Courts

Oh Yeah, The Wall Is Still Not Happening

Ninth Circuit upholds injunction against wall building.

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Live look at Trump’s Wall. (Image via Getty)

I can’t, like, mentally or emotionally deal with what Donald Trump is trying to pull with the Census. It’s in such bad faith and the fact that conservatives are pushing him to still try is such a clear indication of just how committed to racism “movement conservatives” have become.

Anyway, while we wait for the next twist in that case, let’s circle back to Trump’s most consistent racist priority. The Wall. Or as Trump likes to call it: “WALL.”

WALL took a defeat on Wednesday, when a Ninth Circuit panel upheld a district court injunction blocking Trump from stealing military funds to build the thing. From Courthouse News:

U.S. Circuit Judges Richard Clifton and Michelle Friedland, who authored the majority opinion, said Trump is unlikely to win his appeal of U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam’s order last Friday permanently enjoining the feds from building sections of the wall in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

Clifton and Friedland agreed with Gilliam that Trump’s diversion of military funding fails to square with the Appropriations Clause of the U.S. Constitution. They said the need for the money was not unforeseen, as the feds argued, and it was a budget item that Congress had already denied.

The Department of Defense had relied on section 8005 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2019 to move the funds to the Department of Homeland Security.

But the unauthorized use of those funds, the judges wrote, “violates the constitutional requirement that the Executive Branch not spend money absent an appropriation from Congress.”

Unfortunately, the panel was not unanimous. Bush appointee N. Randy Smith dissented:

“Given this significant national security interest, the public would benefit more from a stay that—while this appeal is pending—permits defendants to effect the policies that it has determined are necessary to minimize that threat, than it would from a decision that hampers defendants’ ability to combat this threat throughout the present appellate process,” Smith wrote.

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There is not a “significant national security interest” that WALL addresses. I am disturbed, every time, when a Republican judge accepts the administration’s rationale for WALL, without questioning that rationale. Just like with the Census, the national security explination is just a pretext, and I don’t see why Republicans are proud of their ability to be so freaking obtuse.

In any event, WALL is still not a thing, and for that at least we can be thankful.

Ninth Circuit Upholds Freeze on Pentagon Cash for Trump’s Border Wall [Courthouse News Service]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

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