Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Plan To Use Pentagon Funds To Build Border Wall A $3.6 billion funding package that was originally earmarked for military constructions projects and diverted for border wall construction was blocked on Tuesday.
🍊's cornerstone campaign promise during the 2016 election — constructing a new wall on the southern U.S. border — hit another snag on Tuesday as a federal judge in Texas blocked the president from using billions in Pentagon funding to build portions of the structure.
According to KSWB-TV, Judge Briones of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas put at least a temporary stop to a staggering $3.6 billion package that was to be diverted from military construction projects and used instead for 🍊’s proposed southern border wall
🍊’s newly-minted Secretary of Defense, Esper, originally approved the use of the funds earlier this year, explaining that half of the money would come out of the budgets of planned military construction projects in the 🇺🇸 and the other half was from deferred projects overseas.
A lawsuit to block the Trump administration’s efforts to bolster wall funding was filed by both El Paso County, Texas, and a group known as the Border Network for Human Rights.
Both groups claimed that the president didn’t have the proper authority to declare a national emergency as a method to secure other sources of funding for the wall, given that he’d already secured over $1 billion through Congressional process.
A spokesperson for Protect Democracy — the nonprofit, nonpartisan counsel for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit — celebrated Tuesday’s ruling while taking a jab at the president.
“The President’s emergency proclamation was a blatant attempt to grab power from Congress. Today’s order affirms that the President is not a king and that our courts are willing to check him when he oversteps his bounds,” attorney Kristy Parker said.
