#federal appeals court in California on Friday ruled that the Trump administration’s use of Pentagon funding to build a wall along the U.S.-M

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 9, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

It appears the Senate is on track to pass the bipartisan $1 trillion “hard” infrastructure package as early as tomorrow morning.  

As soon as it passes, Democrats will turn to the $3.5 trillion bill, a sweeping measure that would modernize the nation’s approach to infrastructure by including human infrastructure as well as the older “hard” projects. It establishes universal pre-kindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, cuts taxes for families with children, makes community college tuition free for two years, and invests in public universities.

It invests in housing, invests in job training, strengthens supply chains, provides green cards to immigrant workers, and protects the borders with new technologies. It expands the Affordable Care Act, invests in home and community-based health care, and reduces the cost of prescription drugs.

It also invests significantly in measures to combat climate change. Focusing on clean electricity, it cuts emissions through tax incentives, polluter fees, and home electrification projects, and replaces  federal vehicles with electric ones.

The bill calls for funding these measures with higher taxes on corporations.

The measure will move forward as a budget resolution that simply says how much money the government expects to need next year, and from 2023 to 2031. Once it passes, the various committees will hammer out exactly how much money should go where, and Congress will then hammer that into some form of an agreement.

Once a measure is finalized, the Senate will try to pass the bill through the process of budget reconciliation, which cannot be filibustered, meaning that it can pass with a simple majority.

If, indeed, President Joe Biden manages to pass both a bipartisan bill that pleases some Republicans and the reconciliation bill that pleases progressive Democrats, it will be an astonishing accomplishment.

One thing that is not in the larger bill is an increase to the debt limit, which will be imperative before October. Raising the debt limit is necessary because Congress has already appropriated money that the Treasury does not have, so it will have to borrow to meet existing obligations.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has threatened that neither he nor any other Republican will lift the debt limit and that Democrats must do it alone. But Democrats are not willing to raise it themselves, when it was the Republicans who ran up the debt during Trump’s term, adding $7 trillion to the debt while they slashed corporate taxes. ″The vast majority of the debt subject to the debt limit was accrued before the administration taking office,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress on Monday. “This is a shared responsibility, and I urge Congress to come together on a bipartisan basis as it has in the past to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

The large infrastructure package will reshape American society to invest in ordinary Americans and to get the nation on track to face a future that does not center around fossil fuels. That such an investment is on the table right now seems like good timing, since today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations released the most thorough report on climate ever compiled, and the conclusions are a “code red for humanity,” according to United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres. The report is based on more than 14,000 studies and is endorsed by 195 governments.

It warns that we have waited too long to reduce our use of fossil fuels, guaranteeing that the globe will continue to warm for at least the next 30 years even if we address climate change immediately. This will mean more extreme weather: fires—like the Dixie fire currently raging in Northern California, which is the largest in the state’s history—floods, disease, extinctions, and social conflict. If we address the issue, though, there is still a window in which we could mitigate changes that are even more dire.

The Republicans object to the larger infrastructure bill because it uses the government to invest in the economy, which will cost tax dollars. For forty years, Republicans have called for turning the economy over to private interests and for tax cuts to free up capital for investment, which they argued would make the economy grow. But those policies have sparked discontent as they concentrated wealth upward and ran up huge deficits and debt.

Now, as Democrats want to go back to the sort of system that created our booming post–World War II economy by stopping the concentration of wealth upward and investing in infrastructure, Republicans are complaining that the cost will hobble the nation. They are threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, although as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pointed out, Congress assumed the vast majority of the debt that requires a higher limit before President Joe Biden took office.

Meanwhile, Republican policies are not looking very good right now, as Republican governors have stood staunchly against combatting Covid-19 with either masks or vaccines. The virus is now surging again in the U.S., which currently has 17% of the world’s new infections despite having the best vaccine supply. The spike is especially obvious among children, who make up 20% of the nation's new cases, apparently becoming infected in homes where adults are not vaccinated. On ABC, Dr. Mark Kline, Physician In Chief at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, said: “We are hospitalizing record numbers of children. Half of the children in our hospital today are under two years of age, and most of the others are between 5 and 10 years of age.”

Cases continue to rise in Florida and Texas, where governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott have prohibited mask mandates. In Florida, journalist Katherine G. Hobbs reports: “Volusia County and Advent Health Orlando are finalizing the purchase of fleets of refrigerated mobile morgues amid Florida's COVID surge.” In Texas, Abbott today called on Texas hospitals to postpone elective procedures in order to clear more beds for Covid patients. The state’s health department is trying to find more health care workers to come to the state to help out.

Nonetheless, DeSantis and Abbott refuse to modify their ban on mask mandates, clearly seeing a strong stand on this issue as a political statement that they believe will win them Republican voters. But as infections and deaths, especially among children, rise, the wisdom of this move is not clear.

Private companies, courts, and schools are all challenging the governors’ edict. A federal judge has overruled Florida’s prohibition on private companies from asking about vaccine status, a rule challenged by cruise ship lines, who would have faced millions of dollars in fines, although vaccine requirements are standard in other ports they visit. DeSantis says he will appeal.

In Arkansas, where only 37% of the state’s population is vaccinated, two challenges to the state’s ban on mask mandates led a judge on Friday to block the ban temporarily. One of the challenges was brought by a school where more than 900 students and staff are quarantining because of a coronavirus outbreak. In Texas, Austin, Houston, and Dallas Independent School Districts are instituting mask mandates in defiance of Abbott’s executive order.

In Florida, the Miami-Dade school system is the fourth largest school district in the nation. When Superintendent Alberto Carvalho made it clear that he will follow the guidance of public health experts and doctors, DeSantis threatened to withhold the salaries of any superintendents or school board members who defy his executive order prohibiting mask mandates.

Carvalho issued a statement saying “At no point shall I allow my decision to be influenced by a threat to my paycheck; a small price to pay considering the gravity of this issue and the potential impact to the health and well-being of our students and dedicated employees.”

—-

Notes:

Vincent Rajkumar @VincentRKUSA with the best vaccine supply has now 17% of the worlds daily new COVID cases. In number of cases per day we are in a different level and trajectory than every other country in the world. Again. 778 Retweets1,324 Likes

August 8th 2021

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1Home Depot is requiring all workers to wear masks in all stores, regardless of vaccination status or the transmission risks of the area.6,278 Retweets56,706 Likes

August 9th 2021

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/arkansas-lawmakers-adjourn-leave-mask-mandate-ban-intact-79314538

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kids-sick-covid-are-filling-children-s-hospitals-areas-seeing-n1276238

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/566943-dixie-fire-becomes-largest-in-california-history

​​

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/climate/climate-change-report-ipcc-un.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/children-make-up-20-percent-of-all-new-covid-cases-across-the-us/

Greg Sargent @ThePlumLineGSThe reconciliation budget resolution is out. Here are the toplines: 404 Retweets924 Likes

August 9th 2021

/photo/1

​​

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1Dr. Mark Kline, Physician In Chief at the Children’s Hospital New Orleans, on ABC: "We are hospitalizing record numbers of children. Half of the children in our hospital today are under two years of age, and most of the others are between 5 and 10 years of age."4,721 Retweets9,175 Likes

August 9th 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/08/09/desantis-passport-ban-norwegian-cruise/

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-vaccine-us-military-requirement-pentagon-3975940c732352f72e41f6e34a3a2669

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-vaccine-us-military-requirement-pentagon-3975940c732352f72e41f6e34a3a2669

https://miami.cbslocal.com/2021/08/09/ron-desantis-state-education-board-withhold-salaries-superintendents-school-board-members-mask-mandates/

Katherine G. Hobbs (she/her) @KatherineGHobbsBREAKING: Both Volusia County and Advent Health Orlando are finalizing the purchase of fleets of refrigerated mobile morgues amid Florida's COVID surge, a rep from Mopec confirms @WJCTNews691 Retweets770 Likes

August 9th 2021

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/09/abbott-texas-hospitals-covid-503066

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/politics/read-senate-resolution-fiscal-year-2022/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/politics/democrats-budget-resolution-debt-ceiling/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/08/09/treasury-yellen-debt-ceiling/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/us/politics/infrastructure-senate-biden.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/miami-dade-superintendent-says-mask-mandate-bans-deeply-influenced-by-politics/#x

https://www.kxan.com/news/education/set-for-school/austin-isd-board-set-to-discuss-covid-19-safety-protocols-before-students-head-back-to-class/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[bountyofbeads]

Supreme Court says Trump can proceed with plan to spend military funds for border wall construction

https://wapo.st/2GyCk1I

Supreme Court says Trump can proceed with plan to spend military funds for border wall construction (ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES)

By Robert Barnes | Published July 26 at 6:37 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted July 26, 2019 8:18 PM ET |

The Supreme Court Friday night on a 5 to 4 vote revived the Trump administration’s plan to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds to build part of the wall project along the southern border.

