For a would-be autocrat who thinks extorting foreign leaders to manufacture scandals to discredit political rivals is how the job is done, using the taxpayers’ money as a slush fund for his pet project—and reelection argument—is his prerogative. Never mind the Constitution that gives Congress and only Congress the power of the purse, determining where the federal treasury is to be spent. So news that Trump wants to divert billions more in military funding for his fucking border wall is par for the course.
His pledge to build 500 miles of new wall by the 2020 election "will require a total of $18.4 billion in funding through 2020, far more than the administration has publicly disclosed, the administration’s latest internal projections show," according to The Washington Post. That’s $36 million per mile, and also includes the federal government seizing private land by eminent domain or purchase for about 200 miles of the proposed barrier.
The administration, with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner leading the project, is not asking for the $18.4 billion, given that the $5 billion they keep asking for—and are requesting again for 2020—has proven so contentious. If that money isn't approved, though, they have a plan. They are going to ask for the $3.6 billion that they've already siphoned off that was appropriated by Congress for specific military construction projects to be "backfilled." Then they'd take the $3.6 billion from other projects. "The plan is to sell it as replenishment money to the Defense Department for the $3.6 billion they took this year," said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of reprisal. "Then once they got it from Congress, they would take it again."
Which means a total of $7.2 billion stolen by the Trump administration. That's not the only blatantly crooked thing it’s doing with the wall, though. Trump is trying to force the Army Corps of Engineers "to steer contracts to North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, a company whose top executive is a GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News." That's being investigated by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which has asked the Corps for a briefing on the contracting process. Chairman Elijah Cummings wrote to the Corps, citing the committee's concern that the Corps "is being pressured to bypass regular contracting processes in order to complete construction more quickly." That process, unbelievably, is being monitored by Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Fisher Industries' greatest champion. He has been "deputized" by Trump, he says, to monitor the progress of construction and has demanded that the Corps hand over information about construction bids to him personally.
This is all, reportedly, freaking out Trump people, who are "unnerved" by his "urgency about barrier construction" and his obsession with the aesthetics of the wall—painted black, with spikes—which is also driving up the costs. They don't seem to be all that concerned with the illegality of the whole project, however. The states where the shafted military construction projects are located are concerned. One, Washington state, is suing. State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed the suit, saying it was a "misuse of his presidential emergency powers to accomplish an ideological political goal."
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Can we have impeachment yet, please?