California is likely to sue President Donald Trump over his emergency declaration to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, the state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Friday.
At a joint news conference with Gov. Gavin Newsom, Becerra said there is no emergency at the border and Trump doesn't have the authority to make the declaration.
"No one in America is above the law, not even the president of the United States," Becerra said. "The president does not have power to act frivolously."
Trump declared a national emergency earlier in the day to bypass Congress to use money from the Pentagon and other budgets to fulfill his promise of completing the border wall. The president said illegal immigrants were invading the country.
The announcement was immediately met with resistance from members of Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a statement sharply critical of the president's action. The statement said, in part:
"The President's unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist does great violence to our Constitution and makes America less safe, stealing from urgently needed defense funds for the security of our military and our nation. ...
"The President's actions clearly violate the Congress's exclusive power of the purse, which our Founders enshrined in the Constitution. The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the Courts, and in the public, using every remedy available."
Becerra and Newsom said they were reviewing the emergency declaration but are likely to join other states in suing.
Both challenged the notion that there was a real emergency. Becerra cited events past presidents used to implement such declarations.
“He has the power to declare a national emergency," Becerra said. "But this is not 9/11. This is not the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. This is a president showing his disdain for the rule of law and our U.S Constitution. From California, seeing this is nothing new."
California has repeatedly challenged Trump in court. Becerra has filed at least 45 lawsuits against the administration.
Newsom said the wall is a "monument to stupidity" that would not make the country safer.
Republican congressman Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, told KQED in an interview Friday before the emergency declaration that the Trump administration was on “very solid legal ground.”
"This is not an unprecedented action," McClintock said. "This is the power that's been invoked by presidents 58 separate times."
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, told KQED early Friday that the president absolutely did not have the power to declare an emergency in this case.
“It's plainly an unconstitutional act, and it's hard to imagine a weaker case than the one that the White House will be forced to defend in court — that a situation where Congress has considered a problem, Congress has acted on the problem and passed a border security bill, but it because it's not to the president's liking, he's going to declare an emergency," Schiff said.
Watch video of the press conference below:
This post will be updated.
The Associated Press' Kathleen Ronayne and KQED's Don Clyde contributed to this report.