WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump was poised to issue the first veto of his presidency Friday afternoon, after a bipartisan rebuke of the national emergency he declared to circumvent Congress and fund his long-stalled southern border wall.

A dozen defecting Republicans joined Senate Democrats on the joint resolution Thursday, which capped a week of confrontation with the White House as both parties in Congress strained to exert their power in new ways. And Trump made clear how he planned to respond, tweeting the word "VETO!" in all caps just moments after the vote.

Trump will issue the veto at a ceremony in the Oval Office at 3:30 p.m., flanked by law enforcement as well as the parents of children killed by people in the country illegally, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said.

Gidley said it marks "a sad moment and a very important moment" for the country, and alleged the vote against the president was also a vote "against the America people and their safety and security."

The 59-41 tally on Thursday, and the Senate's vote a day earlier to end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen, promised to force Trump into the first vetoes of his presidency as he faces a now-divided Congress. The House is planning a vote to override the expected veto on the national emergency, which is likely to occur on March 26 following next week's recess. But it is unlikely that Congress will have the votes to override it.

Two years into the Trump era, a dozen Republicans, pushed along by Democrats, showed a willingness to take the political risk of defecting. The 12 GOP senators, including the party's 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney of Utah, joined the dissent over the emergency declaration order that would enable the president to seize for the wall billions of dollars Congress intended to be spent elsewhere.

"The Senate's waking up a little bit to our responsibilities," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who said the chamber had become "a little lazy" as an equal branch of government. "I think the value of these last few weeks is to remind the Senate of our constitutional place."

Many senators said the vote was not necessarily a rejection of the president or the wall, but protections against future presidents — namely a Democrat who might want to declare an emergency on climate change, gun control or any number of other issues.

"This is constitutional question, it's a question about the balance of power that is core to our constitution," Romney said. "This is not about the president."

Thursday's vote was the first direct challenge to the 1976 National Emergencies Act, just as Wednesday's on Yemen was the first time Congress invoked the decades-old War Powers Act to try to rein in a president. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in calling for an end to U.S. backing for the Saudi Arabian-led coalition in the aftermath of the kingdom's role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Even without the numbers needed to override a veto, the twin votes nevertheless sent a message from Capitol Hill.

"Today's votes cap a week of something the American people haven't seen enough of in the last two years," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, "both parties in the United States Congress standing up to Donald Trump."

The result is a role-reversal for Republicans who have been reluctant to take on Trump, bracing against his high-profile tweets and public attacks of reprimand. But now they are facing challenges from voters — in some states where senators face stiff elections -- who are expecting more from Congress.

Centrist Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who's among those most vulnerable in 2020, said she's sure the president "will not be happy with my vote. But I'm a United States senator and I feel my job is to stand up for the Constitution, so let the chips fall where they may."

Trump's grip on the party, though, remains strong and the White House made it clear that Republicans resisting Trump could face political consequences. Ahead of the voting, Trump framed the issue as with-him-or-against-him on border security, a powerful argument with many.

"A vote for today's resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!" Trump tweeted. "Don't vote with Pelosi!" he said in another, referring to the speaker of the House.

A White House official said Trump won't forget when senators who oppose him want him to attend fundraisers or provide other help. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on internal deliberations so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump brought on the challenge months ago when he all but dared Congress not to give him the $5.7 billion he was demanding to build the U.S.-Mexico wall, threatening a federal government shutdown.

Congress declined and the result was the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Against the advice of GOP leaders, Trump invoked the national emergency declaration last month, allowing him to try to tap about $3.6 billion for the wall by shuffling money from military projects, and that drew outrage from many lawmakers. Trump had campaigned for president promising Mexico would pay for the wall.

The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and lawmakers seethed as they worried about losing money for military projects that had already been approved for bases at home and abroad. The Democratic-led House swiftly voted to terminate Trump's order.

Senate Republicans spent weeks trying to avoid this outcome, up until the night before the vote, in a script that was familiar — up until the gavel.</s>President Donald Trump signed the first veto of his presidency Friday, a day after Congress voted to terminate the national emergency Trump declared at the southern border. His declaration was an effort to circumvent Congress to secure more money for his proposed border wall.

The president was joined in the Oval Office by law enforcement and parents of children killed by people in the country illegally.

“Today I am vetoing this resolution. Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution and I have the duty to veto it,” Trump said.

Friday morning, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley called this this "a sad moment and a very important moment" and says the vote against the president is also a vote "against the America people and their safety and security."

Republicans joined Senate Democrats in blocking the order but there do not appear to be enough votes for an override.</s>The Republican-controlled Senate approved a resolution to terminate President Trump’s national emergency declaration at the U.S.-Mexico border, putting Congress on a path to its first veto confrontation with the Trump administration.

Shortly after the vote, President Trump tweeted, “VETO!” Neither chamber mustered the two-thirds support required to override a presidential veto.

The president also tweeted that he looked forward to vetoing the measure, which he called “Democrat inspired.”

