While President Donald Trump appeared to claim Monday that “voters are on board with us,” recent polling shows that there is bipartisan resistance to his invocation of emergency powers to build his border wall. | AFP/Getty Images White House Trump warns GOP senators wavering on emergency declaration

President Donald Trump issued a warning Monday to GOP senators considering voting to block his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, suggesting that those who do so have fallen into a trap set by Democrats.

“I hope our great Republican Senators don’t get led down the path of weak and ineffective Border Security,” he tweeted. “Without strong Borders, we don’t have a Country - and the voters are on board with us. Be strong and smart, don’t fall into the Democrats “trap” of Open Borders and Crime!”


The House is set to vote Tuesday on a resolution of disapproval that would block the president's national emergency declaration. The measure is expected to pass the House and head to the Senate, which would be forced to vote on the measure.

Republicans have a slight majority in the Senate, but the resolution requires only a simple majority to pass, meaning only a handful of GOP votes — along with Democrats' votes — would be needed to send the measure to the president's desk. Trump likely would veto the resolution if it were to pass both houses of Congress, all but killing it, because the measure likely would have insufficient support to override a veto.

While Republicans have been nearly unanimous in their support for Trump’s border wall, they have expressed concerns about the tactic of issuing an emergency declaration to advance a political goal, arguing that it would set a precedent that the GOP would come to rue under a Democratic president.

Some of Trump’s own national security officials have declined to label the situation at the southern border an emergency, and the declaration has already been challenged in court by advocacy groups and state attorneys general.

There has also been opposition to the president’s bypassing Congress — which has the constitutional authority to appropriate funds — in order to redirect Pentagon funding to his wall.

Over the weekend, groups of former national security officials and former GOP members of Congress urged lawmakers to pass the resolution blocking Trump's national emergency declaration.

While Trump claimed Monday that “voters are on board with us,” recent polling shows that there is bipartisan resistance to his invocation of emergency powers to build a border wall.

And though he appeared confident Republicans would side with him on the vote, last week he said he was prepared to veto the resolution and predicted his declaration would survive Congress' action.

“We have too many smart people that want border security so I can't imagine it [the resolution] will survive a veto,” he told reporters Friday.