California and 15 other states filed a lawsuit Monday against President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released a statement Monday saying the suit alleges the Trump administration’s action violates the Constitution.

“President Trump treats the rule of law with utter contempt,” Becerra said. “He knows there is no border crisis, he knows his emergency declaration is unwarranted, and he admits that he will likely lose this case in court.”

READ MORE: White House hints Trump will veto Congressional disapproval of emergency declaration

Joining California in filing the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Virginia.

Trump declared a national emergency to fulfil his promise of completing the wall.

The move allows the president to bypass Congress to use money from the Pentagon and other budgets.

“President Trump is manufacturing a crisis and declaring a made-up ‘national emergency’ in order to seize power and undermine the Constitution,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement. “This ’emergency’ is a national disgrace.” </s> SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California and 15 other states filed a lawsuit Monday against President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released a statement Monday saying the suit alleges the Trump administration’s action violates the Constitution.

“President Trump treats the rule of law with utter contempt,” Becerra said. “He knows there is no border crisis, he knows his emergency declaration is unwarranted, and he admits that he will likely lose this case in court.”

Joining California in filing the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Virginia. All the states involved in the lawsuit have Democratic attorneys general.

Trump declared a national emergency to fulfill his promise of completing the wall.

The move allows the president to bypass Congress to use money from the Pentagon and other budgets.

More: Toomey displeased with Trump's border emergency, breaks with Smucker, Perry

More: AP FACT CHECK: Emergency declarations are not everyday steps

More: White House indicates Trump to veto disapproval of emergency

The states say diversion of military funding to wall-building will hurt their economies and deprive their military bases of needed upgrades. They say taking away funds from counter-drug efforts for the wall will also cause damage. California and New Mexico, the two Mexican border states in the lawsuit, say the wall will harm wildlife.

“President Trump is manufacturing a crisis and declaring a made-up ‘national emergency’ in order to seize power and undermine the Constitution,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement. “This ‘emergency’ is a national disgrace.” </s> President Donald Trump declared a national emergency along the southern border and predicted his administration would end up defending it all the way to the Supreme Court.

That might have been the only thing Trump said Friday that produced near-universal agreement.

The American Civil Liberties Union announced its intention to sue less than an hour after the White House released the text of Trump’s declaration.

Nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen has filed suit in federal court. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several Democratic state attorneys general already have said they might go to court. </s> CLOSE President Trump declared a national emergency to free up funding for his border wall between the U.S and Mexico. But declaring a national emergency isn’t new -- in fact, the use of emergency powers is older than the country itself. USA TODAY, Just the FAQs

WASHINGTON – California and 15 other states sued President Donald Trump on Monday over his decision to declare a national emergency to free up funding for his controversial border wall, calling the move "unlawful and unconstitutional."

The states allege in their lawsuit that Trump's emergency declaration exceeds the power of the president and unconstitutionally redirects federal money that Congress had set aside for other purposes. Trump made the declaration on Friday after lawmakers sent him a government funding bill that included $1.375 billion for the wall, far short of the $5.7 billion he initially requested.

White House officials said they believe they can unlock an additional $6.6 billion through the emergency declaration and other budget maneuvers. The White House believes the money would allow the administration to build at least 234 miles of the border wall, which was a central promise of Trump's 2016 campaign.

“President Trump treats the rule of law with utter contempt," saidCalifornia Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat. "He knows there is no border crisis, he knows his emergency declaration is unwarranted, and he admits that he will likely lose this case in court."

CLOSE During a press conference in the Rose Garden, President Trump admitted that he didn't need to declare a national emergency to fund his border wall, but that he did it so he could "get it done faster." USA TODAY

White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

California filed the lawsuit in the Northern District of California, where appeals are heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Trump has repeatedly claimed that his opponents would file litigation there, and he predicted on Friday that the appeals court would rule against him.

