California leads the way. The key argument is the Trump has violated the separated powers by spending money in violation of the appropriations clause.
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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.
