FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18)– President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday, and this week 16 states have already filed a lawsuit against him.
It’s an effort to stop the re-directing of $3.6 billion in military construction funds to pay for the border wall.
Almost all the states that filed have Democratic governors, and Kentucky is not one of the 16.
A project in Kentucky, however, may sit on the chopping block whether it sues Trump or not.
The project is a middle school that’s set to be built at Fort Campbell—one that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham says can wait.
“Let’s just say for a moment that he took some money out of the military construction budget,” said Graham. “I would say it’s better for the middle-school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border. We’ll get them the school they need. But right now we’ve got a national emergency on our hands. Opioid addiction is going through the roof in this country. Thousands of Americans died last year or dying this year because we can’t control the flow of drugs into this country and all of it’s coming across the border.”
Representative John Yarmuth, of Louisville, spoke about the issue on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:
“Kentucky used to be a border state, but that was during the Civil War. Kentucky’s no longer a border state and what we’re talking about here is not just schools… these are military families. These are the kids of our soldiers, probably some of whom are at the border right now enforcing Donald Trump’s fallacious strategy.”
Senator Rand Paul commented on the national emergency saying that he’s “disappointed with both the massive, bloated, secretive bill that just passed with the president’s intention to declare an emergency to build a wall.”
He also said that he wants “stronger border security, including a wall in some areas. But how we do things matters.”
