On Friday, Feb. 15, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would officially be entering a national state of emergency. Citing the border as an imminent danger to national security, he has signed the bill to secure funds for his costly border wall.

After the drawn-out battle between Democrats and Republicans during the extensive government shutdown, the President has employed his executive power in announcing a national emergency. Citing the National Emergencies Act, which grants the President the power to call upon large sums of money and resources in the event a national catastrophe were to occur when Congress was not in session, President Trump is battling for his proposed border wall.  In the event that a national emergency is announced, the President must publicly notify Congress and update the situation to the legislative branch every six months. Congress does have the power to nullify the declaration, but it would take a two-thirds majority from both the House and Senate to do so. However, the Act is extremely broad, as it does not define what constitutes a national emergency and does not further limit the President’s actions.

After the President signed the emergency declaration, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted out a picture of him doing so. This confirmed the event for the public before President Trump would take to the White House rose garden to announce his course of action. To open his speech, the President again addressed his success with trade relations, with “a large team of very talented people in China… [and] a very good trading relationship with U.K.” He went on to say that the administration has had “a lot of great announcements having to do with Syria and [its] success with the eradication of the caliphate, and that’ll be announced over the next 24 hours.” He also brushed upon the state of affairs regarding North Korea, with him being excited to “see Chairman Kim…[after having] established a very good relationship which has never happened between him or his family and the United States.” Afterward, President Trump then delved into the “several critical actions that [his] administration is taking to confront a problem that we have right here at home.” Painting the wall as essential to America’s survival, he refuted the Democrats’ assertion that drugs “all come through the port of entry as “wrong” and all “just a lie,” despite it having been proven true by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s statistics. To remedy the perceived issue at hand, he announced that he would be “signing the national emergency… and use parts of it on our dealings on cartels.” He reiterated this point many times and underscored that America has “so much money [that it] doesn’t know what to do with it,” and therefore should concern itself with the funding of a border wall.

The wall would total $8 billion; broken down, $1.375 billion would come from Congressional approval, $600 million from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture funds, $2.5 billion from the Defense Department’s drug interdiction program, and the leftover $3.5 billion from the Pentagon’s military construction budget.

Democrats are still considering their response. The most likely course the party would take against this measure would be to block it in the House, which they control. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler has said that the Democratic party is now placing its hopes on “the Senate, [that they] will do their duty to defend the Constitution against an incredibly unconstitutional power grab.” Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not focused her attention on this particular plan, instead insisting that Democrats would need to consider all possible options before settling on how to continue.

However, many have taken to the courts to shut down the national emergency. The American Civil Liberties Union announced that it would sue the President less than an hour after the White House released the signed document. It was followed soon after by the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen, and it urged the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to “bar Trump and the U.S. Department of Defense from using the declaration and funds appropriated for other purposes to build a border wall.” One of House Speaker Pelosi’s options is also to take the issue to court. California’s own Governor Gavin Newsom announced his filing of a lawsuit to challenge the declaration.

Since the declaration was announced, 16 states in total have filed lawsuits against the President to stop the state of emergency from going into effect. Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Virginia joined California in the lawsuit.  Filed on Feb. 18 in the Federal District Court of San Francisco, they posit that the President does not have the power to control the funds, and it is up to Congress to control whether or not money will be diverted to building a border wall. But as it stands, the broad definition of executive power in a national emergency would prove a challenge to the prosecution.

It is still unclear what will happen going forward— but people on both sides will be closely following the issue. Experts such as Ohio State University law professor Peter Shane has stated that courts are reluctant to investigate the President’s justifications for his proclamation. Meanwhile, other professionals have pointed out that there is data that directly contradicts the president’s assertions on illegal immigration and drug smuggling. President Trump has said that he expects to lose in the lower courts, especially in California. On Friday, he expressed his hope to “get a fair shake and [to] win in the Supreme Court, just like the ban [on Muslim-majority countries].”