Appeals Court Allows Trump To Divert $3.6 Billion In Military Funds For Border Wall

I expect Russia and other adversaries will approve of this.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/09/794969121/appeals-court-allows-trump-to-divert-3-6-billion-in-military-funds-for-border-wa


January 9, 20204:42 PM ET
Bobby Allyn

A federal appeals court has handed the Trump administration a victory by allowing the president to tap military construction funds to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

A divided 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision late Wednesday, reversing a lower court order that stopped Trump from using $3.6 billion in U.S Defense Department money to construct the long-promised border wall.

The court noted that in July, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a similar freeze on a separate source of military funding that Trump would like to use to pay for border barriers.

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When the president declared the national emergency over border security, he ordered federal agencies to find $6.7 billion in funding for other government projects to finance construction. The declaration also created a path to another source of border wall funding: money collected in drug interdiction efforts.

In essence, Trump's declaration enabled him to draw billions more dollars beyond the $1.3 billion that Congress specifically authorized for border wall funding. Trump had previously requested $5.7 billion from lawmakers, but Democrats balked at the price tag.

In the 2020 spending package passed in December, Congress maintained border wall funding at $1.3 billion, far below Trump's request, which he had upped to $8.6 billion.

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