Some pleasing noise is emanating from the U.S. Senate. Coalitions are forming to block Trump's planned trade war with Mexico and his arm sales to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In both cases Trump is using a declaration of a national emergency to get what he wants.
The problem for congress is that Trump can simply veto whatever block the Senate comes up with, as he did with the War Powers Resolution on Yemen and the motion of disapproval for building a wall on the Mexican border.
Trump is showing how a U.S. president can govern as a dictator. Invoke national emergencies and veto the congressional response.
As we taxi on the runway to the 2020 presidential election campaign, my guess is that we'll see more emergency decrees and more vetoes.
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Catie Edmondson, "Senators Look to Force 22 Votes Blocking Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia":
The coalition of senators is hoping to leverage a provision in the Arms Export Control Act that allows lawmakers to introduce what is known as a privileged joint resolution of disapproval against a proposed sale of arms, in essence forcing a debate and a vote. Their plan is to introduce 22 such resolutions, one for each proposed arms sale. A simple majority of lawmakers would need to vote to allow the debate to proceed — and if the measures advanced, the group of senators could monopolize hours of floor time as soon as mid-June.
Winning such support from Republican lawmakers is not out of the question. Members of Congress from both parties were livid early this year when the White House missed a congressional deadline to submit a report detailing whether the administration found Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
And the Senate voted 54 to 46 in March to end American military assistance for the kingdom’s war in Yemen and to curtail presidential war powers, with seven Republican senators breaking ranks to join the resolution and the Democratic conference united in support.
To actually block the arms sales, however, backers of the resolutions would almost certainly need a veto-proof majority, and whether the measures could muster that is another question.
[snip]
New outrage emerged Tuesday, when Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, disclosed that the Energy Department had approved nuclear technology transfers to the kingdom on two occasions after Mr. Khashoggi’s killing in October in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul — including one approved two weeks after his death.
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If Mr. Trump were to declare an emergency to impose the tariffs, the House and the Senate could pass a resolution disapproving them. But such a resolution would almost certainly face a presidential veto, meaning that both the House and the Senate would have to muster two-thirds majorities to beat Mr. Trump.
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said he warned the lawyers that the Senate could muster an overwhelming majority to beat back the tariffs, even if Mr. Trump were to veto a resolution disapproving them. Republicans may be broadly supportive of Mr. Trump’s push to build a wall and secure the border, he said, but they oppose tying immigration policy to the imposition of tariffs on Mexico.
[snip]
Opponents of the tariffs would use the same motion of disapproval that they tried to use to block the president from grabbing federal money for a border wall that was not appropriated for that purpose. That motion did pass Congress with significant Republican support, but not enough to overcome Mr. Trump’s veto.
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