What will become of Trump s border wall? The Week Staff
December 13, 2020
Today s best articles
Daily business briefing
Solving COVID newsletter
In its final weeks, the administration is rushing to complete more of its signature border barriers. How much got built? Here s everything you need to know:
How long is the wall today? President Trump inherited 654 miles of border structure along America s 1,900-mile border with Mexico. Over four years, he s constructed 415 miles, although of that total, only about 25 miles cover areas that had no previous barriers. The rest replaced or reinforced existing structures. In the most heavily fortified places, the barrier consists of two walls of concrete and steel bollards up to 30 feet high separated by a paved road. In recent months, the pace of work has surged. Right now, 11 private contractors under the auspices of the Army Corps of Engineers are working around the clock to add at lea
president trump to court today. we ll be joined by at least a dozen states. the separation of powers being violated, we will go out there and make sure that donald trump cannot steal money from the states and the people who need them since we pay the taxpayer dollars to washington, d.c., to get those services. more than half of the $8 billion the white house identified to build the border wall does not depend on the emergency declaration. the $1.37 billion from congress can be used immediately, as can the $601 million from a treasury forfeiture fund and money already in dod s counter drug fund. reprogramming $2.2 billion in the dod budget into that counter drug fund will take a little longer. the only thing that requires the emergency declaration is shifting $3.6 billion in the military construction budget to build the wall. white house officials say president trump is on solid legal ground to do that.
like if this actually gets done, this is one of the people who would do it, he said, you know, we will never build anywhere near what we still need in the next 7 years let alone during this term. so this is about optics. this is ant thbout this preside saying i got something done even though it will never get done. meaning that logistically you cannot expend that much money but first of all there s $680 million from the last two years that is unspent. so where is the emergency? number one. number two, if he goes to the military construction budgets, you have a lot of republicans as you were pointing out in districts across the country that fought for that money to be put for projects in their district. there s only 50 million of that military construction budget that is fluid, that the president could yank. yeah, there s some treasury forfeiture money that arguably he could spend but as rick points out, this stuff has