Haywood S. Gilliam blocks more funding for Trump’s border wall

A federal judge issued a ruling late Friday blocking more of President Trump’s border emergency wall-building plans, ruling that Congress denied him the money and the situations doesn’t warrant his use of emergency powers to circumvent Capitol Hill.

Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., an Obama appointee to a district court in California, had previously halted several sections of border wall projects. His new ruling Friday extends that blockade to all $2.5 billion in money Mr. Trump had sought to use from a Pentagon drug interdiction account.

The judge’s ruling also suggested he may block another $3.6 billion Mr. Trump identified elsewhere in the Pentagon budget — though that issue is not yet ripe for the court.

“Congress considered all of Defendants’ proffered needs for border barrier construction, weighed the public interest in such construction against Defendants’ request for taxpayer money, and struck what it considered to be the proper balance — in the public’s interest — by making available only $1.375 billion in funding,” Judge Gilliam wrote.

The case involved differing interpretations of Congress’s spending powers.

The administration had argued that Congress gave the administration power to move money around within the Defense Department, and never explicitly banned it from moving that money to use for wall-building. Thus the president’s moves were valid.

Judge Gilliam rejected that, saying unless Congress specifically granted money for a project, it cannot be spent.

He said the president does have emergency powers, but only in “unforeseen” cases. In the case of the wall, Congress debated the president’s requests and rejected most of it.

A federal appeals court is already hearing an appeal of Judge Gilliam’s original ruling halting the first pot of money, and Judge Gilliam cleared the way for an immediate appeal of this new ruling Friday, too.

For now, though, his decision is a major blow to Mr. Trump, who is counting on wall-building as an important accomplishment as he runs for re-election.

“We’re building the wall,” he told reporters earlier this week, before the judge’s ruling. “A lot of it is under construction. We’ll have over 400 miles next year, by the end of the year.”