But in Thursday’s vote to block the president’s emergency declaration, 12 Republicans voted with all Senate Democrats to pass the resolution. The Democratic-controlled House approved it last month, 245-182, with just 13 House Republicans breaking with the White House.

North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis penned an opinion piece in the Washington Poston Feb. 25 saying he would vote for the resolution blocking the president’s actions to go around Congress to build a border wall, but reversed himself and opposed it on Thursday.

At stake is nearly $6 billion in federal funds that President Trump redirected in a Feb. 15 emergency declaration. The White House is seeking to take that money from accounts at the Treasury and Defense departments to build physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. The president made the order after Congress agreed on a bipartisan basis to provide $1.375 billion in wall funds for this fiscal year, but Trump said it wasn’t enough.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., initially counseled the president against invoking the national emergency out of concerns it would divide Senate Republicans and test the separation of powers, but he voted with the president on Thursday and defended his actions as lawful.

“He has simply operated within existing law, the National Emergencies Act of 1976, to invoke a narrow set of authorities to reprogram a narrow set of funds,” McConnell said. “If Congress has grown uneasy with this new law, as many have, then we should amend it.”

Democrats broadly oppose the wall, but have argued the resolution bends the intent of the law and the constitutional authority of Congress. “We’ve never had a president like this. We’ve had lots of presidents with lots of foibles but none of them seem to equate their own ego with the entire functioning of the government of the United States except this one. We can’t succumb to that,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Trump said Thursday his declaration would withstand expected court challenges. “The legal scholars all say it’s totally constitutional. It’s very important. It’s really a border security vote,” he said.

Other Republicans tried and failed to cut a deal with the White House to help defeat the resolution. There was a last-ditch effort to get Trump to agree to back legislation by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to limit presidential authority to declare national emergencies going forward, but Trump told Lee he wouldn’t support it, and Democrats said they’d block it anyway. “We tried to cut a deal, the president didn’t appear interested,” Lee told reporters on Wednesday. He ultimately supported the resolution.

The resolution is the second Senate rebuke of the Trump administration this week. On Wednesday, senators approved a resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which is another rejection of Trump administration policy.

The rebukes are a reflection of the new divided government in Washington, with House Democrats planning on a more confrontational approach to a president than congressional Republicans, who worked hard to accommodate the president’s agenda during his first two years in office.</s>The move would block an extra $3.6 billion for building the border wall

President Donald Trump listens during a briefing on drug trafficking at the southern border in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Wednesday, March 13, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The Republican-led Senate is set to deal President Donald Trump a rebuke on his declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border, with the only remaining question how many GOP senators will join Democrats in defying him.

Republicans are predicting that Thursday’s showdown vote will result in Congress sending Trump a resolution blocking the border emergency he proclaimed last month to steer an extra $3.6 billion to building border barriers.

Since the Democratic-controlled House approved the measure last month, the Senate vote would force Trump to use a veto to protect his presidential campaign’s “Build the Wall” mantra over objections from his own party.

“It was called turn out the lights, the party’s over,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., recalling a favourite refrain of “Monday Night Football” announcers when a game was out of reach. “Well, that’s appropriate right now.”

Trump tweeted early Thursday about “the big National Emergency vote today” in the Senate, saying, “I am prepared to veto, if necessary,” and called the situation at the border “a National Security and Humanitarian Nightmare.”

Senate passage of the resolution was all but ordained Wednesday after the collapse of efforts by the White House and GOP senators to reach compromise on separate legislation by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, limiting presidents’ powers to declare emergencies in the future.

Republican lawmakers had hoped a deal on that measure would have helped more of them to back Trump’s border emergency in Thursday’s vote. Instead, several Republicans are being boxed into a thorny dilemma: defy Trump and the conservative voters who back him passionately, or assent to what many lawmakers from both parties consider a dubious and dangerous expansion of presidential authority.

With Republicans controlling the Senate 53-47, just four GOP defections would be enough to approve the resolution cancelling Trump’s border emergency.

Lee became the fifth Republican to say they’d back the resolution after Trump called him during a private lunch of GOP senators to say he opposed Lee’s compromise bill. The call was described by two officials who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and described it on condition of anonymity.

Soon afterward, Lee issued a statement saying he’d support the resolution blocking the border emergency.

“Congress has been giving far too much legislative power to the executive branch,” Lee said. He said he’d vote to block Trump’s emergency because his own bill “does not have an immediate path forward.”

The other GOP senators who have said they will vote to block Trump’s border emergency are Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Kentucky’s Rand Paul.

Tillis and Collins face potentially competitive re-election fights in 2020. Tillis said Wednesday that his vote was “still a work in progress” as talks with the White House continued. But perhaps 15 GOP senators might oppose Trump in Thursday’s vote, said one Republican who offered the estimate only on condition of anonymity.

Within the White House there was concern that agreeing to a deal might only limit the number of defections, said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Any Republican hopes of a turnabout rested largely on a familiar phenomenon of the Trump administration — an abrupt change in mind, as he’s done in congressional battles over health care and immigration.

