Court Battles Over Trump’s ‘Emergency’ Are Just Getting Started

Plus, Elizabeth Warren's universal child care plan

Court Battles Over Trump’s ‘Emergency’ Are Just Getting Started

A coalition of 16 states filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday challenging President Trump’s move to invoke emergency powers to redirect billions of dollars for construction of a border wall.

The 57-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seeks to block the president from moving forward with his plan, arguing that there is no emergency at the border and that Trump’s declaration violates the Constitution’s separation of powers and other federal statutes. The states brining the complaint — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai'i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Virginia — are all led by Democratic governors, except for Maryland.

“We’re suing President Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement announcing the suit. The states say they and their residents will be hurt by Trump’s diversion of federal funds.

The Trump administration said last week it intends to use $600 million from a Treasury Department asset forfeiture fund; about $2.5 billion from a military antidrug fund, though that money would first have to be pulled in from other, as-yet unidentified programs; and $3.6 billion in military construction funds that the president would use emergency powers to tap. That all is in addition to the $1.375 billion appropriated by Congress for border security.

The Justice Department has not commented on the lawsuit, but the president on Twitter described the lawsuit as being “led mostly by Open Border Democrats and the Radical Left.” Trump initially tweeted that the lawsuit was brought by 16 cities before correcting the error.

This isn’t the only legal challenge to Trump’s emergency declaration: Two other cases had already been filed. The nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen sued Trump Friday in federal court in the District of Columbia on behalf of a few Texas landowners and an environmental group in the state. The Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Legal Defense Fund jointly filed suit Saturday, also in D.C. And Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and advocacy group, sued the Justice Department on Friday, saying it failed to provide documents detailing the legal basis for the president’s declaration of a national emergency. At least two other lawsuits are reportedly expected to be filed this week. But the challenge by the states is the “heavyweight” among the filings so far, The Washington Post says.

Congress is working on its own challenge to Trump: Lawmakers are likely to take up a “joint resolution of termination” to end Trump’s emergency declaration, though they may not have to votes to override a presidential veto. So a court challenge from Congress is also likely, and the Democratic-led House could bring a lawsuit of its own or support a lawsuit by a third party.

The outlook for the cases isn’t clear — and won’t just rest on the big constitutional question at hand: While Trump declaration is the first time a national emergency has been used to secure funding for a specific policy objective rejected by Congress, experts say the outcome in court “may turn less on such high constitutional principle and more on complex legal issues — from whether plaintiffs can establish that the case is properly before the courts, to how to interpret several statutes,” The New York Times’ Charlie Savage and Robert Pear report. “Further complicating matters, the administration has said it intends to spend the funds in sequence, starting with the $1.375 billion Congress appropriated, and reaching the emergency-power military-construction fund last. The Justice Department is likely to argue that if no disputed spending is imminent, the case is not ripe for litigation and should be dismissed.”

2020 Watch

Sanders Says He’s Running for President Again

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced Tuesday that he’s making another run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Among the items on the 77-year-old democratic socialist’s 2020 agenda: enacting a “Medicare for All” single-payer health care system, the Green New Deal, a minimum wage of $15 an hour, free tuition at public colleges, expanding Social Security benefits and lowering drug prices via government intervention. Read more on Sanders’ policy agenda at The Washington Post or The New York Times.

Asked in an interview with CBS what would be different compared to his 2016 run, Sanders said, “We’re going to win.” Trump re-election campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany was quick to say that Sanders “has already won” to Democratic primary debate “because every candidate is embracing his brand of socialism. But the American people will reject an agenda of sky-high tax rates, government-run health care and coddling dictators like those in Venezuela.”

The bottom line: Sanders has some powerful advantages, including a large and devoted following, grassroots fund-raising capabilities and campaign experience. But his success in moving the Democratic Party to the left may present some challenges compared to 2016, especially since this time he won’t be the only liberal challenger to an establishment front-runner.

“Many of the items on his 2016 agenda appear to have become articles of faith to many Democratic voters and to some of the other candidates seeking the nomination,” The Washington Post’s Dan Balz writes. “Various other candidates will have pieces of that message, in some cases large pieces. At the same time, there is a brewing debate among the Democratic candidates about the wisdom of taking an agenda that includes pledges of Medicare-for-all and the most aggressive version of a Green New Deal into a general election, just to name two.”

