Appeals court border wall, Trump celebrated the ruling on Twitter

Appeals court border wall, Trump celebrated the ruling on Twitter.

A federal appeals court late Wednesday lifted a lower court’s order that had blocked the Trump administration from using Defense Department money to build sections of a barrier on the southern border.

“Entire Wall is under construction or getting ready to start!” President Trump tweeted Thursday morning. He said the ruling “gave us the go ahead to build one of the largest sections of the desperately needed Southern Border Wall.”

Breaking News: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just reversed a lower court decision & gave us the go ahead to build one of the largest sections of the desperately needed Southern Border Wall, Four Billion Dollars. Entire Wall is under construction or getting ready to start!

A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans voted 2-1 to remove a legal hold that had prevented the government from spending up to $3.6 billion in Pentagon money on the project while a lawsuit over the funding works its way through the courts. The county of El Paso, Texas, and the Border Network for Human Rights, an immigrant advocacy group in El Paso, contended that the government has no legal authority to use the Defense Department funds for wall construction.

The unsigned appeals court ruling said little about the reason for its decision, noting only that the U.S. Supreme Court recently put a hold on a similar ruling from a federal court in California that had blocked Pentagon money from being diverted to the border wall without congressional approval. In lifting that stay in July, the Supreme Court said the groups opposed to the wall did not have the proper legal status to challenge the project in court.