Donald Trump is getting his first $1 billion of wall from money the Defense Department was supposed to use for other things. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has told the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to go ahead with using that money to build 57 miles of “18-foot-high pedestrian fencing, constructing and improving roads, and installing lighting within the Yuma and El Paso Sectors of the border,” he wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Democratic senators, led by Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Dick Durbin of Illinois, wrote to Shanahan that “The $1 billion reprogramming that the department is implementing without congressional approval constitutes a dollar-for-dollar theft from other readiness needs of our Armed Forces.” It’ll be a theft from little things like schools for military children and military pay and pensions.
And, according to leaked memos from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, the push to shift money from its intended uses to the wall is creating “unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency.” But Donald Trump wants what he wants, and what he wants is a useless, expensive wall to fit his racist rhetoric.