Warren Proposes Universal Child Care, Paid for by Taxing the Rich

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who’s running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, on Tuesday unveiled a universal child care plan that would cap families’ expenses at 7 percent of income no matter how many children they have in care. It would be paid for, Warren says, by her proposed wealth tax.

Warren’s new plan would provide free child care for families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, meaning less than $51,500 for a family of four in 2019. Families making more would have to pay, depending on how much they earn, but no family would pay more than 7 percent — the figure that the Department of Health and Human Services uses to define “affordable” child care, according to HuffPost’s Jonathan Cohn.

Many families now face child-care costs significantly higher than that. “As of 2017, married couple[s] paid an average of 11 percent of their household income on child care, while single parents paid 37 percent, according to the research and advocacy organization Child Care Aware of America,” Cohn reports. And Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur says that, “Americans pay nearly as much for child care as they do for rent, with the average cost of child care in the U.S. approaching $1,400 a month, according to a 2018 HotPads analysis of a Care.com state and metro area pricing index.”

The costs: Warren’s plan would cost a net $70 billion a year, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics economists Mark Zandi and Sophia Koropeckyj — an amount “at least four times what the federal government currently spends on its main early childhood programs, which include Head Start, a block grant for state-level child care programs, and a tax credit that mostly benefits middle-class families,” HuffPost’s Cohn says.

Warren says the new program would be paid for by her proposed “Ultra-Millionaire Tax,” which would apply to families with a net worth of more than $50 million. "Experts project that the Ultra-Millionaire Tax will generate $2.75 trillion in new government revenue over the next ten years," the senator wrote in a post on Medium.com. "That’s about four times more than the entire cost of my Universal Child Care and Early Learning plan."

Warren’s proposal, similar to the Head Start program, would have the federal government work with local partners to create a network of child care choices, including licensed child care centers, preschool centers and in-home options. She said that the local providers would be held to national standards and that child care workers would be paid like comparable public school teachers.

“My plan will guarantee high-quality child care and early education for every child in America from birth to school age," Warren said. "It will be free for millions of American families, and affordable for everyone. This is the kind of big, structural change we need to produce an economy that works for everyone."

Klobuchar Pitches Herself as Pragmatic Alternative to Progressive Dems

At a CNN town hall in New Hampshire Monday night, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) drew some clear distinctions between herself and some of the most progressive Democratic presidential candidates in the 2020 race.

  • She called the Green New Deal “aspirational.”

     
  • She said that “Medicare for all” is “could be a possibility in the future. I'm just looking for something that will work now." She favors improving the Affordable Care Act, adding and public option, and expanding Medicare and Medicaid.

     
  • She said she is not for Sen. Bernie Sanders plan for free four-year college for all, citing the growing national debt to argue that the country can’t afford it. “If I was a magic genie, and could give that for everyone, and we could afford it, I would,” she said in response to a recent college graduate’s question. “I’ve got to tell the truth. We have a mounting debt that the Trump administration keeps getting worse and worse.  I also don't want to leave that on the shoulders of all these kids.”

Her answer on free college didn’t impress the young activist who asked about it. “We don’t need a genie to end the student debt crisis, we need a president who isn’t afraid to tax wall street and the 1 percent to fund critical programs like free college for all,” he told The Hill. But the response drew applause from others in the audience — and her townhall drew plaudits from some in the political press.

  • “Sen. Amy Klobuchar seems willing to say one word that often goes unspoken by presidential candidates eager to win over voters: No,” CNN’s Jeff Zeleny writes. “With her presidential campaign only eight days old, Klobuchar is testing the balance between pragmatism and purity, while resisting the urge to pander to the party's progressive wing.”

     
  • “Her stances appear to be rooted in acknowledging a Democratic electorate interested in big ideas but recognizing some proposals might be too radical to win over independents who backed Trump in 2016,” Eugene Scott writes at The Washington Post.

     
  • “Klobuchar might be aiming a bit low on health care, as far as some Democrats are concerned,” says Slate’s Jordan Weissmann. “But they should give her credit: At least she’s telling them enough to know where she stands.”
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Stay classy, San Diego! Congratulations to the San Diego Padres and Manny Machado, who have reportedly reached an agreement on a 10-year, $300 million deal, the largest ever for a free agent in Major League Baseball.



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