Supreme Court rules President Trump can use military funds to build the border wall with Mexico.

A section of the border wall being fixed in 2018. US government photo via Wikipedia.

The Supreme Court has ruled that President Trump can use military funds to build the border wall with Mexico. Reuters. The 5-4 ruling overturned a California lower court that had blocked the administration from $2.9 billion in funds because congress had not specifically said it was for the border wall. The Supreme Court said that the groups challenging the wall did not have standing to bring the court case. The ruling was expedited as the Trump administration wanted to spend the money before September during this fiscal year. President Trump made the border wall a major campaign promise but has been stymied by both the courts and congress. He celebrated the courts ruling today on Twitter. 

Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2019

My Comment:
This is a huge victory for President Trump. He had been starting to get some criticism on the right, even by some of his supporters, for not getting the wall done. Those voices should be much quieter now as it looks like substantial work on the border wall will begin. People like Ann Coulter will have to eat some crow.

Trump just kept a major campaign promise and one that propelled him to victory in 2016. His chances to win in 2020, already pretty high, have just gone up dramatically. This is a huge slab of red meat for his base, who have been clamoring for better border security for a very long time.

I don't know if the $2.9 billion from the military is going to be enough, but it will be a start. We are also getting $6.7 billion in total with some money coming from the Treasury department as well. That may not be enough to totally close the border but with natural barriers and our existing fencing and walls it will likely help things out. It's enough for hundreds of miles of border fencing and walls to be built.

The courts ruling was somewhat interesting. Basically the Supreme Court said that the groups involved in the original lawsuit had no standing to bring it in the first place. That seems like something that should have been realized by the federal judge that ruled this way in the first place but since that judge was from California, I doubt he cared. Judges are supposed to rule on the way things are, not how they want them to be and I am thinking that the bias was very obvious in this case in the lower courts. 

Construction should take some time. A border wall is a substantial piece of engineering and it's not something that can go up over night. It will take weeks and months of construction before we see any change at the border but once it starts happening we should see less holes in our southern defense.

President Trump has been doing quite a bit to try and stop the migrant crisis at our border. He has pressured both Mexico and Guatemala to keep the illegals in their countries so they can either accept them as asylum seekers or deport them back to their own countries. Mexico has cracked down so much that there are now military units on both sides of the US-Mexico border trying to prevent illegal border crossings. That's a huge improvement over just a few years ago where the southern border was a free for all.

The usual suspects are freaking out about this in the media and on social media. I think they finally figured out that they aren't going to prevent President Trump from building the wall. The anger here is mostly for political reasons, if they don't think the wall will work, why care if it is built? They are just angry because they know that Trump kept a major campaign promise and that his base will love him for this. They know that their chances of unseating President Trump in 2020 are pretty much gone. And with Mueller's horrible performance the other day, impeachment is done too and it's looking pretty clear that President Trump will remain president until 2024.