Secretary of Defense Mark Esper authorized the Pentagon on Tuesday to allocate $3.6 billion toward 11 military construction projects for President Trump's border wall, CNN reports.
The big picture: Trump is getting all the Pentagon funding that he sought — about $3.6 billion from the department's military construction fund — from declaring a national emergency over the border crisis in February. In July, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's reprogramming of Pentagon funds for the border wall is permissible. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller Elaine McCusker expects construction at the border to start in about 135 days, per CNN.
The other side: The ACLU said on Tuesday that it will file a motion to block the $3.6 billion from being used. The motion would fall under the Sierra Club v. Trump case put forward by the ACLU in February against the president's emergency powers declaration, but would be a "separate and entirely new motion," per ACLU spokesperson Abdullah Hasan.
Read Esper's letter:
Go deeper: Not a single mile of border wall has been built where fencing did not exist before
