BORDER/ENVIRONMENT/TEXAS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “As President Donald Trump prepares to sell Congress on the border wall at Tuesday’s [2-5-19] State of the Union, a butterfly conservation group is putting itself in the way of construction set to begin in Texas. Equipment for the construction of the first new miles of southern border wall approved since Trump took office has been staged in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley region, a Customs and Border Protection official confirmed on Tuesday. These first new miles of wall are funded with last year’s congressional appropriations, and are part of two projects — totaling 14 miles — in the Rio Grande Valley that will be built in the location of an existing levee wall. While these will be new miles of wall, they are not part of the President’s $5.7 billion push for wall construction, which triggered a standoff that led to the federal government’s longest-ever shutdown last month. But the construction is running into opposition from the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, a 100-acre wild butterfly habitat. The brewing fight on the border underscores the ugly political reality of the wall: Even if Trump wins wall money in Washington, the administration will still face an array of challenges to getting anything built.”
–Geneva Sands, “Butterfly conservationists face off with excavators at border wall construction site,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, February 5, 2019 6:32 pm