A federal judge has temporarily blocked part of President Trump’s plan to build a wall along the southern border with money Congress never appropriated for that purpose.
U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., of the Northern District of California, said that those challenging Trump’s actions had a good chance of prevailing on their claims that the administration is acting illegally in shifting money from other programs to pay for the wall.
Gilliam wrote that the government’s position “that when Congress declines the Executive’s request to appropriate funds, the Executive may simply find a way to spend those funds ‘without Congress’ does not square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic.”
The law the administration invoked to shift funds allows transfers for “unforeseen” events. Gilliam said the government’s claim that wall construction was “unforeseen” “cannot logically be squared” with Trump’s many demands for funding dating back to early 2018 and even in the campaign.
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in Northern California on Friday permanently blocked the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion in contested funding to build barriers along the United States’ southwestern border, dealing a blow to the White House’s efforts to fund a border wall without congressional approval.
Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, who ruled at once on two pending lawsuits against the administration, stated President Trump’s efforts to shift Department of Defense funds toward the border project were “unlawful.”
The decision follows an earlier temporary injunction, issued last month, in which Judge Gilliam said the White House’s efforts did not “square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic.”
The White House had sought to direct $2.5 billion from counterdrug programs in the Department of Defense toward building the wall.