Trump told reporters that he has advised GOP senators to “vote any way you want” on the resolution blocking his emergency declaration — but he added a warning.

“Anybody going against border security, drug trafficking, human trafficking, that’s a bad vote,” he said. Framing Thursday’s vote that way seemed to be a message all but aimed directly at undecided GOP senators facing re-election races next year, of whom there are several.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., tried making it even harder for uncertain Republicans to support Trump’s border emergency. She said the House would never even consider the separate bill limiting future declarations by presidents, including Trump.

“Republican Senators are proposing new legislation to allow the president to violate the Constitution just this once in order to give themselves cover,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The House will not take up this legislation to give President Trump a pass.”

Under a four-decade-old law, presidents have wide leeway in declaring a national emergency. Congress can vote to block a declaration, but the two-thirds majorities required to overcome presidential vetoes make it hard for lawmakers to prevail. Presidents have never before declared an emergency after Congress voted to deny them money for the same purpose.

Lee’s proposal says a presidential emergency would last 30 days unless Congress votes to extend it. It would apply to future emergencies, but not Trump’s current border emergency unless he seeks to renew it next year.

The strongest chance of blocking Trump’s border emergency is likely several lawsuits filed by Democratic state attorneys general, environmental groups and others.

Associated Press writer Catherine Lucey contributed to this report.

Alan Fram And Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.</s>Bill Pape is an avid hiker and Sierra Club member. He’s also a staunch supporter of a border wall between the United States and Mexico. In 30 years of traipsing rocky slopes and dirt trails along California’s southern edge, he has seen everything from coachwhip snakes, ring-tail cats and golden eagles to the decomposing bodies of migrants who tried to cross the blistering desert into the U.S.

Pape, 63, lives in Jacumba Hot Springs, population 600, on the border of San Diego County and Baja, where an existing border wall slices the length of this mountain town. He thinks the nation’s current immigration policy is inhumane, and says he’s seen first-hand how a correctly constructed border wall can cut crime without harming wildlife.

Many are adamantly opposed to any wall cutting off the flow of already decimated species, and are suing to overturn President Donald Trump's emergency declaration and suspension of environmental laws at the border.

Biologists familiar with the terrain here agree having a 1,900 mile wall is unthinkable, but say there's room for compromise on the rocky terrain of politics in certain places.

Pape is not alone in his opinion. Other area residents don’t see the steel fencing as a “big, beautiful wall,” as Trump calls it. They don't even see it as his — it was first built under President Bill Clinton and expanded under President George W. Bush. Despite their appreciation of nature, they see it as indispensable.

“These national environmental groups, they don’t live on the border and they don't understand what it's like,” said Donna Tisdale, 66, founder of Backcountry Against Dumps and an ardent preservationist in the even tinier border town of Boulevard, west of Jacumba. "I don't really like the wall environmentally, but we live here. I think it’s a necessity."

She and her husband own a 200-acre ranch and love seeing bobcats grooming themselves on their front deck, grazing deer out back and myriad other animals. But years ago, her husband also had an automatic weapon aimed at him when he tried to stop a truck carrying would-be immigrants barreling across their land.

Biologist Mark Jorgensen, who was the longtime superintendent of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park just north of here, said, "I understand those people and their concerns for safety. But it is extremely important that we value wildlife corridors as well as walls. We value border security, but hey, wildlife is important in the U.S., too."

The lens of history here in eastern San Diego county stretches across decades rather than election cycles, and is governed more by rural living mixed with vivid memories of local kids in the 1990s going to prison for international drug smuggling and violent, weapons-brandishing convoys racing through town.

Once a sleepy, friendly place whose Mexican neighbors in Jacume sent their children through the simple wire and stick fence at the end of Railroad Street to the local American elementary school, Jacumba was transformed into a major migration and drug smuggling corridor after Operation Gatekeeper in urban San Diego forced cartels and coyotes to shift to the east.

In 2004, the former owner of the Jacumba Hot Springs resort pleaded guilty to smuggling scores of immigrants into town. His lawyer said he felt sorry for them because his own family had fled Nazi Germany, and that he needed their rent for his failing motel. But Pape said there were daily, high speed chases down the town's main street.

These days, heavy, barricaded bollards and corrugated metal walls run behind the library, the senior center, “Snob Hill,” “Relaxo Ranch” and other local spots. In October, a 650-foot long tunnel from Jacume into Jacumba was discovered underground, 15 feet from the front porch of a rental home which Pape owns. In the past two weeks, Army vehicles have arrived to install razor-edged concertina wire on top of the walls.

“It’s certainly ugly, but you can’t climb over it,” Pape said. “The fences that we have ... have made a dramatic difference in security. I’m sure there’s still some activity going on, but it’s a lot more discreet ... not brazen.”

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The wall hasn't cut into his outdoor recreation. "I can take off in any direction and just go," said Pape, who co-leads regular weekend hikes across nearby wilderness areas, ancient Native American sites and other untrammeled open spaces. "There's not a lot of brush in the way."

Other species also crisscross the region, drawn by the same cool breezes at higher elevation and the springs tumbling out of granite rocks that have brought humans to this remote corner for thousands of years.

