California Attorney General, Xavier Becerra: "Today, on Presidents Day, we take President Trump to court to block his misuse of presidential power... [Trump] is willing to manipulate the Office of the Presidency to engage in unconstitutional theatre performed to convince his audience that he is committed to his 'beautiful' border wall. We’re suing President Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states... Unlawful southern border entries are at their lowest point in 20 years, immigrants are less likely than native-born citizens to commit crimes, and illegal drugs are more likely to come through official ports of entry."