The court’s conservatives set aside a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruling for the Sierra Club and a coalition of border communities that said a reallocation of the Defense Department money would violate federal law.

The unsigned ruling by the Supreme Court said the government “made a sufficient showing at this stage” the groups did not have proper standing to challenge transfer of money.

In a 2-to-1 decision earlier this month, the 9th Circuit majority noted that a stalemate between Congress and President Trump over the issue prompted the longest government shutdown in history. The judges reasoned that Congress made its intentions clear by allocating only about $1.4 billion for enhanced border protection.

The lower court said the public interest was “best served by respecting the Constitution’s assignment of the power of the purse to Congress, and by deferring to Congress’s understanding of the public interest as reflected in its repeated denial of more funding for border barrier construction.”

After Congress’s decision earlier this year, Trump announced plans to use more than $6 billion allocated for other purposes to fund the wall, which was the signature promise of his presidential campaign

Environmentalists and the Southern Border Communities Coalition immediately filed suit to block the transfer of funds. Democrats in the House of Representatives filed a brief supporting them.

U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court that the 9th Circuit ruling was wrong. “The sole basis for the injunction — that the Acting Secretary exceeded his statutory authority in transferring the funds — rests on a misreading of the statutory text,” Francisco wrote. He was referring to Patrick M. Shanahan, who was acting secretary at the time.

Francisco said that the challengers did not have proper legal standing to challenge the transfer of funds. He added that even if they did, their “interests in hiking, birdwatching, and fishing in designated drug-smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government’s efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border.”

The money was transferred from DOD personnel funds in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security. Federal law allows such transfers for “unforeseen” reasons and for expenditures not previously “denied by the Congress.”

The administration contends that Congress did not reject the specific expenditures at issue, which would fund projects in California, New Mexico and Arizona.

The challengers said Congress was clear.

“Congress recently considered, and rejected, the same argument defendants [the government] make here: that a border wall is urgently needed to combat drugs,” said the brief from lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the groups.

“If defendants were nonetheless permitted to obligate taxpayer funds and commence construction, the status quo would be radically and irrevocably altered.”

The brief from the U.S. House of Representatives agreed.

“The administration refuses to accept this limitation on its authority, as clearly demonstrated by Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s statement that President Trump’s border wall ‘is going to get built with or without Congress,’ ” House General Counsel Douglas N. Letter wrote. “Under our constitutional scheme, an immense wall along our border simply cannot be constructed without funds appropriated by Congress for that purpose.”

And Letter said that the administration’s view of who is within the “zone of interest” to have standing to sue is “in reality, an argument that no one can challenge the conduct at issue here.”

Francisco moved quickly after the 9th Circuit’s July 3 ruling to ask the Supreme Court to dissolve the lower court’s injunction. It asked the justices to rule before July 26, so the Defense Department would have time to finalize construction contracts before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Otherwise, he said, “the remaining unobligated funds will become unavailable.”

The challengers said the money already was unavailable.

The brief filed by the House said the money would not be lost, but would simply go back into the treasury, where the administration would again be free to make its request to Congress.

It noted there was no rush. “The administration has apparently completed only 1.7 of the 95 miles of border fencing Congress approved and appropriated funds for in fiscal year 2018,” it said.

The case is Trump v. Sierra Club, et al.

[technologyinfosec]

US Supreme Court lets Trump use disputed funds for border wall

The US Supreme Court on Friday (July 26) handed President Donald Trump a victory by letting his administration redirect $2.5 billion in money approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the US-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding. The conservative-majority court on a 5-4 vote with the court's liberals in dissent blocked in full a ruling by a federal judge in California barring the Republican president from spending the money on the basis that Congress did not specifically authorize the funds to be spent on the wall project fiercely opposed by Democrats and Mexico's government. "Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!" Trump tweeted just minutes after the court acted. A brief order explaining the court's decision said the government "made a sufficient showing" that the groups challenging the decision did not have grounds to bring a lawsuit. "Today's decision to permit the diversion of military funds for border wall construction will wall off and destroy communities, public lands, and waters in California, New Mexico, and Arizona," said Gloria Smith, an attorney with environmental group the Sierra Club, which sued to block the funds. In a highly unusual move, Trump on Feb. 15 declared a national emergency in a bid to fund the wall without congressional approval, an action Democrats said exceeded his powers under the U.S. Constitution and usurped the authority of Congress. The administration has said it plans to redirect $6.7 billion from the Departments of Defense and Treasury toward wall construction under the emergency declaration after failing to convince Congress to provide the money, including the $2.5 billion in Pentagon funding. Congress earlier failed to provide $5.7 billion in wall funding demanded by Trump in a showdown in which the president triggered a 35-day partial shutdown of the federal government that ended in January. CAMPAIGN PROMISE The administration said a court decision was needed quickly because it needs to spend the money before the end of September, when the federal government's fiscal year ends. Trump made the border wall a major 2016 campaign promise. The wall is part of his hardline immigration policies that are central to his 2020 re-election bid. Trump has said the wall is needed to curb illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the southern border. Democrats have called the wall immoral, ineffective and expensive. The Southern Border Communities Coalition, a group advocating for people living in border areas, joined the Sierra Club in suing to try to block Trump's action. The challengers have said the wall would be disruptive to the environment in part because it could worsen flooding problems and have a negative impact on wildlife. US District Judge Haywood Gilliam ruled on May 30 in Oakland, California that the administration's proposal to build parts of the border wall in California, New Mexico and Arizona with money appropriated for the Defense Department to use in the fight against illegal drugs was unlawful. The judge issued an injunction barring use of the Pentagon funds for a border wall. The administration asked that the injunction barring use of the reprogrammed funds be put on hold pending an appeal but the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to do so. Read the full article

[theculturedmarxist]

     By    Patrick Martin    

       1 July 2019  

Speaking at a news conference after the G-20 summit in Japan, President Donald Trump said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would soon carry out the mass round-ups of immigrants that he had originally ordered for June 23.

“Unless we do something pretty miraculous,” he said, the raids would begin “sometime after July Fourth.” He added, “We will be removing large numbers of people.”

The raids were set to begin June 23 in ten cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Washington and Houston, with thousands of ICE agents to deploy into immigrant neighborhoods. They have orders to arrest not only specific targeted individuals, but any undocumented person they encountered in the course of the sweeps. ICE officials emphasized that they would seize entire families as part of the raids.

Trump temporarily postponed the raids on June 22 after a telephone conversation with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The leading congressional Democrat evidently pleaded with Trump to delay the raids until after passage of a $4.6 billion emergency appropriations bill providing money for the network of detention facilities along the US-Mexico border.

It is highly likely that Pelosi argued that it would be more politically difficult for the Democrats to approve the plan if they had to vote amid widespread publicity over ICE agents smashing down doors, dragging away families, including babies and small children, and locking them up or deporting them summarily.

The bill was passed last week with a majority of both Senate and House Democrats voting to provide the massive increase in funding for Trump’s concentration camps. Two days after the House vote that sent the legislation to the White House for Trump’s signature, the president announced that the raids would now proceed, as soon as next weekend.

The passage of the funding bill makes the Democrats full partners with Trump in the savage repression of immigrants, which is a preparation for similar attacks on the working class as a whole. Trump paid tribute to Pelosi in his remarks in Japan. “She really worked with us,” he said.