An added attraction are natural hot springs, formed by a fissure between two earthquake faults. "Ja - cumba" roughly translated from the ancient Kumeyaay Indian language means "hot water" or "rising water." Native cooking spots can still be seen in the center of town, a block from the resort — actually a motel with a mineral-fed hot tub next to the restroom at its Raven's Nest bar, a different type of watering hole.

“All these little communities across the Southwest are nestled up against water sources because they needed those springs or creeks. Well, the same is true of the wildlife, they need the water," said Dan Millis, the Sierra Club's Borderlands coordinator, based in Tucson, Ariz. Millis said wildlife along many stretches of the existing 650-mile border wall from San Diego to the Rio Grande have suffered due to habitat fragmentation, loss of food and other impacts. "It's death by a thousand cuts," he said.

Jorgensen agreed. Rare jaguarina, prong-horned sheep, burrowing owls and Quino checker spot butterflies all have had habitat cut in half by the imposing physical barricades.

The Jacumba area is a vital transitional zone between the Yuha desert floor and formidable mountain peaks, Jorgensen said, which includes mid-range slopes, deep canyons, fractured granite boulders, chaparral and a wide range of vegetation, from pines to live oaks. It makes for scenic hiking, and it's also perfect habitat for everything from lizards to large mammals.

Foremost among them are the endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep. Descendants of their species' own migration from Asia half a million years ago, the rams need hundreds of miles to move and mate, as do the male mountain lions that feed on them. The curly horned ungulates once roamed from Palm Springs deep into Mexico.

But their numbers plunged due to urbanization, disease and fragmentation of habitat. The species was declared federally endangered in 1998. By then a sub-population north of Jacumba and the Interstate 8 freeway had been all but wiped out, with just 28 sheep remaining. By setting aside additional park lands, restricting illegal off-roading and other measures, those numbers increased to 232 sheep by 2010.

"It's exceptional, the rebounding of that sub-population," said Jorgensen, who has studied bighorns for decades.

To the great joy and relief of Jorgensen and other researchers, the sheep have also begun re-inhabiting their historic range, crossing the freeway into the Jacumba Wilderness and moving on into Mexico.

"The population down there does not recognize international boundaries. It freely uses the area on both sides," said Sally Theriault, visitor center manager for the Anza-Borrego state park, which stretches south nearly to the border.

State fish and game scientists have monitored hundreds of crossings by radio-collared bighorn sheep in recent years. They've also watched a male mountain lion, which traveled south through the state park 30 miles into Mexico, "where he probably fed on sheep and then turned around and came back to the exact spot where he'd been radio-collared three months earlier," Jorgensen said. A ram was tracked traveling 70 miles through six sub-populations.

Having adequate varied terrain, including mountain passes and grassy desert areas, allows them to move away from extreme drought, up into cooler areas as climate change takes hold, and to increase genetic diversity. Rams crowded into smaller areas will inbreed with close female relatives, causing birth defects and other problems that kill off lambs sooner.

So how have they managed to make such a comeback, despite miles of physical barriers?

Jorgensen doesn't mince words when it comes to President Trump's proposal: "He's a New York businessman who doesn't know a thing about what wildlife or the American people want."

But years ago, Jorgensen spoke with a different Republican elected official about the Jacumba wilderness.

"I had seen this area and I discussed this with Rep. Duncan Hunter Sr. several times, and I would say (he) was a good proponent for the bighorn sheep in more ways than one. Duncan Hunter Sr., not Jr.," he said.

"It was decided that there was no way vehicles could get over the mountains beyond Jacumba and down onto the desert floor. But bighorn will go along ridges and piles of boulders which vehicles cannot reach."

The decision was made to allow wildlife to pass through there between the two countries.

Today, the border wall dead-ends into Airport Mesa. Mountain lions, coyotes and the sheep and mule deer they feed on cross the border freely high above town. The open stretch remains a vital trans-boundary opening. For now.

There's still Trump's push to complete the wall, which does not sit well with many.

“They should not close off that gap,” said Michael Rood, an Imperial County attorney who has spent weekends hiking the area for years. "I think we've got enough wall as is."

Pape agrees the open area needs to stay, and notes that it's impassable for vehicles or people. But he could see erecting the wall across Davies Valley just over the Imperial County line and other low-lying areas. It wouldn't just stop crime, it could save lives, he says. Three times in the 1990s he stumbled across corpses — two not far from each other when he was doing a night hike in Pinto Canyon, and the third, badly decayed, as he hiked in the Valley of the Moon.

Nationally, the Sierra Club and other environmental and human rights organizations say the evidence shows that's incorrect. Much of the unauthorized entry and drug smuggling have simply shifted further east to Yuma, Ariz., and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. They say Trump is violating federal laws by ordering construction of fencing without assessments of potential harm to ecosystems and wildlife. Environmental groups in western San Diego, Arizona and New Mexico support the lawsuits, saying rare butterflies and other species are being harmed.

