Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Declares She's Taking on Donald Trump Over His 'Fake National Emergency'

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced on Friday that she and her colleague, Texas Representative Joaquin Castro, intended to fight President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration with legislation.

".@JoaquinCastrotx and I aren't going to let the President declare a fake national emergency without a fight," she tweeted in response to a story from Bloomberg reporting the news.

Trump announced he had signed the order declaring the national emergency shortly thereafter on Friday, as was expected. The wording in Ocasio-Cortez's tweet mirrored the hashtag, #FakeTrumpEmergency, that trended across the U.S. on Twitter on Friday.

Trump signed the order to go around Congress, which did not give him the funding he demanded for the border wall he had long promised along the southern border of the United States.

Castro put out a statement on Thursday saying Trump's declaration set a dangerous precedent. It read:

"If President Trump declares a national emergency to fund his border wall, I'm prepared to introduce a resolution to terminate the President's emergency declaration under 50 U.S.C. 1622. (National Emergencies Act).

"Historically, Presidents have declared national emergencies for urgent matters of national security. President Trump would unconstitutionally usurp congressional authority by declaring an emergency based upon unfounded hype rather than any substantive emergency. Border crossings are lower than they have been in four decades. There are more law enforcement officers at the border—some stationed there simply to make good on politicians' anti-immigrant rhetoric—than ever before. Further, such a baseless declaration by President Trump would set a dangerous precedent regarding the constitutional balance of powers between the executive and legislative branches."

Trump signed a bipartisan spending bill that allocated more than $1 billion to border security but he deemed that not enough.

"I went through Congress. I made a deal. I got $1.4 billion ... but I'm not happy with it," he said while announcing the emergency declaration on Friday.

He also said that he wasn't pleased with the speed with which his wall—that he had promised Mexico would pay for on the campaign trail—was being built, while declaring the state of emergency.

"I just want to get it done faster," he said.