House Votes to Block Trump’s National Emergency Declaration About the Border – The New York Times

But ahead of the Senate vote, lawmakers have not said what their next steps would be if the resolution to stop the emergency declaration fails.

Three Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have said that they will support the resolution, and several others have expressed extreme unease. Vice President Mike Pence and a Justice Department lawyer joined Republican senators on Tuesday for a lunch on Capitol Hill to outline what they maintained was the president’s statutory authority for the declaration and need for additional money.

Mr. Pence faced some frustration from senators about Mr. Trump’s decision to make the declaration and the legal grounds for doing so, particularly from Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, according to three people familiar with the exchange who asked for anonymity to describe a private meeting.

When Mr. Paul argued that Mr. Pence, a former representative, would have opposed Mr. Trump’s use of an emergency declaration and compared it to President Barack Obama’s use of an executive order to establish protections for young undocumented immigrants under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Mr. Pence objected, according to one person. He argued that there was a difference between the two uses of executive power, according to two people.

A spokesman for Mr. Paul said that the senator had raised concerns, along with other senators, about the declaration in an exchange, but did not raise the comparison to DACA.

Mr. McConnell acknowledged that there had been “a fulsome discussion” during the meeting, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a close ally of the president, said he hoped that as a result of the discussion, “we will prevail.”