Politico By JOSH GERSTEIN 06/20/2019
A federal appeals court panel appears divided on the Trump administration’s request for an emergency stay that would allow the Defense Department to begin the process of spending $1 billion to fund border wall construction in Arizona and New Mexico.
A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel sitting in San Francisco heard about 90 minutes of heated legal arguments Thursday on the high-profile issue, with a Justice Department attorney and lawyers for wall opponents both facing intense questioning from the three jurists assigned to the case.
Judge N.R. Smith, a George W. Bush appointee, sounded inclined to grant the stay and to overturn the injunction an Oakland, Calif.-based federal district court judge issued last month barring the expenditure as unauthorized by Congress.
Judge Michelle Friedland — an Obama appointee — seemed deeply skeptical of the administration’s arguments, effectively accusing officials of trying to evade Congress’s decision to give President Donald Trump just a small fraction of the wall funding he requested and to limit it to Texas’s Rio Grande Valley.
The decision could turn on the views of the third judge on the panel, Bush appointee Richard Clifton, who was more difficult to read. He initially seemed skeptical of the administration’s arguments, but later seemed to align himself with Smith’s concerns that the suit was asking judges to second-guess matters that agencies like the Pentagon were better suited to assess.
More:
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/20/court-seems-split-on-trump-border-wall-request-1376089