Closer to home, Tisdale says she knows there’s an impact on nature and on area groundwater. When it rains, the wall through Boulevard blocks off free-flowing runoff into washes, causing muddy floods and other problems. People here live off of wells, just as animals live off of area springs.

"It cuts migration routes for wildlife, it does. We've got mountain lions, we've got deer, we've got the bighorn sheep down by Jacumba," she said. "And It's pretty much a nuisance when water can’t flow its natural course. It also reduces the recharge rate of our aquifer. We're all on groundwater."

But her solution isn’t to tear down the wall — it’s to use a different style. The old Vietnam-era corrugated metal landing mats that were installed under Clinton can easily be climbed by people, she notes, while rain and mud backs up on either side during heavy storms. The more modern, thick steel bollards installed under Bush that now stretch across part of Jacumba would curb human migration even more, she says. And the water and smaller species could pass right through.

That's not good enough, says Jorgensen, who said high posts with a few inches of space between them still add up to an impregnable wall .

"A solid wall for 1,900 miles is not a compromise," he said. "Like I mentioned before, what could work is if everybody could stand there and say, 'here's where vehicles can go, we're going to put barriers across those, and here's where they'd never be able to go, and that's where we're going to leave it naturally open."

He stops for a minute, then thinks of one more species that's in trouble.

"You've also got the flat-horned lizard, which has a very restricted range. I know the answer is going to be, 'who cares about flat-tailed horned lizards? We're talking about drugs and murder here.' My answer is, there needs to be accommodation for wildlife that's been here for millions of years.

"We're a supposedly advanced, civilized society, most of our needs are cared for here, unlike the countries where many of these people trying to get here are from. We also need to be good stewards for wildlife."</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was poised to issue the first veto of his presidency Friday afternoon, after a bipartisan rebuke of the national emergency he declared to circumvent Congress and fund his long-stalled southern border wall.

A dozen defecting Republicans joined Senate Democrats on the joint resolution Thursday, which capped a week of confrontation with the White House as both parties in Congress strained to exert their power in new ways. And Trump made clear how he planned to respond, tweeting the word “VETO!” in all caps just moments after the vote.

Trump will issue the veto at a ceremony in the Oval Office at 3:30 p.m., flanked by law enforcement as well as the parents of children killed by people in the country illegally, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said.

Gidley said it marks “a sad moment and a very important moment” for the country, and alleged the vote against the president was also a vote “against the America people and their safety and security.”

The 59-41 tally on Thursday, and the Senate’s vote a day earlier to end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen, promised to force Trump into the first vetoes of his presidency as he faces a now-divided Congress. The House is planning a vote to override the expected veto on the national emergency, which is likely to occur on March 26 following next week’s recess. But it is unlikely that Congress will have the votes to override it.

Two years into the Trump era, a dozen Republicans, pushed along by Democrats, showed a willingness to take the political risk of defecting. The 12 GOP senators, including the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney of Utah, joined the dissent over the emergency declaration order that would enable the president to seize for the wall billions of dollars Congress intended to be spent elsewhere.

“The Senate’s waking up a little bit to our responsibilities,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who said the chamber had become “a little lazy” as an equal branch of government. “I think the value of these last few weeks is to remind the Senate of our constitutional place.”

Many senators said the vote was not necessarily a rejection of the president or the wall, but protections against future presidents — namely a Democrat who might want to declare an emergency on climate change, gun control or any number of other issues.

“This is constitutional question, it’s a question about the balance of power that is core to our constitution,” Romney said. “This is not about the president.”

Thursday’s vote was the first direct challenge to the 1976 National Emergencies Act, just as Wednesday’s on Yemen was the first time Congress invoked the decades-old War Powers Act to try to rein in a president. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in calling for an end to U.S. backing for the Saudi Arabian-led coalition in the aftermath of the kingdom’s role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Even without the numbers needed to override a veto, the twin votes nevertheless sent a message from Capitol Hill.

“Today’s votes cap a week of something the American people haven’t seen enough of in the last two years,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, “both parties in the United States Congress standing up to Donald Trump.”

The result is a role-reversal for Republicans who have been reluctant to take on Trump, bracing against his high-profile tweets and public attacks of reprimand. But now they are facing challenges from voters — in some states where senators face stiff elections — who are expecting more from Congress.

Centrist Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who’s among those most vulnerable in 2020, said she’s sure the president “will not be happy with my vote. But I’m a United States senator and I feel my job is to stand up for the Constitution, so let the chips fall where they may.”

Trump’s grip on the party, though, remains strong and the White House made it clear that Republicans resisting Trump could face political consequences. Ahead of the voting, Trump framed the issue as with-him-or-against-him on border security, a powerful argument with many.

“A vote for today’s resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!” Trump tweeted. “Don’t vote with Pelosi!” he said in another, referring to the speaker of the House.

A White House official said Trump won’t forget when senators who oppose him want him to attend fundraisers or provide other help. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on internal deliberations so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump brought on the challenge months ago when he all but dared Congress not to give him the $5.7 billion he was demanding to build the U.S.-Mexico wall, threatening a federal government shutdown.

