Sen. Rand Paul is reprising his role as Mitch McConnell's home state nemesis, becoming the fourth Republican to oppose the Russian asset's national emergency declaration. He joins Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Thom Tillis, and every Democrat. That means there are 51 yes votes on the bill to terminate the emergency declaration that the House passed last week in the Senate, ensuring its passage.
Paul told an an audience at the the Southern Kentucky Lincoln Day Dinner on Saturday, "I can't vote to give extra-Constitutional powers to the president," the Bowling Green Daily News reports. "I can't vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress. […] We may want more money for border security, but Congress didn't authorize it. If we take away those checks and balances, it's a dangerous thing."
He reiterated his opposition in an op-ed for Fox News, saying he will "stand up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the system of checks and balances we have—under Republicans and Democrats," and predicts that the case will go to the courts and Trump will lose. "I think the president’s own picks to the Supreme Court may rebuke him on this," he wrote.
A handful of other Republicans—Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Mitt Romney of Utah, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi—have all spoken against the emergency declaration, but haven't elevated their concern to actually saying they will vote against it. Trump has made clear he'll use the first veto of his tenure on this, so it'd take another dozen Republican senators to decide they can't cede their power to Trump to override him. That's not likely to happen, so Paul's prediction that it goes to the courts is spot on.