|
 
Dear friends:
BREAKING NEWS: A federal judge has just ruled that President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to circumvent Congress to fund his border wall violated federal law. The ruling makes it categorically clear: emergency powers are not a political tool to bypass Congress’ power of the purse. This is a huge win for our democracy!
Throughout history, autocrats have often used so-called emergency powers to seize control from democratic systems that don't yield to their will. Thankfully, our founders also knew that the seizing of legislative powers by the executive was, in the words of James Madison, 'the very definition of tyranny' and built our system to prevent it.
We filed this case on behalf of the County of El Paso, Texas and the Border Network for Human Rights and in doing so we assembled a cross-ideological legal coalition including former Acting Attorney General Stuart Gerson, who served as a top aide to President George H.W. Bush; Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional law experts who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, the Niskanen Center, a center-right policy think tank; and the law firms O'Melveny & Myers and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.
The case is likely to eventually make its way to the Supreme Court where we'll continue to fight on behalf of the communities on the front line of one the President’s most flagrant assaults on our democracy.
You can read the full ruling here.
And this is not the only work that we've done on this front. After filing the lawsuit in February, we helped to organize a coalition of voices from the right to advocate to Republican offices to oppose the declaration. This included a direct meeting between us and Senator Mike Lee, who became the key vote whose opposition led to many more Republicans opposing the declaration. We then assembled a coalition of groups who worked with these offices to get the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to approve a bill to reform the National Emergencies Act with strong bipartisan support, which we are now working to bring to the floor of the Senate.
We can win the fight for our democracy — indeed, we are winning. But it will take more of us to sustain this movement and weather the Administration's unprecedented attacks on our system of checks and balances. So please share this with friends who care about democracy. Friends can join here: protectdemocracy.org/signup. And for those of us who are able to chip in a small amount financially to support this work so we can take on even more of the above can do so by clicking the button below.
|
