In many ways, Donald Trump is incredibly predictable. He cannot accept defeat and he uses Twitter to air all his petty grievances, so a tweet blasting the 9th Circuit and calling the judges who ruled against him on Wednesday a group of “Obama judges” will most likely come at any moment.
Federal appeals court: Trump administration cannot use military funds for border wall https://t.co/LiTmRbJxUw
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 4, 2019
The 2-1 ruling in the 9th Circuit was decided against Trump’s demands to use military funding for his wall across the entire southern border of the United States. The court ruled that Trump does not have the right to violate the Constitution, which grants the power of spending to the legislative branch. Trump already tried going through them and was denied even when he shut down the government. Afterward, he tried declaring a national emergency only to be turned down then, as well.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
‘In rejecting the administration’s request, the 9th Circuit said using the military funds “violates the constitutional requirement that the executive branch not spend money absent an appropriation from Congress.
‘The public interest is “best served by respecting the Constitution’s assignment of the power of the purse to Congress,” the 9th Circuit said.’
An appeals court has blocked the Trump admin's emergency border-wall spending, rejecting claims it can reallocate military funds for the wall, WSJ reports.https://t.co/ehOjRcY3vp
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 3, 2019
Trump is sure to blame liberal judges for the ruling, but that will, as usual, be a misdirection. One Obama-appointed judge, Judge Michelle Friedland, and one George W. Bush-appointed judge, Richard Clifton, voted down the request. A second Bush-appointed judge, Judge N. Randy Smith, was the lone dissenter.
‘Smith accused the majority of creating “a constitutional issue where none previously existed.”
‘“We have no right to expand the Judiciary’s role in this manner,” he wrote.’
“In rejecting the administration’s request, the 9th Circuit said using the military funds “violates the constitutional requirement that the executive branch not spend… https://t.co/vA6Zc4TqbU
— Mitch Chase (@MitchChase) July 4, 2019
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump’s loss in the Supreme Court was challenged. After the Trump administration stated publicly that it would not pursue a rewriting of the reason for the citizenship question to be added to the 2020 census, Trump tweeted that he intended to go forward, which came as a surprise to the judges involved as well as the attorneys. The request for military funds to be diverted to the fund to build Trump’s border wall will be appealed, and the Supreme Court will need to decided whether to take on yet another of the president’s hardline immigration policies.
Judge stops President Trump from using $2.5 billion in military funding to build border wallhttps://t.co/G5MxBlncmI
— TIME (@TIME) June 29, 2019
Featured image via Flickr by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons license
