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Politico

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Supreme Court gives Trump go-ahead on border wall


President Donald Trump scored a major victory at the Supreme Court on Friday, as the justices lifted a lower court order blocking a key part of his plan to expand the border wall with Mexico.

The Justice Department had asked the justices to stay a pair of rulings an Oakland-based federal judge issued in May and June blocking Trump’s plan to use about $2.

5 billion in military construction funds for wall projects in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

All the Republican-appointed justices voted in favor of allowing Trump to proceed with that aspect of his plan while litigation over the issue continues. All the Democratic-appointed justices dissented, except for Justice Stephen Breyer who said he would have allowed the contracting process to move forward but blocked actual construction.

Trump announced in May that he intended to spend over $8 billion on border wall construction, despite the fact that Congress appropriated only $1.375 billion for that purposes and limited its use to southeast Texas. He also declared a state of emergency in an effort to unlock a portion of the funds.

The roughly $2.5 billion at issue in the litigation was identified by the administration as available because of a provision allowing excess military construction money to be spent on counterdrug projects.

However, the language allowing that flexibility rules out spending on any “item” previously denied by Congress.

Rulings from the district court in Oakland and from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals portrayed Trump’s move as an illegal end-run around Congress’s authority to control federal spending.

On July 12, the Justice Department filed an emergency stay application with the Supreme Court, asking it to step in and stay the lower court orders so that contracting and spending on the wall projects could proceed.

Administration lawyers argued expanding the wall is urgent due to a surge in drug trafficking, but judges noted that officials say most drugs are smuggled through staffed border checkpoints.

The lower-court injunctions were issued in a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

The House of Representatives also sued Trump over the border wall spending plan. A district court judge tossed out that case, which is now on appeal.


Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

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