Appeals Court hands Donald Trump a victory on the border wall

  Back and forth we go on the issue of using some money allocated for military funding for the border wall. When last we left this little saga a court had ruled that Donald Trump could not reallocate defense funds to build the border wall and issued what was being called a “permanent injunction” even though the Trump administration was preparing to appeal the decision.

  Well, yesterday that appeal came through and it turns out the “permanent injunction” was not so permanent at all because a court has ruled that the groups that are suing to stop the border wall this time around also probably do not have standing and issued a stay until a decision has been made. (You might remember a previous case made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled those groups also did not have standing to sue over this issue.)  Here is more:

A U.S. federal appeals court on Wednesday put on hold a lower court ruling that blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from using $3.6 billion in military construction funds to build a wall on the country’s border with Mexico.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay pending the Trump administration’s appeal of a Dec. 10 decision by a federal judge that barred the funding transfer.

In a 2-1 ruling, the panel noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had stayed an injunction in a similar border wall case from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The court also said there was a “substantial likelihood” that the parties challenging the funding transfer – the county of El Paso, Texas, and the Border Network for Human Rights – lacked standing to sue the Trump administration.

    And so the beat goes on as these groups try to run out the clock waiting for Donald Trump to be voted out of office.

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium