title: Fritz Lang

text: Lang's parents were of Moravian descent and practising Catholics. His mother, born Jewish, converted to Roman Catholicism before Fritz's birth, and his parents, who took their religion seriously were dedicated to raising Fritz as a Catholic. Lang frequently had Catholic-influenced themes in his films. Late in life, he described himself as "a born Catholic and very puritan". Although an atheist, Lang believed that religion was important for teaching ethics.


title: Fritz Lang

text: After finishing school, Lang briefly attended the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied civil engineering and eventually switched to art. He left Vienna in 1910 in order to see the world, traveling throughout Europe and Africa, and later Asia and the Pacific area. In 1913, he studied painting in Paris.


title: Fritz Lang

text: At the outbreak of World War I, Lang returned to Vienna and volunteered for military service in the Austrian army and fought in Russia and Romania, where he was wounded four times and lost sight in his right eye, the first of many vision issues he would face in his lifetime. While recovering from his injuries and shell shock in 1916, he wrote some scenarios and ideas for films. He was discharged from the army with the rank of lieutenant in 1918 and did some acting in the Viennese theater circuit for a short time before being hired as a writer at Decla Film, Erich Pommer's Berlin-based production company. In 1919, he married for the first time to Lisa Rosenthal, a Jewish woman; in 1921, she died under mysterious circumstances, of a single gunshot wound deemed to have been fired by a sidearm weapon from World War I.


title: Fritz Lang

text: Lang's writing stint was brief, as he soon started to work as a director at the German film studio UFA, and later Nero-Film, just as the Expressionist movement was building. In this first phase of his career, Lang alternated between films such as "Der Müde Tod" ("The Weary Death") and popular thrillers such as "Die Spinnen" ("The Spiders"), combining popular genres with Expressionist techniques to create an unprecedented synthesis of popular entertainment with art cinema.


title: Fritz Lang

text: In 1920, Lang met his future wife, the writer Thea von Harbou. She and Lang co-wrote all of his movies from 1921 through 1933, including "Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler" ("Dr. Mabuse the Gambler," 1922 - which ran for over four hours, in two parts in the original version, and was the first in the Dr. Mabuse trilogy), the five-hour "" (1924), the dystopian film "Metropolis" (1927), and the science fiction film "Woman in the Moon" (1929). "Metropolis" went far over budget and nearly destroyed UFA, which was bought by right-wing businessman and politician Alfred Hugenberg. It was a financial flop, as were his last silent films "Spies" (1928) and "Woman in the Moon", produced by Lang's own company.


title: Fritz Lang

text: In 1931, independent producer Seymour Nebenzahl hired Lang to direct "M" for Nero-Film. His first "talking" picture, considered by many film scholars to be a masterpiece of the early sound era, "M" is a disturbing story of a child murderer (Peter Lorre in his first starring role) who is hunted down and brought to rough justice by Berlin's criminal underworld. "M" remains a powerful work; it was remade in 1951 by Joseph Losey, but this version had little impact on audiences, and has become harder to see than the original film.


title: Fritz Lang

text: During the climactic final scene in "M", Lang allegedly threw Peter Lorre down a flight of stairs in order to give more authenticity to Lorre's battered look. Lang, who was known for being hard to work with, epitomized the stereotype of the tyrannical Germanic film director, a type embodied also by Erich von Stroheim and Otto Preminger; Lang wore a monocle adding to the stereotype.


title: Fritz Lang

text: In the films of his German period, Lang produced a coherent oeuvre that established the characteristics later attributed to film noir, with its recurring themes of psychological conflict, paranoia, fate and moral ambiguity.


title: Fritz Lang

text: At the end of 1932, Lang started filming "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse". Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, and by March 30, the new regime banned it as an incitement to public disorder. "Testament" is sometimes deemed an anti-Nazi film, as Lang had put phrases used by the Nazis into the mouth of the title character. A screening of the film was cancelled by Joseph Goebbels, and it was later banned by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. In banning the film, Goebbels stated that the film "showed that an extremely dedicated group of people are perfectly capable of overthrowing any state with violence", and that the film posed a threat to public health and safety.


title: Fritz Lang

text: Lang was worried about the advent of the Nazi regime, partly because of his Jewish heritage, whereas his wife and co-screenwriter Thea von Harbou had started to sympathize with the Nazis in the early 1930s, and later joined the NSDAP in 1940. They soon divorced. Lang's fears would be realized following his departure from Austria, as under the Nuremberg Laws he would be identified as half-Jewish by ethnicity even though his mother was a converted Roman Catholic, and he was raised as such.


