OAKLAND, Calif. _ A federal judge said he'll rule as fast as he can on whether President Donald Trump can move forward on the next phase of his Mexico border wall after a government lawyer said construction is slated to start in a week.
U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam pressed lawyers on both sides with tough questions during a two-hour hearing Wednesday in Oakland over a request from the Sierra Club, a coalition of states and House Democrats to block the Trump administration from using $3.6 billion in Defense Department funding for the wall. Opponents of the project claim the administration broke the law by using a purported national emergency as an "end-run" around Congress's refusal to fund the projects.
The U.S. Supreme Court in July overruled Gilliam's earlier order blocking Trump from using $2.5 billion for construction of parts of the wall in California, Arizona and New Mexico. The high court's ruling loomed over Wednesday's debate.
The judge asked a government lawyer if there had ever been another case in which a president had declared a national emergency in order to "take issue" with a congressional funding decision. Gilliam then recited how the political standoff over the wall escalated.
"No, I don't think there's ever been a fact pattern like that," said deputy attorney general James Burnham.
Burnham told Gilliam that construction is set to begin Nov. 27 on a slice of the wall that runs along a remote bombing range in Arizona's Sonoran Desert named for the deceased U.S. senator and onetime presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