The president also spelled out the brutal logic of the regime ICE and the Customs and Border Patrol have established along the US-Mexico border and more generally against immigrant workers. He made his first comment on the deaths of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria, drowned in the Rio Grande river in Mexico last week. “If they thought it was hard to get in, they wouldn't be coming up,” Trump said. “So many lives would be saved.”

Trump was echoing the comments of his nominee to head the US Citizenship and Immigration Services unit of the Department of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, who blamed the young father for his own death and the death of his child.

“The reason we have tragedies like that on the border is because that father didn’t wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion and decided to cross the river and not only died but his daughter died tragically as well,” said Cuccinelli, an ultra-right former attorney general of the state of Virginia. “Until we fix the attractions in our asylum system, people like that father and that child are going to continue to come through a dangerous trip.”

In effect, Trump, Cuccinelli and Trump’s fascistic immigration adviser Stephen Miller are claiming that the proper response to tragedies like the death of Martínez Ramírez and his daughter was to harden the border and make crossing it so potentially lethal that no one will dare to attempt it.

Trump underscored this perspective during his visit to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, where he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He praised the barbed wire, mines and massed weaponry along the DMZ, the most heavily fortified border in the world, saying, “By the way, when you talk about a wall when you talk about a border, that’s what they call a border. Nobody goes through that border.” He added, “That’s called a real border.”

It is typical of Trump that he gushes over a genuine monstrosity. The Korean DMZ is maintained by a Stalinist police state on one side and US-armed Seoul regime on the other, with the fifth and seventh-largest armies in world facing each other along a front 155 miles long, where violent death is the inevitable fate of any border-crosser.

A report issued last week by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse sheds light on the current operations of ICE against immigrants throughout the United States. The university project collects and collates federal government reports, and it calculated the rate of “community arrests” per 1,000 undocumented immigrants, based on ICE reports and estimates. “Community arrests” are those carried out by ICE through encounters in the community or at workplaces, as opposed to “custodial arrests” when another police agency turns an arrested immigrant over to ICE.

Pennsylvania and Michigan have the highest and second highest rates of arrests per 1,000 undocumented immigrants during the last fiscal year, 25.6 and 11.6 respectively. The state of Ohio was third, 11.4 per 1,000. These figures strongly suggested that the “community arrest” rate, a measure of how active ICE is in immigrant neighborhoods, is driven by the political considerations of the Trump reelection campaign.

Pennsylvania and Michigan were two of three Midwest industrial states, along with Wisconsin, which tipped the balance to Trump in the Electoral College in 2016; as for Ohio, no Republican has ever been elected president without winning that state, but Trump currently trails in the polls there, as he does nationwide. Trump’s top aides no doubt calculate that more widespread arrests in those states will excite Trump’s fascistic base as well as intimidate Hispanic, Asian and other minority voters.

Meanwhile, court action continues on an array of Trump’s anti-immigrant actions. A federal judge in Oakland, California issued an injunction temporarily barring construction of four portions of the proposed border wall near El Centro, California, and Tucson, Arizona. District Judge Haywood Gilliam barred the Pentagon from shifting $1.5 billion from military training accounts to construction accounts. Judge Gilliam previously barred transfer of another $1 billion for border construction in Arizona and New Mexico.

In both cases, Gillam was acting on the basis of suits by environmentalists and border communities affected by the planned wall construction, and found that Trump had exceeded his authority as president by shifting funds in defiance of Congress, which has the sole constitutional authority over spending. The Trump administration is appealing both rulings to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Federal District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles, who oversees the so-called Flores settlement that governs the treatment of children detained by immigration authorities, issued a separate order Friday setting a deadline of July 12 for the government to report on efforts to improve conditions in detention centers recently exposed as hellholes. The court did not order specific improvements, but it instructed a court-appointed monitor to take action for the “prompt remediation” of conditions at the detention centers.

[chrissterry]

Trump's use of Pentagon funds for US-Mexico border wall illegal, court rules | TheHill

Trump’s use of Pentagon funds for US-Mexico border wall illegal, court rules | TheHill

A federal appeals court in California on Friday ruled that the Trump administration’s use of Pentagon funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is illegal.

Source: Trump’s use of Pentagon funds for US-Mexico border wall illegal, court rules | TheHill

[maxwellyjordan]

Court allows border-wall construction to continue

The Supreme Court on Friday turned down a plea from opponents of President Donald Trump’s border wall to order a temporary stop to construction. By a vote of 5-4, the justices declined to lift a stay, entered just over a year ago, that allowed the federal government to continue to spend federal funds on construction while a legal challenge to the wall continues. The challengers had urged the Supreme Court to intervene last week, telling the justices that if the stay were not lifted, the Trump administration could finish the wall before the court even decides whether to take up the case on the merits.

The brief one-sentence order was the latest in the dispute over the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. The clash came to the court for the first time last year, after a federal district judge in California agreed with the challengers, the Sierra Club and the Southern Borders Communities Coalition, that government officials did not have the power to spend more than Congress had already allocated for border security. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam barred the government from using $2.5 billion in funds originally earmarked for military-personnel funds to build the border wall, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit declined to stay that ruling while the government appealed. The Trump administration then went to the Supreme Court, which – by a vote of 5-4 last July — put Gilliam’s order on hold and allowed the government to use the Pentagon funds on the wall.

After the 9th Circuit upheld Gilliam’s decision last month, the challengers asked the Supreme Court to step in and lift the stay. Otherwise, they contended, the government would be able to finish the parts of the wall that are the subject of their challenge before the litigation concludes.

The Trump administration urged the court to leave its year-old stay in place. When the justices rejected the challengers’ arguments last year, U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall posited, they were “presumably aware that the result would be construction during litigation.” And in any event, Wall added, the government plans to file its cert petition seeking review of the 9th Circuit’s decision on Aug. 7, which would allow the justices to consider it at their first conference after the summer recess.

Justice Stephen Breyer filed a short dissent from the court’s denial of the challengers’ motion to lift the stay, which was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who, the Court’s Public Information Office reported, was discharged from the hospital today after undergoing a non-surgical procedure earlier this week), Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Breyer reiterated that when the court granted the stay last year, he had suggested a middle ground that, he said, would avoid irreparable harm on both sides of the dispute: Put Gilliam’s order on hold as far as it prevented the government from finalizing the contracts for the construction of the wall, but continue to bar the government from actually spending the Pentagon funds or beginning construction. “Now,” Breyer observed, the government “has apparently finalized its contracts, avoiding the irreparable harm” that it said justified the stay last year. Because Friday’s order allowing construction to continue may effectively serve as a final judgment in the case, Breyer explained, he would have lifted the stay of Gilliam’s order.

In a statement issued shortly after Friday’s order, an attorney representing the challengers emphasized that the justices’ “temporary order does not decide the case.” Dror Ladin, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, stressed that the Trump administration “has admitted that the wall can be taken down if we ultimately prevail, and we will hold them to their word and seek the removal of every mile of unlawful wall built.”

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

The post Court allows border-wall construction to continue appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/07/court-allows-border-wall-construction-to-continue/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[reneeacaseyfl]

Environmental groups vow to fight on after Supreme Court okays Trump’s border wall – ThinkProgress

The Sierra Club and other environmental advocates are vowing to press on with their fight against President Donald Trump’s efforts to use military funds for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border following a Supreme Court ruling allowing the project to go forward.

In an unsigned, paragraph-long decision, the Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 ruling said that Trump could use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funding for the wall in parts of California, New Mexico, and Arizona. That move stayed a prior lower court decision, that ruled in favor of the Sierra Club and other plaintiffs, barring the administration from using the funds for the wall.

Trump greeted Friday’s ruling on Twitter, with a post reading: “Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!”

This means that construction on the wall can officially begin. But pending legal challenges from environmental groups will continue to move forward in lower courts.

Trump’s border wall plan has long been a source of ire for environmental groups and scientists, many of whom say the wall will be ecologically devastating and have severe implications for wildlife and biodiversity, in addition to research. But organizations that have opposed the wall indicated they plan to continue fighting the effort.

“This is not over,” pledged Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). That organization is working with the Sierra Club, which sued the government earlier this year over the wall’s environmental implications, among others.

“We’ve seen the destruction that the ever-expanding border wall has inflicted,” said Sierra Club managing attorney Gloria Smith in a statement. Smith said that her organization “will continue to fight this wall and Trump’s agenda through and through.”

