Democrats have been fighting against Trump’s border wall for months.
And with Speaker Pelosi now running the House of Representatives, Democrats are vowing to block any border security bill from passing Congress.
But Nancy Pelosi was just betrayed on the border wall by the last person she ever suspected.
When Democrats took over the House of Representatives, that signaled an end to any further conservative legislation passing Congress.
The conventional wisdom was that with Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House, any more signature policy pieces were dead on arrival and that President Trump would simply have to be content with appointing more judicial nominees and getting the Republican-held Senate to confirm them.
But that line of thought may be wrong.
According to one top Democrat in the House of Representatives, President Trump can still get his border wall even without Congress signing off on it.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) admitted on ABC this past weekend that President Trump has the executive authority to declare a national emergency and direct the Department of Defense to construct the wall without Congressional approval.
Breitbart reports, “Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” House Armed Service Committee chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) said President Donald Trump does have the authority to declare a national emergency and have the military build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.”
When asked by ABC host George Stephanopoulos whether the President had “the authority to declare a national emergency and have the military build his wall?”, Congressman Smith stunned Stephanopoulos with this response.
“Well, unfortunately, the short answer is yes. There is a provision in the law that says the president can declare an emergency.”
Smith qualified his answer by saying the President could be challenged in court over the merits and definition of what constituted a “national emergency”, but Smith admitted that Congress can do little to stop the President from using his authority to direct the Department of Defense to secure the border.
The comments come after weeks of Democratic stonewalling and obstructionism against a border wall, with Nancy Pelosi going so far as to describe it as an “immorality” to the press last week.
Smith’s answer opens up a wide variety of questions. How far would Democrats go to challenge the President if he declared a state of emergency?
It’s unclear what it means if they would have to challenge the President, though at the same time the President has rarely used the power for domestic affairs.
If President Trump attempted to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico using his executive authority, the inevitable legal challenges could end up all the way to the Supreme Court.
President Trump has hinted he may follow through with the power Smith referred to on ABC this past week, but has yet to officially state his intentions to bypass Congress and build the wall using the military.
We will keep you up to date with any new developments in this ongoing story.
