Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Effort To Transfer Military Money For Border Wall

MONTOURSVILLE, PA - MAY 20: U.S. President Donald Trump calls up Blake Marnell, wearing a jacket with bricks representing a border wall, to the stage during a 'Make America Great Again' campaign rally at Williamsport... MONTOURSVILLE, PA - MAY 20: U.S. President Donald Trump calls up Blake Marnell, wearing a jacket with bricks representing a border wall, to the stage during a 'Make America Great Again' campaign rally at Williamsport Regional Airport, May 20, 2019 in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Trump is making a trip to the swing state to drum up Republican support on the eve of a special election in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district, with Republican Fred Keller facing off against Democrat Marc Friedenberg. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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A federal judge on Friday temporarily stopped President Donald Trump’s use of an emergency declaration to spend money on border wall construction that Congress did not allocate for that purpose, writing at one point in his order that “the Court has serious concerns with Defendants’ theory of appropriations law.”

The temporary block does not affect all of the money Trump wants to divert for a border wall, but rather just the first $1 billion; the rest of the funds — currently allocated for “military construction” — aren’t projected to be used for wall construction immediately, and therefore weren’t required to be enjoined immediately, Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California said.

“The Court finds that the language and purpose of Section 8005 and Section 2214(b) likely preclude Defendants’ attempt to transfer $1 billion from funds Congress previously appropriated for military personnel costs to the drug interdiction fund for the construction of a border barrier,” Gilliam wrote, granting a preliminary injunction requested by the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

A staff attorney for the ACLU, whose lawyers worked on the case, called the injunction “a win for our system of checks and balances, the rule of law, and border communities.”

Trump’s declaration of emergency to shift money for a border wall was novel: Not only had Congress not allocated the wall money, it had actively refused to pass legislation fulfilling the White House’s request for $5.7 billion in wall funds.

“[T]he reality is that Congress was presented with—and declined to grant—a $5.7 billion request for border barrier construction,” Gilliam wrote.

Gilliam also took issue with the Trump administration’s assertion that the use of Defense Department funds to build a border wall was “unforeseen,” in the same way diverting funds for, say, a natural disaster response would be unforeseen.

“Nothing presented by the Defendants suggests that its interpretation is what Congress had in mind when it imposed the “unforeseen” limitation, especially where, as here, multiple agencies are openly coordinating in an effort to build a project that Congress declined to fund,” he added separately. “The Court thus finds it likely that Plaintiffs will succeed on this claim.”

Congress’s “absolute” control over the government’s purse strings,  the judge wrote in conclusion “is not a bug in our constitutional system. It is a feature of that system, and an essential one.”

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Notable Replies

  1. So much winning.

  2. Why every ruling is against Trump? Why? The system must be rigged!

  3. Sure. It’s either an Obama judge, or maybe a Bush judge, or a “Democrat” judge, or a liberal judge or a judge legislating from the bench or a Mexican judge or a “so-called judge” or a whatever judge because Trump has a lot of enemies due to envy of his awesomeness. It’s very easy to see once you understand the principles at work here.

  4. Avatar for pshah pshah says:

    By my count, that’s his third loss in the federal courts just this week. It’s a ray of hope because I’d like to think even the Supreme Court would be loathe to interfere with Congress’s Article 1 power of the purse just to appease Trump. But, then again, I’ve learned anything goes with Republicans in their quest to bend justice for power.

  5. I’m no longer concerned about the Wall. Litigation will keep everything tied up past the 2020 election, at which point either it will be cancelled by the incoming President, or a stupid wall will be the least of our worries.

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