Congress declined and the result was the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Against the advice of GOP leaders, Trump invoked the national emergency declaration last month, allowing him to try to tap about $3.6 billion for the wall by shuffling money from military projects, and that drew outrage from many lawmakers. Trump had campaigned for president promising Mexico would pay for the wall.

The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and lawmakers seethed as they worried about losing money for military projects that had already been approved for bases at home and abroad. The Democratic-led House swiftly voted to terminate Trump’s order.

Senate Republicans spent weeks trying to avoid this outcome, up until the night before the vote, in a script that was familiar — up until the gavel.

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Catherine Lucey, Zeke Miller, Padmananda Rama and Andrew Taylor in Washington and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed.</s>The Republican-controlled Senate approved a resolution to terminate President Trump's national emergency declaration at the U.S.-Mexico border, putting Congress on a path to its first veto confrontation with the Trump administration.

Shortly after the vote, President Trump tweeted, "VETO!" Neither chamber mustered the two-thirds support required to override a presidential veto.

The president also tweeted that he looked forward to vetoing the measure, which he called "Democrat inspired."

But in Thursday's vote to block the president's emergency declaration, 12 Republicans voted with all Senate Democrats to pass the resolution. The Democratic-controlled House approved it last month, 245-182, with just 13 House Republicans breaking with the White House.

North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Feb. 25 saying he would vote for the resolution blocking the president's actions to go around Congress to build a border wall, but reversed himself and opposed it on Thursday.

At stake is nearly $6 billion in federal funds that President Trump redirected in a Feb. 15 emergency declaration. The White House is seeking to take that money from accounts at the Treasury and Defense departments to build physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. The president made the order after Congress agreed on a bipartisan basis to provide $1.375 billion in wall funds for this fiscal year, but Trump said it wasn't enough.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., initially counseled the president against invoking the national emergency out of concerns it would divide Senate Republicans and test the separation of powers, but he voted with the president on Thursday and defended his actions as lawful.

"He has simply operated within existing law, the National Emergencies Act of 1976, to invoke a narrow set of authorities to reprogram a narrow set of funds," McConnell said. "If Congress has grown uneasy with this new law, as many have, then we should amend it."

Democrats broadly oppose the wall, but have argued the resolution bends the intent of the law and the constitutional authority of Congress. "We've never had a president like this. We've had lots of presidents with lots of foibles but none of them seem to equate their own ego with the entire functioning of the government of the United States except this one. We can't succumb to that," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Trump said Thursday his declaration would withstand expected court challenges. "The legal scholars all say it's totally constitutional. It's very important. It's really a border security vote," he said.

Many Senate Republicans aren't as sure. "Never before has a president asked for funding, Congress has not provided it, and the president then has used the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to spend the money anyway," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who said congressional authority to appropriate federal tax dollars is a "crucial source of our freedom."

"This declaration is a dangerous precedent," he added.

Other Republicans tried and failed to cut a deal with the White House to help defeat the resolution. There was a last-ditch effort to get Trump to agree to back legislation by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to limit presidential authority to declare national emergencies going forward, but Trump told Lee he wouldn't support it, and Democrats said they'd block it anyway. "We tried to cut a deal, the president didn't appear interested," Lee told reporters on Wednesday. He ultimately supported the resolution.

The resolution is the second Senate rebuke of the Trump administration this week. On Wednesday, senators approved a resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which is another rejection of Trump administration policy.

The rebukes are a reflection of the new divided government in Washington, with House Democrats planning on a more confrontational approach to a president than congressional Republicans, who worked hard to accommodate the president's agenda during his first two years in office.



President Trump tweeted a single word this afternoon - veto, exclamation point. He was responding to a congressional vote terminating his national emergency declaration to build a wall. In the Senate, a dozen Republicans broke with the White House to side with Democrats. The democratically-controlled House had already voted against the emergency declaration. The president has been consistent all along about how he would respond. This is what he said earlier today before the Senate vote.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, no. I don't know what the vote will be. It doesn't matter. I'll probably have to veto.

SHAPIRO: And this would be the first veto of the Trump presidency. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis joins us now. Hi, Sue.

SHAPIRO: The outcome of this vote was not in doubt because Democrats had enough support from Republicans to pass it. But how surprising is it that 12 Republicans broke with the White House?

DAVIS: You know, when you think about how reluctant Republicans generally are to break with President Trump, especially on an issue like the wall, it does speak to how deep the concern is in Congress that there's something much bigger at stake here. Those 12 Republicans who sided with Democrats - they all support the wall. The question is about whether President Trump is operating within the bounds of the Constitution, not with the national emergency declaration itself. The law is pretty unambiguous that he has the authority to declare national emergencies, but it's in the question of using that authority to then redirect this money that Congress has already decided to be spent elsewhere. So what Congress is saying is that they are trying to overturn the president's February 15th order, which aims to redirect about $6 billion to build a wall.

SHAPIRO: Assuming that the president follows through on his promise to veto this, there are not enough votes to overturn his veto, override it. So where does it go from here?