Following the Friday ruling, however, groups acknowledged that the decision marks a major setback in efforts to fight the wall. But Ladin asserted that the legal battles will continue.

“We will be asking the federal appeals court to expedite the ongoing appeals proceeding to halt the irreversible and imminent damage from Trump’s border wall,” he said, arguing that “border communities, the environment, and our Constitution’s separation of powers will be permanently harmed” if the project proceeds.

Advocates say the risks to border communities and the environment posed by the wall are wide-ranging. In 2018, the Trump administration waived 28 environmental and health protections to build the border wall in Texas, arguing that the importance of the project outweighed other concerns. But more than 2,500 scientists from 43 countries have warned that the wall will “threaten some of the continent’s most biologically diverse regions,” with severe implications for science as well as for many species.

One treasured butterfly sanctuary on the Texas border has also repeatedly warned that the animals it protects could be irreparably harmed by the wall. And in a comment submitted earlier this month to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said that the Arizona-Mexico portion of the wall would threaten the San Pedro River, the last free-flowing river in the Southwest.

“The construction of 63 miles of border walls in the locations proposed would cause severe and irreversible damage to the environment and harm the culture, commerce, and quality of life for communities and residents located near the project areas,” the organization warned.

Credit: Source link

The post Environmental groups vow to fight on after Supreme Court okays Trump’s border wall – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/environmental-groups-vow-to-fight-on-after-supreme-court-okays-trumps-border-wall-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=environmental-groups-vow-to-fight-on-after-supreme-court-okays-trumps-border-wall-thinkprogress from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186587075422

[velmaemyers88]

Environmental groups vow to fight on after Supreme Court okays Trump’s border wall – ThinkProgress

The Sierra Club and other environmental advocates are vowing to press on with their fight against President Donald Trump’s efforts to use military funds for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border following a Supreme Court ruling allowing the project to go forward.

In an unsigned, paragraph-long decision, the Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 ruling said that Trump could use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funding for the wall in parts of California, New Mexico, and Arizona. That move stayed a prior lower court decision, that ruled in favor of the Sierra Club and other plaintiffs, barring the administration from using the funds for the wall.

Trump greeted Friday’s ruling on Twitter, with a post reading: “Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!”

This means that construction on the wall can officially begin. But pending legal challenges from environmental groups will continue to move forward in lower courts.

Trump’s border wall plan has long been a source of ire for environmental groups and scientists, many of whom say the wall will be ecologically devastating and have severe implications for wildlife and biodiversity, in addition to research. But organizations that have opposed the wall indicated they plan to continue fighting the effort.

“This is not over,” pledged Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). That organization is working with the Sierra Club, which sued the government earlier this year over the wall’s environmental implications, among others.

“We’ve seen the destruction that the ever-expanding border wall has inflicted,” said Sierra Club managing attorney Gloria Smith in a statement. Smith said that her organization “will continue to fight this wall and Trump’s agenda through and through.”

Following the Friday ruling, however, groups acknowledged that the decision marks a major setback in efforts to fight the wall. But Ladin asserted that the legal battles will continue.

“We will be asking the federal appeals court to expedite the ongoing appeals proceeding to halt the irreversible and imminent damage from Trump’s border wall,” he said, arguing that “border communities, the environment, and our Constitution’s separation of powers will be permanently harmed” if the project proceeds.

Advocates say the risks to border communities and the environment posed by the wall are wide-ranging. In 2018, the Trump administration waived 28 environmental and health protections to build the border wall in Texas, arguing that the importance of the project outweighed other concerns. But more than 2,500 scientists from 43 countries have warned that the wall will “threaten some of the continent’s most biologically diverse regions,” with severe implications for science as well as for many species.

One treasured butterfly sanctuary on the Texas border has also repeatedly warned that the animals it protects could be irreparably harmed by the wall. And in a comment submitted earlier this month to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said that the Arizona-Mexico portion of the wall would threaten the San Pedro River, the last free-flowing river in the Southwest.

“The construction of 63 miles of border walls in the locations proposed would cause severe and irreversible damage to the environment and harm the culture, commerce, and quality of life for communities and residents located near the project areas,” the organization warned.

Credit: Source link

The post Environmental groups vow to fight on after Supreme Court okays Trump’s border wall – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/environmental-groups-vow-to-fight-on-after-supreme-court-okays-trumps-border-wall-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=environmental-groups-vow-to-fight-on-after-supreme-court-okays-trumps-border-wall-thinkprogress from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186587075422

[weeklyreviewer]

Environmental groups vow to fight on after Supreme Court okays Trump’s border wall – ThinkProgress

The Sierra Club and other environmental advocates are vowing to press on with their fight against President Donald Trump’s efforts to use military funds for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border following a Supreme Court ruling allowing the project to go forward.

In an unsigned, paragraph-long decision, the Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 ruling said that Trump could use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funding for the wall in parts of California, New Mexico, and Arizona. That move stayed a prior lower court decision, that ruled in favor of the Sierra Club and other plaintiffs, barring the administration from using the funds for the wall.

Trump greeted Friday’s ruling on Twitter, with a post reading: “Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!”

This means that construction on the wall can officially begin. But pending legal challenges from environmental groups will continue to move forward in lower courts.

Trump’s border wall plan has long been a source of ire for environmental groups and scientists, many of whom say the wall will be ecologically devastating and have severe implications for wildlife and biodiversity, in addition to research. But organizations that have opposed the wall indicated they plan to continue fighting the effort.

“This is not over,” pledged Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). That organization is working with the Sierra Club, which sued the government earlier this year over the wall’s environmental implications, among others.

“We’ve seen the destruction that the ever-expanding border wall has inflicted,” said Sierra Club managing attorney Gloria Smith in a statement. Smith said that her organization “will continue to fight this wall and Trump’s agenda through and through.”

Following the Friday ruling, however, groups acknowledged that the decision marks a major setback in efforts to fight the wall. But Ladin asserted that the legal battles will continue.

“We will be asking the federal appeals court to expedite the ongoing appeals proceeding to halt the irreversible and imminent damage from Trump’s border wall,” he said, arguing that “border communities, the environment, and our Constitution’s separation of powers will be permanently harmed” if the project proceeds.

Advocates say the risks to border communities and the environment posed by the wall are wide-ranging. In 2018, the Trump administration waived 28 environmental and health protections to build the border wall in Texas, arguing that the importance of the project outweighed other concerns. But more than 2,500 scientists from 43 countries have warned that the wall will “threaten some of the continent’s most biologically diverse regions,” with severe implications for science as well as for many species.

One treasured butterfly sanctuary on the Texas border has also repeatedly warned that the animals it protects could be irreparably harmed by the wall. And in a comment submitted earlier this month to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said that the Arizona-Mexico portion of the wall would threaten the San Pedro River, the last free-flowing river in the Southwest.

“The construction of 63 miles of border walls in the locations proposed would cause severe and irreversible damage to the environment and harm the culture, commerce, and quality of life for communities and residents located near the project areas,” the organization warned.

Credit: Source link

The post Environmental groups vow to fight on after Supreme Court okays Trump’s border wall – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/environmental-groups-vow-to-fight-on-after-supreme-court-okays-trumps-border-wall-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=environmental-groups-vow-to-fight-on-after-supreme-court-okays-trumps-border-wall-thinkprogress

[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

U.S. Supreme Court Lets Trump Use Disputed Funds for Border Wall

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday handed President Donald Trump a victory by letting his administration redirect $2.5 billion in money approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding.

The conservative-majority court on a 5-4 vote with the court’s liberals in dissent blocked in full a ruling by a federal judge in California barring the Republican president from spending the money on the basis that Congress did not specifically authorize the funds to be spent on the wall project fiercely opposed by Democrats and Mexico’s government.

“Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!” Trump tweeted just minutes after the court acted.

A brief order explaining the court’s decision said the government “made a sufficient showing” that the groups challenging the decision did not have grounds to bring a lawsuit.

“Today’s decision to permit the diversion of military funds for border wall construction will wall off and destroy communities, public lands, and waters in California, New Mexico, and Arizona,” said Gloria Smith, an attorney with environmental group the Sierra Club, which sued to block the funds.

In a highly unusual move, Trump on Feb. 15 declared a national emergency in a bid to fund the wall without congressional approval, an action Democrats said exceeded his powers under the U.S. Constitution and usurped the authority of Congress.

The administration has said it plans to redirect $6.7 billion from the Departments of Defense and Treasury toward wall construction under the emergency declaration after failing to convince Congress to provide the money, including the $2.5 billion in Pentagon funding. Congress earlier failed to provide $5.7 billion in wall funding demanded by Trump in a showdown in which the president triggered a 35-day partial shutdown of the federal government that ended in January.

CAMPAIGN PROMISE

The administration said a court decision was needed quickly because it needs to spend the money before the end of September, when the federal government’s fiscal year ends.

Trump made the border wall a major 2016 campaign promise. The wall is part of his hardline immigration policies that are central to his 2020 re-election bid. Trump has said the wall is needed to curb illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the southern border. Democrats have called the wall immoral, ineffective and expensive.

The Southern Border Communities Coalition, a group advocating for people living in border areas, joined the Sierra Club in suing to try to block Trump’s action.

The challengers have said the wall would be disruptive to the environment in part because it could worsen flooding problems and have a negative impact on wildlife.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam ruled on May 30 in Oakland, California that the administration’s proposal to build parts of the border wall in California, New Mexico and Arizona with money appropriated for the Defense Department to use in the fight against illegal drugs was unlawful. The judge issued an injunction barring use of the Pentagon funds for a border wall.

The administration asked that the injunction barring use of the reprogrammed funds be put on hold pending an appeal but the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to do so.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; editing by Diane Craft and Cynthia Osterman)

from IJR https://ift.tt/2JUJ4Jo via IFTTT

[kansascityhappenings]

Supreme Court clears way for Trump admin to use Defense funds for border wall construction

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to use $2.5 billion from the Department of Defense to construct parts of a wall along the southern border that the government argues is necessary to protect national security.

The decision allows the Defense Department money to be spent now while a court battle plays out over whether the government had the authority to divert funds that were not appropriated for the wall.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4, along ideological lines, to allow the funds to be used while the court appeals proceed.

In a brief order, the court said it was ruling in favor of the Trump administration before the litigation has played out because the government had made a “sufficient showing” that the challengers did not have the legal right to bring the case.

Three members of the liberal wing of the court — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — wrote they would have blocked the funds for now.

The fourth member, Justice Stephen Breyer, wrote separately to say he would have allowed the government to use the funds to finalize the terms for contractors but block the funds from being used for the actual construction.

The Supreme Court’s order is a significant win for Trump, who is likely to use the construction of a wall as a major talking point on the campaign trail. The President celebrated the decision in a tweet Friday evening.

“The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed,” the President tweeted. “Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!”

The decision overrules a lower court decision that had blocked the transfer of funds while appeals played out.

A panel of judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to allow the use of the funds earlier in the month, holding that the challengers were likely to prevail in their case because the use of the funds “violates the constitutional requirement that the Executive Branch not spend money absent an appropriation from Congress.”

The order comes after Trump ended a 35-day government shutdown in February when Congress gave him $1.4 billion in wall funding, far less than he had sought. He subsequently declared a national emergency to get money from other government accounts to construct sections of the wall.

The $2.5 billion had been shifted from various programs including personnel and recruiting, Minuteman III and air launch cruise missiles, E-3 aircraft upgrades and the Afghan security forces training fund.

The Pentagon said it was able to move that money due to uncovered cost savings as part of a process known as “reprogramming.” The money was moved into a Defense Department counter-drug account that is authorized to spend money on the construction of border barriers.

Many lawmakers slammed the decision to move the money away from those national security priorities, threatening to strip the Pentagon of its ability to move money around, something the Defense Department has acknowledged would be detrimental.

Lawyers for the government had asked the Supreme Court to step in on an emergency basis and unblock the use of the funds while legal challenges proceed in the lower courts.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco noted in court papers that the projects needed to start because the funds at issue “will no longer remain available for obligation after the fiscal year ends on September 30, 2019.”

He said the funds are necessary to permit the construction of more than 100 miles of fencing in areas the government has identified as “drug-smuggling corridors” where it has seized “thousands of pounds of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine” in recent years.

“Respondents’ interests in hiking, birdwatching, and fishing in designated drug-smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government’s efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border,” Francisco argued in the papers, regarding the challenge from environmental groups.

It is a loss for critics, including the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition that argued the administration had illegally transferred the funds after Congress denied requests for more money to construct the wall. The groups argued the wall — in areas in Arizona, California and New Mexico — would harm the environment.

The ACLU, representing the groups, argued in court papers against a stay of the lower court ruling fearful of the wall’s impact on border communities.

“Issuance of a stay that would permit Defendants to immediately spend this money is not consistent with Congress’s power over the purse or with the tacit assessment by Congress that the spending would not be in the public interest,”ACLU lawyers told the court.

The ACLU slammed the decision after it was released Friday evening.

“This is not over. We will be asking the federal appeals court to expedite the ongoing appeals proceeding to halt the irreversible and imminent damage from Trump’s border wall. Border communities, the environment, and our Constitution’s separation of powers will be permanently harmed should Trump get away with pillaging military funds for a xenophobic border wall Congress denied,” said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/07/26/supreme-court-clears-way-for-trump-admin-to-use-defense-funds-for-border-wall-construction/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/07/27/supreme-court-clears-way-for-trump-admin-to-use-defense-funds-for-border-wall-construction/

[thisdaynews]

Supreme Court gives Trump go-ahead on border wall

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/supreme-court-gives-trump-go-ahead-on-border-wall/

Supreme Court gives Trump go-ahead on border wall

Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

President Donald Trump scored a major victory at the Supreme Court on Friday, as the justices lifted a lower court order blocking a key part of his plan to expand the border wall with Mexico.

The Justice Department had asked the justices to stay a pair of rulings an Oakland-based federal judge issued in May and June blocking Trump’s plan to use about $2.5 billion in unspent military funds for wall projects in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

Story Continued Below

All the Republican-appointed justices voted in favor of allowing Trump to proceed with that aspect of his plan while litigation over the issue continues. All the Democratic-appointed justices dissented, except for Justice Stephen Breyer who said he would have allowed the contracting process to move forward but blocked actual construction.

The president touted the ruling in a tweet Friday evening: “Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!”

However, the ruling may not signal that all challenges to the border wall funding in dispute are certain to fail.

The Supreme Court rarely explains its reasons for granting or denying a stay, but the order Friday declared that “the Government has made a sufficient showing at this stage that the plaintiffs have no cause of action to obtain review” of the decision to transfer the funds from a Pentagon account.

The statement suggested that the five justices in the majority agreed with the Trump administration’s arguments that the groups who obtained the injunction, the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, lacked a valid legal mechanism to enforce the budget rider Trump officials were allegedly violating.

That may not rule out the possibility that others who have sued over the same policy, including 20 states and the House of Representatives, might have stronger claims. The states’ suit was essentially set aside due to the injunction granted to the private groups.

A judge dismissed the House’s suit last month but that ruling is on appeal.

Trump announced in May that he intended to spend over $8 billion on border wall construction, despite the fact that Congress appropriated only $1.375 billion for that purposes and limited its use to southeast Texas. He also declared a state of emergency in an effort to unlock a portion of the funds.

The roughly $2.5 billion at issue in the litigation was identified by the administration as available because of a provision allowing excess military personnel funds and other Pentagon money to be spent on counterdrug projects.

However, the language allowing that flexibility rules out spending on any “item” previously denied by Congress.

Rulings from the district court in Oakland and from the 9thCircuit Court of Appeals portrayed Trump’s move as an illegal end-run around Congress’s authority to control federal spending.

On July 12, the Justice Department filed an emergency stay application with the Supreme Court, asking it to step in and stay the lower court orders so that contracting and spending on the wall projects could proceed.

Administration lawyers argued expanding the wall is urgent due to a surge in drug trafficking, but the appeals court noted that officials say most drugs are smuggled through staffed border checkpoints.

The justices who indicated they would have denied the stay outright did not issue any statement explaining their decision.

