Administration seeks emergency court order to build border wall
June 4, 2019, 12:53 PM EDT
By Pete Williams
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is seeking an emergency court order to let the government use Pentagon money to build sections of a border wall in Arizona and Texas.
A federal judge in California late last month blocked a White House plan, announced as part of President Donald Trump's declaration of a national emergency, to tap the military's counter-drug budget for money to build wall projects in Yuma and El Paso. The judge agreed with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, who said in a lawsuit that the construction would produce environmental harm and would amount to spending money without the required approval by Congress.
In seeking an emergency order from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the Justice Department said if the legal dispute isn't resolved quickly, the government will lose access to the Pentagon funds. A decision from the appeals court by June 17, it said, would still leave enough time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The administration said the May 24 order by Federal District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam was flawed for two reasons — because the Pentagon has the authority to transfer funds from one program to another within its budget and because there's no right for private parties to sue over such reprogramming decisions ...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-administration-seeks-emergency-court-order-build-border-wall-n1013706
