On the same day that Donald Trump was slapped with two articles of impeachment, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the president cannot use military dollars to fund his vanity wall on the southern border.
According to CNN, “A federal judge in Texas blocked the Trump administration from using billions of dollars in Pentagon funds for the construction of the border wall.”
The ruling is just the latest development in Trump’s three-year failed effort to construct an unpopular and ineffective wall on the southern border of the United States.
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Judge David Briones of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas said Tuesday that the administration cannot use military construction funds to build additional barriers on the southern border.
In September, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper authorized diverting of $3.6 billion in military construction funds for 11 wall projects on the southern border with Mexico. The Pentagon said at the time that half the money was coming from deferred projects overseas, and the other half was planned for projects in the US.
The lawsuit, brought by El Paso County, Texas, and Border Network for Human Rights, argued that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority when he issued a national emergency declaration to gain access to additional funds for his border wall, despite receiving $1.375 billion from Congress.
Trump has repeatedly failed to fulfill his top campaign promise
Donald Trump will surely spend the next year telling the American people that he fulfilled his top campaign promise to build a wall spanning the southern border, but he has repeatedly failed to follow through on that pledge.
Trump couldn’t accomplish his border wall promise when Republicans had complete control of Congress, he didn’t get it during the 2018-2019 government shutdown, and a federal judge on Tuesday blocked him from using military funds to build it.
As much of the country fixes its attention on Donald Trump’s corruption through the ongoing impeachment process, it’s sometimes easy to forget that this president is also an unmitigated failure on the policy front.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
