Court Blocks Trump’s Border Wall Spending

“A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s plan to shift $2.5 billion from the military budget to erect a border wall, finding by a 2-1 vote that the administration violated federal law by diverting funds Congress had appropriated for other purposes,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Rejecting administration arguments that the public interest necessitated such spending, the court found that those aims are “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.”