Iran Press/ America: After threating 'border denier' to violence, now the Donald Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to lift a freeze on Pentagon money it wants to use it for his agenda to build the border with Mexico.
Two lower courts have ruled against the administration in a lawsuit over the funding, AP reported.
Last week, a divided three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco kept in place a lower court ruling preventing the government from tapping Defense Department counter-drug money to build high-priority sections of the wall in Arizona, California, and New Mexico.
At stake in the case is billions of dollars that would allow Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his race for a second term.
Trump ended a 35-day government shutdown in February after Congress gave him approximately $1.4 billion in border wall funding, far less than the $5.7 billion he was seeking. Trump then declared a national emergency to take cash from other government accounts to use to construct sections of the wall.
The money includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counter-drug activities and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund. The Treasury Department funds have so far survived legal challenges, and the transfer of the military construction funds has not yet been approved.
At issue in the case before the Supreme Court is just the $2.5 billion in Defense Department funds, which the administration says will be used to construct more than 100 miles of fencing.
Trump also announced on November that as many as 15,000 troops may be deployed along US-Mexico border
On last February, 16 US states, led by California, sued Trump over the border wall.
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