Supreme Court says Trump can proceed with plan to spend military funds for border wall construction
Source: Washington Post
The Supreme Court Friday night on a 5 to 4 vote revived the Trump administration’s plan to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds to build part of the wall project along the southern border. The court’s conservatives set aside a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruling for the Sierra Club and a coalition of border communities that said a reallocation of the Defense Department money would violate federal law. The unsigned ruling by the Supreme Court said the government “made a sufficient showing at this stage” the groups did not have proper standing to challenge transfer of money.
In a 2-to-1 decision earlier this month, the 9th Circuit majority noted that a stalemate between Congress and President Trump over the issue prompted the longest government shutdown in history. The judges reasoned that Congress made its intentions clear by allocating only about $1.4 billion for enhanced border protection. The lower court said the public interest was “best served by respecting the Constitution’s assignment of the power of the purse to Congress, and by deferring to Congress’s understanding of the public interest as reflected in its repeated denial of more funding for border barrier construction.” After Congress’s decision earlier this year, Trump announced plans to use more than $6 billion allocated for other purposes to fund the wall, which was the signature promise of his presidential campaign. Environmentalists and the Southern Border Communities Coalition immediately filed suit to block the transfer of funds. Democrats in the House of Representatives filed a brief supporting them.
U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court that the 9th Circuit ruling was wrong. “The sole basis for the injunction — that the Acting Secretary exceeded his statutory authority in transferring the funds — rests on a misreading of the statutory text,” Francisco wrote. He was referring to Patrick M. Shanahan, who was acting secretary at the time. Francisco said that the challengers did not have proper legal standing to challenge the transfer of funds. He added that even if they did, their “interests in hiking, birdwatching, and fishing in designated drug-smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government’s efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border.”
The money was transferred from DOD personnel funds in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security. Federal law allows such transfers for “unforeseen” reasons and for expenditures not previously “denied by the Congress.” The administration contends that Congress did not reject the specific expenditures at issue, which would fund projects in California, New Mexico and Arizona. The challengers said Congress was clear. “Congress recently considered, and rejected, the same argument defendants [the government] make here: that a border wall is urgently needed to combat drugs,” said the brief from lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the groups. “If defendants were nonetheless permitted to obligate taxpayer funds and commence construction, the status quo would be radically and irrevocably altered.” The brief from the U.S. House of Representatives agreed.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-trump-can-proceed-with-plan-to-spend-military-funds-for-border-wall-construction/2019/07/26/f2a63d48-aa55-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html
Original article -
July 26 at 6:27 PM
The Trump administration moved to reallocate the money earlier this year, after Congress denied the president's full request for border wall construction funds. The Sierra Club and a coalition of border communities sued, arguing that President Trump had violated federal law.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2019/07/26/supreme-court-says-trump-can-proceed-with-plan-to-spend-military-funds-for-border-wall-construction/?utm_term=.571d23514d3e
NYT -
By Adam Liptak
July 26, 2019
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with plans to build a wall along parts of the Mexican border while litigation over paying for it proceeds.
A trial judge had prohibited the administration from transferring $2.5 billion from the Pentagon's budget to fund the effort, and an appeals court had refused to enter a stay while it considered the administration's appeal.
The Supreme Court entered a stay, allowing construction to proceed while the litigation continues.
The court's four more liberal justices dissented. One of them, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, wrote that he would have allowed preparatory work but not construction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/us/politics/supreme-court-border-wall-trump.html
Apparently there is a technicality in that the litigation about this can continue but the SCOTUS lifted the stay from the lower courts on the construction (i.e., the SCOTUS didn't appear to decide on the merits).
= new reply since forum marked as read
falling apart, that’s no reason to deny this pigfucker and his minions their 300 feet of beautiful artistic “wall”, right
Take all the money you want and fuck the Army, the Navy, the Marines, and all their families, I mean just fuck em
Shameshameshame scotus
From March 30:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/camp-lejeune-still-mess-6-months-after-hurricane-florence-where-n986456
Whats next social security and medicare................can be privatized...................The House of Representatives don't or have the power to allocate money..................
I worry about ALL future SC decisions! 
That's what they have staff for - to provide them the info and research past cases for them so that they can evaluate and write up their opinions to submit (colloquially "phoning it in" )! 
we had stuff like WebEx (and other applications before that that had audio and video and were streamed using our IP phone system, that were installed on our work machines - most recently laptops). We also had dedicated video-telecom equipment set up in the conference and/or training rooms. I don't know if anyone in the government is using Skype but who knows? They usually get a contract for some video-telecom app/system that offers GSA pricing. 