DAVIS: So 16 states have already filed legal challenges to the president's declaration, so that has to play out. Democrats on Capitol Hill also say they intend to fight it in the courts. The vote by Congress, while it doesn't have the votes to override, could play a factor in these legal challenges 'cause it will send a message to the courts about what the legislative branch's position is here. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell - before this, he had privately urged the president not to go down this path, although ultimately, today he voted with the White House. But when he was speaking on the floor today, he made the point that if Congress doesn't like the way the president's using these powers, they should do something about it. This is what he said.

MITCH MCCONNELL: He has simply operated within existing law - the National Emergencies Act of 1976 - to invoke a narrow set of authorities to reprogram a narrow set of funds. If Congress has grown uneasy with this new law, as many have, then we should amend it.

DAVIS: The catch here, Ari? A lot of Republicans actually did try to do that. There was a last-minute effort this week among some Senate Republicans to say to the White House, we'll vote down the resolution if the president will say he will support legislation to limit future presidential authority to declare national emergencies. And President Trump told Republicans he could not commit to supporting that.

SHAPIRO: And what's really amazing, Sue, is this is the second vote this week where the Republican-controlled Senate rejected Trump administration positions. There was also a vote on ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which the administration supports. Is this a sea change? I mean, are we living in a different era now?

DAVIS: It is certainly a different chapter. You know, for his first two years in office, President Trump had Republicans in control of the House and Senate. They worked very hard to accommodate the president, move his legislative agenda. I think on, you know, a singular basis, lawmakers still overwhelmingly support President Trump. But as the next two years unfold, he's got a loyal opposition in the House. And he does have a not-insignificant number of Republican senators who, at turns, are uneasy about his foreign policy, his trade policy and, as we saw today, his possible executive overreach.

DAVIS: You're very welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.</s>Wasting no time in responding to the Senate’s action Thursday to give final congressional approval to a resolution intended to block President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration, Trump vetoed the measure Friday.

“Consistent with the law and the legislative process designed by our Founders, today I am vetoing this resolution. Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution, and I have the duty to veto it,” Trump said, according to a White House transcript.

The veto is the first of his presidency.

“I have to, in particular, thank the Republican — strong, wonderful people — the Republican senators that were on our side and on the side of border security and on the side of doing what they have to to keep our nation safe,” Trump said.

He later added that the vote for the resolution was “a vote against reality.”

Trump’s declaration was made under the National Emergency Act, which allows Congress to take action to block a presidential declaration.

Based on the House and Senate votes to pass the resolution, the declaration’s opponents do not have the votes to override the veto. On Thursday, 12 GOP senators joined with Democrats to oppose the emergency declaration.

Although Congress failed to stop the declaration, it will face court challenges.

Trump has said is necessary to spur construction of the border wall along the southern border between the United States and Mexico.

In a statement accompanying his veto, he said that “our porous southern border continues to be a magnet for lawless migration and criminals and has created a border security and humanitarian crisis that endangers every American.”

“Last month alone, (the Border Patrol) apprehended more than 76,000 aliens improperly attempting to enter the United States along the southern border — the largest monthly total in the last 5 years,” the president said.

Trump noted that the border allows huge quantities of illegal drugs into the nation, as well as individuals who commit crimes in the U.S.

“In other words, aliens coming across our border have injured or killed thousands of people, while drugs flowing through the border have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans,” he said.

The president said border security “is rapidly deteriorating because of who is arriving and how they are arriving.”

Noting that at one time most illegal immigrants were single adults from Mexico, Trump said that has changed.

“More recently, however, illegal migrants have organized into caravans that include large numbers of families and unaccompanied children from Central American countries,” he said. “Last year, for example, a record number of families crossed the border illegally. If the current trend holds, the number of families crossing in fiscal year 2019 will greatly surpass last year’s record total.

“Criminal organizations are taking advantage of these large flows of families and unaccompanied minors to conduct dangerous illegal activity, including human trafficking, drug smuggling, and brutal killings.”

Trump said that under current immigration laws, “the Government is forced to release many of them into the interior of the United States, pending lengthy judicial proceedings. Although many fail ever to establish any legal right to remain in this country, they stay nonetheless.”

In short, the president wrote, “This situation on our border cannot be described as anything other than a national emergency, and our Armed Forces are needed to help confront it.”

“Every day, the crisis on our border is deepening, and with new surges of migrants expected in the coming months, we are straining our border enforcement personnel and resources to the breaking point,” he said.

The resolution “ignores these realities,” the president said. “It is a dangerous resolution that would undermine United States sovereignty and threaten the lives and safety of countless Americans. It is, therefore, my duty to return it to the House of Representatives without my approval.”

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.</s>U.S. President Donald Trump has issued the first veto of his presidency, overriding a congressional measure and protecting his national security declaration to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution and I have the duty to veto it," Trump said Friday in the Oval Office.

Surrounded by law enforcement officials as well as parents of children killed by people who were illegally in the United States, Trump called the congressional action "dangerous" and "reckless."

