After failing to stop President Donald Trump’s wall at the U.S.-Mexico border through legislative action, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is taking the president to court.
Lawfare
In a Thursday press release announcing the House lawsuit, Pelosi accused Trump of “stealing from appropriated funds” to pay for the planned border wall project. The president vetoed Congress last month after lawmakers voted to block Trump from redirecting military funds to the wall.
“The president’s action clearly violates the Appropriations Clause by stealing from appropriated funds, an action that was not authorized by constitutional or statutory authority,” Pelosi said in a statement.
After experiencing a 35-day government shutdown over wall funding, where Democrats agreed to pay just $1.4 billion of the nearly $6 billion requested by the president, Trump circumvented Congress by invoking the National Emergencies Act. Title 10 of the US Code states clearly that “the Secretary of Defense, without regard to any other provision of law, may undertake military construction projects, and may authorize the Secretaries of the military departments to undertake military construction projects, not otherwise authorized by law that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces.”
Although the White House plans to use at least $3 billion in Pentagon civil works funds for the wall, Trump also has access to revenue that doesn’t require a national emergency to spend, including $2 billion in counter-narcotics funds, $681 million from Treasury forfeiture funds, and $200 million from the Department of Homeland Security. However, the president was forced to use his veto powers in March after both the House and the Senate voted on a resolution to block the president’s plan.
“I know the president has the votes to pursue his approach,” Ohio Sen. Rob Portman said before the vote. “But I continue to hope the president uses the funds he has available to him without creating a bad precedent, having some of the needed funds tied up in the courts and taking money from important military projects.”
For his part, Trump responded with a one-word tweet which set up the current legal battle: “Veto!” he wrote.
Litigious liberals
As predicted, a coalition of 16 states sued the federal government in February to halt the defense appropriations, while four more states initiated lawsuits of their own a month later. Democrats point to an example established by Republican lawmakers during the Obama administration, when the GOP sued the president for moving unallocated funds to pay for the Affordable Care Act.
However, Obama didn’t make use of the National Emergencies Act when he abused his executive authority by diverting funds to his socialist health care program. Therefore, the two lawsuits are hardly the same, and Trump has a legitimate justification for moving forward with his military spending plan.
Federal judges eventually ruled in favor of Republicans in the Obamacare case, but a showdown at the Supreme Court never occurred due to Trump’s election. Legal analysts who spoke to the Washington Times said that Democrats are at a legal disadvantage since they already tried to stop the military wall spending through traditional legislative action.
Since Trump has already used the military to assist the border patrol at the southern border, White House lawyers should have no problem convincing federal courts that a genuine emergency exists at the southern border. Last year, over 400,000 illegal aliens were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, and thousands of immigrants are being released out into American neighborhoods due to a shortage of beds in detention centers.
Democrats have become the party of open borders and obstruction, and American citizens are paying the price. It’s time to end the political grandstanding, once and for all.
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