By now, you’ve probably heard the downtrodden media tell you that the Supreme Court is allowing Trump to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds to be used to build the border wall/fence. What does that $2.5 billion give us? Enough money to build about 100 miles of fence-wall to keep out illegal aliens.
| SCOTUS ruling allows for 100 miles of border wall-fence to be built |
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The Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to reprogram $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds to start construction on 100 miles of border wall in a late Friday order.
The five conservative justices voted with the government in full. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan indicated their full dissent. Justice Stephen Breyer proposed a compromise in a partial dissent.
“The government has made a sufficient showing at this stage that the plaintiffs have no cause of action to obtain review,” the Court’s order reads.
President Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border on Feb. 15 after Congress refused to appropriate sufficient funds for border barriers. Pursuant to that proclamation, administration officials announced plans to reprogram $600 million from the Treasury Department’s forfeiture fund; $2.5 billion from Defense Department counter-narcotics activities; and $3.6 billion from military construction projects to finance construction of the wall.
The $2.5 billion for counter-drug efforts were at issue in Friday’s case. That sum was slated to finance fencing in Arizona, California, and New Mexico. Government lawyers said those projects are priorities for the Department of Homeland Security, as they are meant to deter narcotic trafficking in major drug smuggling corridors. The administration moved the funds pursuant to a transfer statute that allows such reallocations to address “unforeseen needs,” provided they have not been “denied by the Congress.”