On Thursday, Congress formally rejected Trump's national emergency declaration to fund border wall construction, as the Senate voted 59 to 41 to disapprove the executive action.

A dozen Republicans joined with Senate Democrats to back the resolution.

The House had passed the measure weeks earlier, largely along party lines.

Trump's veto sends the issue back to Congress, where it is unlikely that there will be enough support to override the veto. Two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate are needed to overcome a presidential veto.

Earlier this year, a politically divided Congress provided limited funds to erect new fencing along small sections of the U.S.-Mexico border, an outlay Trump deemed inadequate.

The president then declared a national emergency, allowing him to redirect federal funds for the wall, which the White House said would come from mostly military accounts.

The president has argued the situation at the border is a crisis that warrants such an emergency declaration, and has said the United States is facing an invasion of people trying to enter the country illegally.

Democrats have largely opposed building a wall on the southern border.

Republicans who voted against Trump's national security declaration said that while they supported increasing security on the southern border, they did not support Trump's attempt to bypass Congress.

Congress has not funded Trump's border wall requests during the more than two years he has been in office, including during the first two years when Republicans were in control of both houses of Congress.</s>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump promised to fight Democrats and Republicans in Washington, and, with his first-ever veto Friday, he did just that.

“Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution, and I have the duty to veto it,” he said as he sent a measure that would have terminated his declaration of a national emergency — and the transfer of billions of dollars to build his promised border wall — right back to Capitol Hill.

The day before, a dozen Republican senators had joined with Democrats to pass the measure, an unusually large number of GOP defections from Trump’s line.

While Trump played down the fracture Friday — “I didn’t need the votes,” he said — it showed that by engaging in a battle with Congress over the power of the purse, he has weakened institutional support for the wall, and for his authority, among Washington Republicans.

That is, even some Republicans who say they're for the wall are drawing the line at Trump declaring a national emergency and seizing spending decisions from Congress to do it.

But some Republicans say that may not be a bad thing for Trump as he heads into the 2020 election.

On the surface, it suggests he’ll have a much tougher time winning budget battles with a Congress that is obviously increasingly inclined to assert its own prerogatives and restrain his. But Trump doesn't have any domestic policy agenda items that approach the political importance of the wall, and he wants to campaign against Washington again.

It's all the better if he can run, at least a little bit, against both parties, said Matt Schlapp, a Trump ally and chairman of the American Conservative Union.

“They gave him a gift,” Schlapp said of Congress sending him the resolution. “The president is at his strongest when he is fighting and he is seen as credible when he is fighting members of his own party…especially when the principles are on his side.”

Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and frequent Trump critic, noted that the president said Friday he wasn't upset with Republicans who defected. Steele said he sensed a little bit of public theater playing out on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the boulevard that runs between the White House and the Capitol.

"On the vote itself, there's a lot of high-minded drama about what these senators did," he said, noting that there was no chance of the president's veto being overridden and that most of the Republicans who defected aren't up for re-election next year. "I'm not convinced."

As for Trump, Steele added, "he loves the fight, he doesn't care who he's fighting, it doesn't matter if it's Republicans or Democrats ... for him, politically, it reaffirms for his base why they sent him to Washington."

Ultimately, the courts will decide whether Trump's spending gambit passes constitutional muster. For now, Democrats and some Republicans argue that his decision to grab money from existing projects and rededicate it to build the wall is a violation of Congress' constitutional primacy in spending matters.

"The House and Senate resoundingly rejected the President’s lawless power grab, yet the president has chosen to continue to defy the Constitution, the Congress and the will of the American people," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement released after the veto.

Some Republican critics of the president's methods, including Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, have raised constitutional concerns, while others have simply worried that a future Democratic president would use the precedent set by Trump to spend money on pet projects not approved by Congress.

Rachel Bovard, the policy director at the Conservative Policy Institute and a former aide to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who cited constitutional concerns in voting against the president Thursday, said that the emergency declaration doesn't violate the separation of powers principle.

"The Constitution is not in crisis. The border is," Bovard said in a text exchange with NBC. "The president's declaration follows the law that Congress passed. They've appropriated money and authorized a law that allows this wall to be built. If Congress wants to change the law that disallows future presidents from taking this action, they are well within their rights to do so."

To Bovard, the question is a political one, not a legal one.

"Trump is using the power that Congress gave him to secure the border — which is more than Congress is apparently willing to do," she said. "So what's truly at stake is whether or not Republicans are going to be united on border security going into 2020."

The movement of power toward the executive branch, and away from Congress, is a long-running trend, said Mack McLarty, who served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.

While he sees Trump's use of executive power in this instance — including the veto and the original decision to shift money around — as "unique" because it "interferes with Congress’ rights ...in terms of appropriations funds," he said Friday's action makes sense in the context of the emphasis Trump has put on the wall.

"This is a priority issue for him, and this is why he’s using the veto pen," McLarty said.
U.S. President Donald Trump issues his first ever veto after Congress attempts to block his emergency declaration to fund construction of the wall along the Mexico–United States border.