The Trump Administration can exercise the power of eminent domain to enable the federal government to acquire land necessary to build the border wall. As a sign of the Trump
Administration’s intent to exercise eminent domain for construction of a border wall, on July 25, 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a notification that officials from the CBP and the Army Corps of Engineers would immediately begin conducting in-person reviews of property records available at county courthouses for “border wall requirements” in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
Despite the Administration’s request for an initial down payment of $1.6 billion to pay for 74 miles of wall construction and replacement fencing in Fiscal Year 2018, the Committee was informed that the Administration cannot provide the Committee with any definitive real estate costs or requirements, cannot tell the Committee how many American citizens will have their land
seized, and has no timeline for completion and acquisition efforts necessary to build the wall
that... Trump has ordered.
...To handle the “initial surge” of condemnation cases, the Administration is seeking nearly $2 million to hire additional land acquisition attorneys within the Department of Justice to secure the “hundreds or thousands of parcels of land” necessary to facilitate border wall construction. The Administration also anticipates that DHS attorneys will provide “significant litigation support in defense of various challenges to the construction of the physical wall as well as in the condemnation of land along the southwest border.”
The full report is here.
Peloton has a new ad for Thanksgiving. I love my Peloton bike, and in fact, am off to ride it right now.
This is an open thread, all topics welcome.