In a 2-1 decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, President Trump can use the 3.6 billion dollars in emergency funding for the wall.
That is enough to build another 174 miles of border wall.
The case could be appealed to the Supreme Court, but it’s unlikely they would accept it since they already ruled against a similar lawsuit that the 9th Circuit okayed.
The four liberal judges could vote to take the case because it only takes four votes to do that, but they would not have enough votes to put a hold on the money.
By the time the court would get to the case, the money will have already been spent.
Reuters reported:
In a 2-1 ruling, the panel noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had stayed an injunction in a similar border wall case from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court also said there was a “substantial likelihood” that the parties challenging the funding transfer – the county of El Paso, Texas, and the Border Network for Human Rights – lacked standing to sue the Trump administration.
Despite all the opposition President Trump has gotten from Republicans during the Paul Ryan fiasco, Democrats, and activist judges, he has been able to replace 100 miles of inadequate border barriers, and with this money, they will replace more and also build the wall in areas that currently have none at all.
This also opens the possibility for more money to be shifted to the wall.
So far, and amid dogged resistance by Democratic legislators, Trump’s deputies have upgraded roughly 100 miles of older wall. The extra money — which was transferred from other spending programs by President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration — will allow the agencies to construct another 174 miles of wall, including new wall on stretches of the border which lack any barrier.
“The Fifth Circuit’s order allowing the Trump administration to proceed came in a brief 2-1 decision, with appointees of Presidents Reagan and Trump in the majority, and an Obama appointee in dissent,” says a report in the Wall Street Journal. “The order wasn’t a final ruling on the merits of the case, but gives the administration a green light for now.”