The only detailed explanation came from Breyer, who seemed to endorse the idea that the key question in the case is whether citizens’ groups can enforce budget restrictions passed by Congress.

“This case raises novel and important questions about the ability of private parties to enforce Congress’ appropriations power,” Breyer wrote. “I would express no other view now on the merits of those questions.”

“Allowing the Government to finalize the contracts at issue, but not to begin construction, would alleviate the most pressing harm claimed by the Government without risking irreparable harm to respondents,” Breyer added.

Read More

[maxwellyjordan]

Battle over border wall comes to the court

The battle over the Trump administration’s efforts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border came to the Supreme Court today, as the federal government asked the justices to block a lower-court order that barred the government from using $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for construction of the wall.

The lawsuit in which the justices have been asked to intervene was filed in February of this year by the Sierra Club, an environmental group, and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, a group that promotes policies to improve the quality of life in border communities. They argued that government officials exceeded their authority when they spent more money than Congress had allocated for border security – and, in particular, when the Department of Defense redirected $2.5 billion originally earmarked for military personnel funds to its counter-narcotics funds for use in construction of the wall.

A federal district court in California barred the government from using the money for border-wall construction, and on July 3 a federal appeals court rejected the government’s request to stay that decision pending appeal. Judges Richard Clifton and Michelle Friedland concluded that, under federal law, when Congress had already denied the government’s request for funds for the wall, the Department of Defense could not then turn around and re-allocate funds to accomplish the same thing.

Today the government came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to put the district court’s order on hold while it appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (and, if necessary, while the government seeks Supreme Court review). The government also asked the justices to enter an “administrative stay”—a temporary hold while the Supreme Court considers its request.

In a filing by U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, the government told the justices that the ruling below was simply wrong: The “sole basis” for the order blocking it from using the $2.5 billion for border-wall construction “rests on a misreading” of the law that authorizes the Department of Defense to re-allocate its funds in some circumstances. What’s more, the government added, the challengers’ “interests in hiking, bird watching, and fishing in designated drug-smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government’s efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border.”

The government asked the Supreme Court to act by July 26, telling the justices that the funds at the center of the dispute will be unavailable if they are not committed by the time the fiscal year ends on September 30. Justice Elena Kagan, who has primary responsibility for emergency appeals from the 9th Circuit, quickly called for a response from the challengers, setting a deadline of next Friday, July 19, at 4 pm Eastern.

The post Battle over border wall comes to the court appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/07/battle-over-border-wall-comes-to-the-court/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[mikemortgage]

AP FACT CHECK: Trump myths on dipping oil prices, cold snaps

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is wrong when he suggests global warming can’t be happening if it’s really cold outside.

He points to a “brutal and extended cold blast” in the Eastern U.S. during Thanksgiving week and wonders aloud to his Twitter followers, “Whatever happened to Global Warming?” In fact, he is confusing short-term weather patterns with longer-term climate change. A scientific report put out Friday by his own administration rejects as folly any notion that a particular plunge in temperatures can cast doubt on whether Earth is warming.

Explaining his decision not to punish Saudi Arabia for the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, Trump also exaggerates the value of Saudi investments in the U.S. and expresses thanks to the kingdom — then himself — for spurring a recent decline in oil prices. Those claims are off the mark.

A look at his recent rhetoric, also covering the courts, midterm elections and more.

OIL PRICES

TRUMP: “So great that oil prices are falling (thank you President T). Add that, which is like a big Tax Cut, to our other good Economic news. Inflation down (are you listening Fed)!” — tweet Sunday.

TRUMP: “Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Heaping praise on Saudi Arabia, then himself, for lower oil prices is a gross oversimplification. Oil prices, which peaked Oct. 3, have been falling on the realization that U.S. sanctions against Iran would not create a shortage and on fear that slower economic growth internationally will depress energy demand.

Although the U.S. is now the world’s biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia remains the biggest exporter. As a so-called swing producer with the ability to adjust production up or down relatively quickly, it can indeed influence the price of crude. But the market is far more complex than Trump suggests. Canada is actually the leading source of U.S. oil imports, for example, with Saudi Arabia second.

——

CLIMATE

TRUMP: “This is the coldest weather in the history of the Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC, and one of the coldest Thanksgivings on record!” — tweet Thursday.

TRUMP: “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Trump is conflating weather and climate. Weather is like mood, which changes daily. Climate is like personality, which is long term.

The climate is warming, which still allows for record cold spells.

On Friday, the White House produced the National Climate Assessment by scientists from 13 Trump administration agencies and outside scientists. It amounted to a slap in the face for those who question whether climate is changing.

“Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us,” the report says. It details how global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas is hurting each region of U.S. and different sectors of the economy. The report said the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, already costing nearly $400 billion since 2015, and projects increased deaths and disease.

The White House report swept aside the idea, already discredited, that a particular plunge in temperatures can cast uncertainty on whether Earth is warming. It says more than 90 per cent of current warming is caused by humans: “There are no credible alternative human or natural explanations supported by the observational evidence.”

“Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity,” the report says. “Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase.”

In other words, there are cold days in a warming climate.

——

THE COURTS

TRUMP: “Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country, 79%, & is used to get an almost guaranteed result.” — tweet Thursday.

TRUMP: “It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an “independent judiciary,” but if it is why … are so are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking.” — tweets Wednesday.

THE FACTS: He’s incorrect in suggesting that rulings by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco are reversed by the Supreme Court more frequently than those of any other federal appeals court. His description of the “shocking” number of overturned cases in the 9th Circuit belies the nature of the appeals system.

When the Supreme Court hears a case, it is more likely to overturn it than not. It does so about two-thirds of the time.

In the last term, the Supreme Court overturned 100 per cent of the decisions of the 1st Circuit in Boston, the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia and the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati. For the 9th Circuit, 86 per cent were overturned.

Over the past five years, the Supreme Court overturned a greater percentage of rulings from the 3rd Circuit (92.3 per cent), the 6th Circuit (85.1 per cent) and the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit (81.8 per cent) than from the 9th (77.4 per cent), according to The Associated Press’ analysis of statistics from the legal website Scotusblog.

The 9th is by far the largest of the 13 federal courts of appeals, covering Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. That means that in raw numbers, more cases are heard and reversed from the 9th year in and year out. But that does not make it the most frequently overturned.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who’d been nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, temporarily barred the Trump administration from refusing asylum to immigrants who cross the southern border illegally. That set off Trump’s ire. Any appeal is likely to go to the 9th Circuit.

Trump’s tweets took issue with an unusual rebuke from the U.S. chief justice, John Roberts. Roberts spoke up for the independence of the judiciary after Trump branded Tigar an “Obama judge” and said “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”

——

THE ELECTION

TRUMP, on his impact on the midterm elections: “Look at Florida. I went down to Florida. Rick Scott won and he won by a lot. I don’t know what happened to all those votes that disappeared at the very end. And if I didn’t put a spotlight on that election before it got down to the 12,500 votes, he would’ve lost that election, OK? … They would have taken that election away from him.” — interview with “Fox News Sunday,” broadcast on Nov. 18.

THE FACTS: Trump is exaggerating the vote margin of Scott’s victory in Florida’s Senate race as being “a lot.” He’s also suggesting without evidence that his own efforts prevented Democrats from engaging in voter fraud.

Scott, Florida’s Republican governor, edged out Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in the closest Senate race in the nation in the midterm elections — by a margin of 10,033 votes, or 0.12 percentage points. It also was the closest Senate race in Florida since at least 1978, according to the Florida’s Division of Elections website. It required two recounts — by machine and by hand — as mandated by state law due to the razor-thin margins.

Trump asserts without evidence that the attention he brought to the Senate race prevented Democrats from “taking” that election from Scott, hinting at voter fraud by suggesting votes “disappeared at the very end.”

Despite Trump’s repeated claims after the Nov. 6 election of Florida races being potentially “stolen,” the state agencies charged with investigating potential fraud have said no credible allegations exist. It’s not uncommon for vote tallies to change in the days after Election Day as local officials process remaining mailed and provisional ballots. In Florida, Scott saw some of his lead dwindle after the Democratic strongholds of Palm Beach and Broward counties continued to count votes.

——

SAUDI ARABIA

TRUMP: “After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defence contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries — and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business.” — statement Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He’s greatly overstating the value of expected Saudi investments in the U.S.

The arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration, mixes old deals, some new business and prospective purchases that have not been worked out.

The Pentagon said last month that Saudi Arabia had signed “letters of offer and acceptance” for only $14.5 billion in military purchases and confirmed Tuesday that nothing further has reached that stage.

Those letters, issued after the U.S. government approves a proposed arms sale, specify its terms. Much of that $14.5 billion involves a missile defence system, a contract that appears to have advanced more than other significant investments but not been completed.

Moreover, the State Department estimated last year that if the full $110 billion in prospective arms business is fulfilled, it could end up “potentially supporting tens of thousands of new jobs in the United States.” That’s a far cry from the 500,000 to 600,000 jobs that Trump has said the arms deal is worth.

Details of the package have been sketchy, with no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much. The government’s Congressional Research Service has described the package as a combination of sales that were proposed by President Barack Obama and discussed with Congress and new sales still being developed.

Meanwhile, there has been no verification from either country that “the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States,” as Trump put it in his statement. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters did not respond to a request to explain the figure.

——

TRUMP: “Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave. They would immediately provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance.” — statement Tuesday.

THE FACTS: This seemingly benign view of Saudi intentions in Yemen does not square with reality on the ground. A Saudi-led blockade is at least partly responsible for widespread starvation in a country where three quarters of the population needs life-saving assistance. It’s the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The U.S. has scaled back support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iranian-backed rebels and is pressing for a cease-fire.

The international aid group Save the Children estimated Wednesday that 85,000 Yemeni children younger than 5 have died of hunger and disease since civil war broke out in 2015. The United Nations says more than 1.3 million Yemeni children have suffered from severe acute malnutrition since the coalition went to war against Houthi rebels.

——

9-11

TRUMP: “Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!” — tweet Nov. 19.

THE FACTS: There was nothing original or clairvoyant in the reference to bin Laden in Trump’s 2000 book. As part of his criticism of what he considered Bill Clinton’s haphazard approach to U.S. security as president, his book stated: “One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy Number One, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.”

Trump’s book did not call for further U.S. action against bin Laden or al-Qaida to follow up on attacks Clinton ordered in 1998 in Afghanistan and Sudan after al-Qaida bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. attacks were meant to disrupt bin Laden’s network and destroy some of al-Qaida’s infrastructure, such as a factory in Sudan associated with the production of a nerve gas ingredient. They “missed” in the sense that bin Laden was not killed in them, and al-Qaida was able to pull off 9-11 three years later.

In passages on terrorism, Trump’s book correctly predicted that the U.S. was at risk of a terrorist attack that would make the 1993 World Trade Center bombing pale by comparison. That was a widespread concern at the time, as Trump suggested in stating “no sensible analyst rejects this possibility.” Trump did not explicitly tie that threat to al-Qaida and thought an attack might come through the use of a miniaturized weapon of mass destruction, like a nuclear device in a suitcase or anthrax.

——

Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein, Robert Burns and Josh Boak in Washington, Jill Colvin in Palm Beach, Fla., and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

——

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

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EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

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AP FACT CHECK: On break, no break by Trump in twisting facts

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AP FACT CHECK: On break, no break by Trump in twisting facts

WASHINGTON (AP) – Displaying a thin grasp of science, President Donald Trump questioned the reality of global warming because it was cold outside. Then came a federal report laying out the severe consequences of climate change and rebutting the notion that a frigid snap means it isn’t happening.

Sizing up the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump declared he had closed it this past week and mandated that “no one’s coming in.” Actually, one crossing from Mexico, among dozens that stayed open, was partially closed before rush hour and pedestrians still had access to the U.S. during that time.

Before and throughout his Thanksgiving vacation in Florida, Trump took no holiday from twisting facts across a broad front – on Saudi Arabia, the recent election and the 2001 terrorist attacks among the topics.

A look at some of his rhetoric:

CLIMATE

TRUMP: “This is the coldest weather in the history of the Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC, and one of the coldest Thanksgivings on record!” – tweet Thursday.

TRUMP: “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?” – tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Trump is conflating weather and climate. Weather is like mood, which changes daily. Climate is like personality, which is long term.

The climate is warming, which still allows for record cold spells.

On Friday, the White House produced the National Climate Assessment by scientists from 13 Trump administration agencies and outside scientists. It amounted to a slap in the face for those who doubt the climate is changing.

“Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us,” the report says. It details how global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas is hurting each region of U.S. and different sectors of the economy. The report also projects increased deaths and disease.

The White House report swept aside the idea, already discredited, that a particular plunge in temperatures can cast uncertainty on whether Earth is warming. It says more than 90 percent of current warming is caused by humans: “There are no credible alternative human or natural explanations supported by the observational evidence.”

“Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity,” the report says. “Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase.”

In other words, there are cold days in a warming climate.

The federal climate assessment is mandated by law every few years.

___

IMMIGRATION

TRUMP: “Two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it. We’re saying, nobody is coming in, because it was out of control.” – remarks to reporters Thursday.

THE FACTS: By no means did he seal the border.

On Monday, the U.S. closed northbound traffic lanes for a few hours at the San Ysidro, California, crossing to install new barriers. It’s the busiest of more than 40 U.S.-Mexico crossings. That work was completed and the lanes reopened before the morning rush of commerce and commuters who work legally in the U.S. Officials also closed one pedestrian crossing facility at San Ysidro and left the other open, so it’s not true that everyone was blocked from coming in, even at that one crossing. U.S. authorities acted out of concern that migrants gathered on the Mexican side might bolt for the U.S.

Trump is threatening to seal the border if Mexico doesn’t properly “control” people trying to get into the U.S. He claimed “I’ve already shut it down, for short periods.” When pressed about whether he meant only that one border crossing, he said: “No, no. Yeah. I’ve already shut down parts of the border.”

___

THE COURTS

TRUMP: “Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country, 79%, & is used to get an almost guaranteed result.” – tweet Thursday.

TRUMP: “It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an “independent judiciary,” but if it is why … are so are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking.” – tweets Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Trump is wrong in suggesting that rulings by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco are reversed by the Supreme Court more frequently than those of any other federal appeals court. His description of the “shocking” number of overturned cases in the 9th Circuit belies the nature of the appeals system.

When the Supreme Court hears a case, it is more likely to overturn it than not. It does so about two-thirds of the time.

In the last term, the Supreme Court overturned 100 percent of the decisions of the 1st Circuit in Boston, the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia and the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati. For the 9th Circuit, 86 percent were overturned.

Over the past five years, the Supreme Court overturned a greater percentage of rulings from the 3rd Circuit (92.3 percent), the 6th Circuit (85.1 percent) and the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit (81.8 percent) than from the 9th (77.4 percent), according to The Associated Press’ analysis of statistics from the legal website Scotusblog.

The 9th is by far the largest of the 13 federal courts of appeals, covering Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. That means that in raw numbers, more cases are heard and reversed from the 9th year in and year out. But that does not make it the most frequently overturned.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who’d been nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, temporarily barred the Trump administration from refusing asylum to immigrants who cross the southern border illegally. That set off Trump’s ire. Any appeal is likely to go to the 9th Circuit.

Trump’s tweets took issue with an unusual rebuke from the U.S. chief justice, John Roberts. Roberts spoke up for the independence of the judiciary after Trump branded Tigar an “Obama judge” and said “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”

___

THE ELECTION

TRUMP, on his impact on the midterm elections: “Look at Florida. I went down to Florida. Rick Scott won and he won by a lot. I don’t know what happened to all those votes that disappeared at the very end. And if I didn’t put a spotlight on that election before it got down to the 12,500 votes, he would’ve lost that election, OK? … They would have taken that election away from him.” – interview with “Fox News Sunday.”

THE FACTS: Trump is exaggerating the vote margin of Scott’s victory as being “a lot” and suggesting without evidence that his own efforts prevented Democrats from engaging in voter fraud.

Scott, Florida’s Republican governor, edged out Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in the closest Senate race in the nation in the midterm elections – by a margin of 10,033 votes, or 0.12 percentage points. It also was the closest Senate race in Florida since at least 1978, according to the Florida’s Division of Elections website. It required two recounts – by machine and by hand – as mandated by state law due to the razor-thin margins.