"They will sue us in the 9th Circuit," Trump told reporters in the White House Rose Garden on Friday. "We will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we'll get another bad ruling and then we'll end up in the Supreme Court."

The states' lawsuit is only the latest, and it's probably not the last. Hours after Trump signed the emergencydeclaration, the watchdog group Public Citizen filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia. The suit was filed on behalf of Texas landowners who own property on the Rio Grande and others.

But the lawsuit filed by the states, whose attorneys general are all Democrats, will be especially important to watch, in part because of the legal resources attorneys general bring to major federal litigation and in part because of their standing to sue. The attorneys general argue in the suit that the president's moves will redirect drug interdiction money and other funds that would have gone to their states.

The states joining California are: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Virginia.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/18/donald-trump-california-sues-over-national-emergency-delcaration/2911625002/ </s> California and at least a dozen other states will be joining a lawsuit to challenge President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Monday. “The president admitted that there’s not a basis for the declaration, he admitted there’s no crisis at the border, he’s now trying to rob funds that were allocated by Congress legally to the various states and people of our states,” Becerra told MSNBC. “The separation of powers is being violated, we’re going to go out there and make sure that Donald Trump cannot steal money from the states and people who need them, since we paid the taxpayer dollars to Washington, D.C. to get those services.”

Speaking on CNN, Becerra said the lawsuit is imminent. “We should be filing sometime today,” Becerra said. “We’re going to try to halt the President from violating the Constitution, the separation of powers, from stealing money from Americans and states that has been allocated by Congress, lawfully.”

This marks the latest effort to challenge Trump’s emergency declaration in the courts. Earlier, three environmental and advocacy groups joined a lawsuit against the emergency declaration. The Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Animal Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit over the weekend arguing that the White House doesn’t have the authority to use emergency funds to build a wall along the Mexico border. “The only emergency here is Trump’s assault on the Constitution,” said Brian Segee, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “Separation of powers is at the heart of our democracy and the power of the purse is a critical check on the president. Trump’s authoritarian attempt to build his destructive border wall is a flagrant abuse of that constitutional structure. If he gets his way, it’ll be a disaster for communities and wildlife along the border, including some of our country’s most endangered species.” This came after the advocacy group Public Citizen also filed a lawsuit on behalf of three Texas landowners and an environmental group. The American Civil Liberties Union also said it was preparing a lawsuit claiming that Trump doesn’t have the authority to redirect taxpayer money to build a wall.

All the lawsuits shouldn’t come as a surprise to the White House. In fact, Trump said he fully expected the be sued when he announced the emergency declaration Friday but he was confident his administration would eventually come out on top of any legal challenge. “And I’ll sign the final papers as soon as I get into the Oval Office. And we will have a national emergency, and then we will then be sued, and they will sue us in the Ninth Circuit, even though it shouldn’t be there,” Trump said. “And we will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we’ll get another bad ruling. And then we’ll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake. And we’ll win in the Supreme Court, just like the ban.”

Challenge to the emergency declaration could also come from Congress, where lawmakers could put forth a joint resolution to terminate it. But White House adviser Stephen Miller hinted Trump wouldn’t hesitate to cast the first veto of his presidency if lawmakers tried to undo his emergency declaration. “Obviously the president is going to protect his national emergency declaration,” Miller said on Fox News Sunday. </s> SACRAMENTO (AP) – California is likely to sue President Donald Trump over his emergency declaration to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, the state attorney general said Friday.

Attorney General Xavier Becerra at a joint news conference with Gov. Gavin Newsom said there is no emergency at the border and Trump doesn’t have the authority to make the declaration.

“No one in America is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Becerra said. “The president does not have power to act frivolously.”

President Trump is manufacturing a crisis and declaring a made-up “national emergency” in order to seize power. This “emergency” is a national disgrace — and the blame lays solely at the feet of the President. Our message to the White House is simple: CA will see you in court.

