Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said Republicans are telling Democrats privately that President Donald Trump was “acting childish and is violating the Constitution” with his national emergency declaration.

Brown said, “Well, this is the first kind of emergency we’ve seen like this that a president has done this. He couldn’t get the Mexicans to build the wall. Couldn’t get Congress to vote the money in. This is the, in fact, the first emergency declaration like this with that kind of construct where he got turned down by Congress and then went ahead and did it. That’s why you see so many Republicans saying don’t do this.”

He continued, “Republicans are afraid he’s going to take the money from somewhere else in something they care about but fundamentally, they think it’s a president who failed who hates to lose who is acting childish and is violating the Constitution. Republican after Republican is telling us that privately.”

He added, “We will have a vote on this likely in the next two or three weeks. See if those Republicans show the backbone that they generally haven’t shown standing up to this president in the past. But this is more serious because it’s a constitutional question. So I take them at their word that they’ll stand up to him.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN