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The Democrat-led chamber asked U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden in Washington to bar the administration from reallocating the money from other Defense Department projects in the wake of Congress’s outright refusal to give the president all the funding he sought for the project
But the judge -- a 2017 Trump nominee -- had reservations, opining at the outset about an apparent lack of legal precedent and whether courts are the right forum for resolving disputes between the executive and legislative branches.
The so-called legal standing question "strikes me as a significant issue in this case," McFadden said.
McFadden asked House lawyer Douglas Letter whether his clients had exhausted all other avenues for resolving its dispute with the Trump administration.
McFadden asked House lawyer Douglas Letter whether his clients had exhausted all other avenues for resolving its dispute with the Trump administration.
It had, the House attorney responded, it said no to the president.
The standoff over the funding, which began in December, resulted in a record 35-day partial shutdown of the federal government, after which both houses of Congress appropriated just $1.4B.
The standoff over the funding, which began in December, resulted in a record 35-day partial shutdown of the federal government, after which both houses of Congress appropriated just $1.4B.
Trump signed the legislation, immediately declared a national emergency and said he’d tap other sources to get the rest of the money, raising the ire of Democrats.
"We cannot have the president appropriating money," House lawyer Douglas Letter told McFadden during the nearly three-hour hearing Thursday. That power, he said, is reserved to Congress under the Constitution and goes "to the very heart," of its system of checks and balances.
One of the few comparable cases was decided in 2016 by another Washington federal judge, who ruled the Obama administration couldn’t spend money on an Obamacare subsidy program because of it lacked a specific Congressional appropriation.
Judge Rosemary Collyer’s ruling -- which made winners out of House Republicans and losers of a Democratic administration -- isn’t legally binding because she and McFadden operate at the same level of the court system.
Defending the administration’s plan for the second time in a week was DOJ lawyer James Burnham, who told McFadden the Constitution made no provision for one branch of the federal government to sue another in a fight refereed by the third.
Its framers would have found that notion "ridiculous," he said.