Trump declared a national emergency earlier in the day to bypass Congress to use money from the Pentagon and other budgets to fulfill his promise of completing the border wall. The president said illegal immigrants were invading the country.

The announcement was immediately met with resistance from members of Congress.

Becerra and Newsom said they were reviewing the emergency declaration but are likely to join other states in suing.

Both challenged the notion that there was a real emergency. Becerra said past presidents used such declarations after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Iran hostage crisis in 1979.

Newsom said the wall is a “monument to stupidity” that would not make the country safer.

California has repeatedly challenged Trump in court. Becerra has filed at least 45 lawsuits against the administration. </s> SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California's attorney general says at least a dozen states will join a lawsuit against President Donald Trump's emergency declaration to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Becerra told MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports" he planned to file California's lawsuit on Monday. He didn't specify which other states would join, but officials in Colorado and New Mexico have announced that they would challenge Trump.

Becerra says there is no emergency at the border and Trump doesn't have the authority to make the declaration.

Trump declared a national emergency to fulfill his promise of completing the wall.

The move allows the president to bypass Congress to use money from the Pentagon and other budgets.

California has repeatedly challenged Trump in court. Becerra has filed at least 45 lawsuits against the administration. </s> Hours after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, two lawsuits have been filed seeking to block it.

Advocacy group Public Citizen confirmed their lawsuit in a tweet saying, “BREAKING: We just sued Trump over his fake national emergency.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics also confirmed that they're suing the Justice Department after "it failed to to produce documents concerning the legality of President Trump invoking emergency powers to build a border wall."

The American Civil Liberties Union had announced earlier it would file suit challenging his emergency powers declaration.

"By the president's very own admission in the Rose Garden, there is no national emergency. He just grew impatient and frustrated with Congress, and decided to move along his promise for a border wall 'faster,'" said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. Some Democratic state attorneys general have also threatened to go to court over the decision

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, told reporters that the state is also likely to sue the president over his emergency declaration.

"No one in America is above the law, not even the president of the United States," Becerra said. "The president does not have power to act frivolously."

Trump signed the declaration to justify diverting billions of federal dollars from military construction and other purposes after Congress approved only a fraction of the money he had demanded. The standoff over border funding had led to the longest government shutdown in history. To avoid another shutdown, Trump reluctantly signed a funding bill Friday that included just $1.4 billion of the $5.7 billion he had demanded for the wall.

Trump announced the declaration in a free-wheeling, 50-minute Rose Garden news conference that included a long preamble about his administration's accomplishments. He jousted with reporters and delivered a sing-song prediction about the fate of the order as it winds its way through the legal system before potentially ending up at the Supreme Court.

"Sadly, we'll be sued and sadly it will go through a process and happily we'll win, I think," said Trump.

“If Trump gets away with this, there’s no telling what the next concocted ‘emergency’ will be, wo will be targeted and what emergency powers will be claimed,” Public Citizen said in a tweet. “We refuse to tolerate this slide to authoritarianism.”

Trump announced in his national emergency speech that he will be spending roughly $8 billion on border barriers — combining the money approved by Congress with funding he plans to repurpose through executive actions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. </s> ACLU Says It Will Sue Over Trump Emergency Order

WASHINGTON (AP) – The American Civil Liberties Union says it will file a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

The Friday announcement came hours after Trump signed the declaration and said he expected legal challenges. The civil rights group will argue that Trump’s use of emergency powers is unprecedented and can’t be used to build a border wall.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero says the declaration is ‘patently illegal.’ Their legal action would be separate from anything Congress may do.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have also raised the possibility of legal action. They say Trump’s decision would “shred the Constitution” by usurping Congress’ power to control spending.

White House officials say some of the money would come from military construction projects. </s> President Donald Trump declared a national emergency along the southern border Friday and predicted his administration would end up defending it all the way to the Supreme Court.

That might have been the only thing Trump said Friday that produced near-universal agreement.

The American Civil Liberties Union announced its intention to sue less than an hour after the White House released the text of Trump’s declaration that the “current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency.”

Nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen filed suit later, urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to “bar Trump and the U.S. Department of Defense from using the declaration and funds appropriated for other purposes to build a border wall.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several Democratic state attorneys general already have said they might go to court.

The coming legal fight seems likely to hinge on two main issues: Can the president declare a national emergency to build a border wall in the face of Congress’ refusal to give him all the money he wanted and, under the federal law Trump invoked in his declaration, can the Defense Department take money from some congressionally approved military construction projects to pay for wall construction?

The Pentagon has so far not said which projects might be affected.

But after weeks of publicly ruminating whether to act, Trump’s signature on the declaration set in motion a quick march to the courthouse.

Trump relied on the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which Congress adopted as a way to put some limits on presidential use of national emergencies. The act requires a president to notify Congress publicly of the national emergency and to report every six months. The law also says the president must renew the emergency every year, simply by notifying Congress. The House and Senate also can revoke a declaration by majority vote, though it would take a two-thirds vote by each house to override an expected presidential veto.

Beyond that, though, the law doesn’t say what constitutes a national emergency or impose any other limits on the president.

The broad grant of discretion to the president could make it hard to persuade courts to rule that Trump exceeded his authority in declaring a border emergency. “He’s the one who gets to make the call. We can’t second-guess it,” said John Eastman, a professor of constitutional law at the Chapman University School of Law.

Courts often are reluctant to look beyond the justifications the president included in his proclamation, Ohio State University law professor Peter Shane said on a call organized by the liberal American Constitution Society.

But other legal experts said the facts are powerfully arrayed against the president. They include government statistics showing a decades-long decline in illegal border crossings as well as Trump’s rejection of a deal last year that would have provided more than the nearly $1.4 billion he got for border security in the budget agreement he signed Thursday. Opponents of the declaration also are certain to use Trump’s own words at his Rose Garden news conference Friday to argue that there is no emergency on the border.

“I could do the wall over a longer period of time,” Trump said. “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”

Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan said Congress made a conscious choice not to give Trump what he wanted. “A prerequisite for declaring an emergency is that the situation requires immediate action and Congress does not have an opportunity to act,” Amash said on Twitter.

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said Trump’s remarks are an admission that there is no national emergency. “He just grew impatient and frustrated with Congress,” Romero said in a statement that also said the rights group would file a lawsuit next week.

Trying to turn the president’s words against him failed in the challenge to Trump’s ban on travel to the United States by citizens of several mostly Muslim countries. The ban’s opponents argued that Trump’s comments as a candidate and as president showed the ban was motivated by anti-Muslim bias, not concern about national security. Lower courts struck down the ban, but the Supreme Court upheld it in a 5-4 vote last year.

Trump said he expected to lose in lower courts that he claims have been unfair to him, particularly if lawsuits are filed in California. “Hopefully, we’ll get a fair shake and we’ll win in the Supreme Court, just like the ban,” he said.

Beyond the challenge to Trump’s authority to declare an emergency, lawsuits also are expected to focus on the military construction project law that allows the re-allocation of money in a national emergency.

Eastman said he doubts that the Supreme Court would try to interfere with Trump’s decision to send the military to the border and then authorize the use of money from other Defense Department construction projects to build miles of a border wall. “The president is authorized to make those judgments, not some judge in San Francisco,” Eastman said.

But the ACLU’s suit will argue that Congress allowed for flexibility in using money it appropriated for projects needed to support the emergency use of the military forces, like overseas military airfields in wartime.

Several legal experts said claims that the building of the wall is not the kind of project contemplated in the military construction law could be more difficult to rebut because border security is more like a law enforcement issue than a military emergency.

But Shane, the Ohio State professor, said, “It’s hard to know how exactly this is going to unfold politically or judicially.”
Sixteen states sue U.S. President Donald Trump, calling his national emergency declaration made last week "unlawful and unconstitutional".