Trump asserts without evidence that the attention he brought to the Senate race prevented Democrats from “taking” that election from Scott, hinting at voter fraud by suggesting votes “disappeared at the very end.”

Despite Trump’s repeated claims after the Nov. 6 election of Florida races being potentially “stolen,” the state agencies charged with investigating potential fraud have said no credible allegations exist. It’s not uncommon for vote tallies to change in the days after Election Day as local officials process remaining mailed and provisional ballots. In Florida, Scott saw some of his lead dwindle after the Democratic strongholds of Palm Beach and Broward counties continued to count votes.

___

SYRIA

TRUMP: “The country of Iran, as an example, is responsible for a bloody proxy war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, trying to destabilize Iraq’s fragile attempt at democracy, supporting the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon, propping up dictator Bashar Assad in Syria (who has killed millions of his own citizens), and much more.” – statement Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He’s inflating the already staggering number of Syrians killed in more than seven years of civil war. Syrian government forces, led by President Bashar Assad and backed by Russia and Iran, have retaken most of the territory rebels seized during a war that has killed nearly 500,000 people, according to estimates by United Nations and human rights groups.

___

SAUDI ARABIA

TRUMP: “After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries – and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business.” – statement Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He’s greatly overstating the value of expected Saudi investments in the U.S.

The arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration, mixes old deals, some new business and prospective purchases that have not been worked out.

The Pentagon said last month that Saudi Arabia had signed “letters of offer and acceptance” for only $14.5 billion in military purchases and confirmed Tuesday that nothing further has reached that stage.

Those letters, issued after the U.S. government approves a proposed arms sale, specify its terms. Much of that $14.5 billion involves a missile defense system, a contract that appears to have advanced more than other significant investments but not been completed.

Moreover, the State Department estimated last year that if the full $110 billion in prospective arms business is fulfilled, it could end up “potentially supporting tens of thousands of new jobs in the United States.” That’s a far cry from the 500,000 to 600,000 jobs that Trump has said the arms deal is worth.

Details of the package have been sketchy, with no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much. The government’s Congressional Research Service has described the package as a combination of sales that were proposed by President Barack Obama and discussed with Congress and new sales still being developed.

Meanwhile, there has been no verification from either country that “the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States,” as Trump put it in his statement. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters did not respond to a request to explain the figure.

___

TRUMP: “Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!” – tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Merely thanking Saudi Arabia for lower oil prices is a gross oversimplification. Oil prices, which peaked Oct. 3, have been falling on the realization that U.S. sanctions against Iran would not create a shortage and on fear that slower economic growth internationally will depress energy demand.

Although the U.S. is now the world’s biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia remains the biggest exporter, and as a so-called swing producer with the ability to adjust production up or down relatively quickly, it can indeed influence the price of crude. But the market is far more complex than Trump suggests. Canada is actually the leading source of U.S. oil imports, for example, with Saudi Arabia second.

___

TRUMP: “Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave. They would immediately provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance.” – statement Tuesday.

THE FACTS: This seemingly benign view of Saudi intentions in Yemen does not square with reality on the ground. A Saudi-led blockade is at least partly responsible for widespread starvation in a country where three quarters of the population needs life-saving assistance. It’s the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The U.S. has scaled back support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iranian-backed rebels and is pressing for a cease-fire.

The international aid group Save the Children estimated Wednesday that 85,000 Yemeni children younger than 5 have died of hunger and disease since civil war broke out in 2015. The United Nations says more than 1.3 million Yemeni children have suffered from severe acute malnutrition since the coalition went to war against Houthi rebels.

___

TERRORISM

TRUMP: “Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!” – tweet Monday.

THE FACTS: There was nothing original or clairvoyant in the reference to bin Laden in Trump’s 2000 book. As part of his criticism of what he considered Bill Clinton’s haphazard approach to U.S. security as president, his book stated: “One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy Number One, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.”

Trump’s book did not call for further U.S. action against bin Laden or al-Qaida to follow up on attacks Clinton ordered in 1998 in Afghanistan and Sudan after al-Qaida bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. attacks were meant to disrupt bin Laden’s network and destroy some of al-Qaida’s infrastructure, such as a factory in Sudan associated with the production of a nerve gas ingredient. They “missed” in the sense that bin Laden was not killed in them, and al-Qaida was able to pull off 9/11 three years later.

In passages on terrorism, Trump’s book correctly predicted that the U.S. was at risk of a terrorist attack that would make the 1993 World Trade Center bombing pale by comparison. That was a widespread concern at the time, as Trump suggested in stating “no sensible analyst rejects this possibility.” Trump did not explicitly tie that threat to al-Qaida and thought an attack might come through the use of a miniaturized weapon of mass destruction, like a nuclear device in a suitcase or anthrax.

___

Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein, Robert Burns and Josh Boak in Washington, Jill Colvin in Palm Beach, Florida, and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

___

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US military to accept transgender recruits after Justice Department decides not to appeal court ruling AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko The Justice Department decided not to appeal the rulings that blocked President Donald Trump's transgender ban. Transgender people will be allowed for the first time to enlist in the U.S. military starting on Monday as ordered by federal courts. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Transgender people will be allowed for the first time to enlist in the U.S. military starting on Monday as ordered by federal courts, the Pentagon said on Friday, after President Donald Trump's administration decided not to appeal rulings that blocked his transgender ban. Two federal appeals courts, one in Washington and one in Virginia, last week rejected the administration's request to put on hold orders by lower court judges requiring the military to begin accepting transgender recruits on Jan. 1. A Justice Department official said the administration will not challenge those rulings. "The Department of Defense has announced that it will be releasing an independent study of these issues in the coming weeks. So rather than litigate this interim appeal before that occurs, the administration has decided to wait for DOD's study and will continue to defend the president's lawful authority in district court in the meantime," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. In September, the Pentagon said it had created a panel of senior officials to study how to implement a directive by Trump to prohibit transgender individuals from serving. The Defense Department has until Feb. 21 to submit a plan to Trump. Lawyers representing currently serving transgender service members and aspiring recruits said they had expected the administration to appeal the rulings to the conservative-majority Supreme Court but were hoping that would not happen. Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb said in a statement, "As mandated by court order, the Department of Defense is prepared to begin accessing transgender applicants for military service Jan. 1. All applicants must meet all accession standards." AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais 'Costs and disruption' In a move that appealed to his hard-line conservative supporters, Trump announced in July that he would prohibit transgender people from serving in the military, reversing Democratic former President Barack Obama's policy of accepting them. Trump said on Twitter at the time that the military "cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail." Four federal judges - in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Seattle and Riverside, California - have issued rulings blocking Trump's ban while legal challenges to the Republican president's policy proceed. The judges said the ban would likely violate the right under the U.S. Constitution to equal protection under the law. The Pentagon on Dec. 8 issued guidelines to recruitment personnel in order to enlist transgender applicants by Jan. 1. The memo outlined medical requirements and specified how the applicants' sex would be identified and even which undergarments they would wear. "There has been a tremendous amount of care, thought and planning that has gone into the policy that is set to go into effect on Jan. 1 allowing transgender people to enlist," said Jennifer Levi, a lawyer with gay, lesbian and transgender advocacy group GLAD. Both GLAD and the ACLU represent plaintiffs in the lawsuits filed against the administration. The Trump administration previously said in legal papers that the armed forces were not prepared to train thousands of personnel on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants and might have to accept "some individuals who are not medically fit for service." The Obama administration had set a deadline of July 1 of this year to begin accepting transgender recruits. But Trump's defense secretary, James Mattis, postponed that date to Jan. 1, which the president's ban then put off indefinitely. Trump also has taken other steps aimed at rolling back transgender rights. In October, his administration said that a federal law banning gender-based workplace discrimination does not protect transgender employees, reversing an Obama-era position. In February, Trump rescinded guidance issued by the Obama administration saying that public schools should allow transgender students to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Idrees Ali; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Eric Beech and Will Dunham) NOW WATCH: Why airplane windows have tiny holes December 30, 2017 at 02:54PM