The D.C. Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of House Democrats in an ongoing fight against the Trump administration over their construction of a southern border wall — although, to be clear, much of that supposed “wall” is just a replacement of old fence. The D.C. court ruled that House Dems could move forward with their lawsuit against the Trump team, which was launched after the administration decided to repurpose some $2.5 billion for the wall that had originally been designated for other purposes at the Defense Department. Observers have argued that the redirection of funds is an illegal violation of Congress’s Constitutionally-mandated oversight of government spending.
A federal appeals court in California has already ruled that the Trump administration’s redirection of billions of dollars towards the wall was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court just recently overturned that ruling, preventing it from going into effect. If it had gone into effect, the ruling would have, presumably, forced a stop to the wall construction that’s being done with Defense Department money. The Supreme Court had previously stepped in to allow southern border wall construction to continue amidst the nationwide court battle over the redirection of those billions of dollars.
Trump redirected the money after signing an emergency declaration covering the situation at the southern border. The problem is that the kind of security emergency at the southern border that Trump talks about isn’t actually there — the emergency declaration was just meant as a cover for the administration’s political agenda of putting up the “wall.” The Republican-majority Senate has actually passed a measure that would cancel the emergency declaration — twice! — but each time, the majority that voted in favor of the cancellation was not big enough to be veto-proof. Still, it’s notable that in an age of fierce party loyalty, 11 Republican Senators voted to terminate the emergency declaration when the issue most recently came up for a vote.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee recently insisted that border wall construction would stop if he’s elected. He said:
‘There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration. I’m gonna make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it and at the ports of entry — that’s where all the bad stuff is at.’
Trump’s “security” policy is often based on pure political profiteering anyway.