title: Fritz Lang

text: According to Lang, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called Lang to his offices to inform him – apologetically – that "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse" was being banned but, nevertheless, he was so impressed by Lang's abilities as a filmmaker (especially "Metropolis"), that he offered Lang the position of head of German film studio UFA. Lang said it was during that meeting he had decided to leave for Paris – but that the banks had closed by the time the meeting was over. Lang claimed that, after selling his wife's jewelry, he fled by train to Paris that evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind. However, his passport of the time showed that he traveled to and from Germany a few times during 1933.


title: Fritz Lang

text: Lang left Berlin for good on July 31, 1933, four months after his meeting with Goebbels and his initial departure. He moved to Paris, having divorced Thea von Harbou, who stayed behind, earlier in 1933.


title: Fritz Lang

text: In Paris, Lang filmed a version of Ferenc Molnár's "Liliom", starring Charles Boyer. That was Lang's only film in French (excluding the French version of "Testament"). He then moved to the United States.


title: Fritz Lang

text: Lang made twenty-three features in his 20-year American career, working in a variety of genres at every major studio in Hollywood, and occasionally producing his films as an independent. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939.


title: Fritz Lang

text: Signing first with MGM Studios, Lang's crime drama "Fury" (1936) saw Spencer Tracy cast as a man who is wrongly accused of a crime and nearly killed when a lynch mob sets fire to the jail where he is awaiting trial. However, in "Fury", he was not allowed to represent black victims in a lynching scenario or to criticize racism, which was his original intention. By the time "Fury" was released, Lang had been involved in the creation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, working with Otto Katz, a Czech who was a Comintern spy. He made four films with an explicitly anti-Nazi theme, "Man Hunt" (1941), "Hangmen Also Die!" (1943), "Ministry of Fear" (1944) and "Cloak and Dagger" (1946). "Man Hunt", wrote Dave Kehr in 2009, "may be the best" of the "many interventionist films produced by the Hollywood studios before Pearl Harbor" as it is "clean and concentrated, elegant and precise, pointed without being preachy."


title: Fritz Lang

text: His American films were often compared unfavorably to his earlier works by contemporary critics, although the restrained Expressionism of these films is now seen as integral to the emergence and evolution of American genre cinema, film noir in particular. "Scarlet Street" (1945), one of his films featuring Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett, is considered a central film in the genre.


title: Fritz Lang

text: One of Lang's most praised "films noir" is the police drama "The Big Heat" (1953), known for its uncompromising brutality, especially for a scene in which Lee Marvin throws scalding coffee on Gloria Grahame's face. As Lang's visual style simplified, in part due to the constraints of the Hollywood studio system, his worldview became increasingly pessimistic, culminating in the cold, geometric style of his last American films, "While the City Sleeps" (1956) and "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" (1956).


title: Fritz Lang

text: Finding it difficult to find congenial production conditions and backers in Hollywood, particularly as his health declined with age, Lang contemplated retirement. The German producer Artur Brauner had expressed interest in remaking "The Indian Tomb" (from an original story by Thea von Harbou, that Lang had developed in the 1920s which had ultimately been directed by Joe May), so Lang returned to Germany to make his "Indian Epic" (consisting of "The Tiger of Eschnapur" and "The Indian Tomb").


title: Fritz Lang

text: Following the production, Brauner was preparing for a remake of "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse" when Lang approached him with the idea of adding a new original film to the series. The result was "The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse" (1960), whose success led to a series of new Mabuse films, which were produced by Brauner (including the remake of "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse"), though Lang did not direct any of the sequels. Lang was approaching blindness during the production, and it was his final project as director.


title: Fritz Lang

text: On February 8, 1960, Lang received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture industry, located at 1600 Vine Street.


title: Fritz Lang

text: Lang died from a stroke in 1976 and was interred in the Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.


title: Fritz Lang

text: While his career had ended without fanfare, Lang's American and later German works were championed by the critics of the "Cahiers du cinéma", such as François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Truffaut wrote that Lang, especially in his American career, was greatly underappreciated by "cinema historians and critics" who "deny him any genius when he 'signs' spy movies ... war movies ... or simple thrillers." Filmmakers that were influenced by his work include Jacques Rivette, William Friedkin, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Luis Buñuel, Osamu Tezuka, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard and Stanley Kubrick.


title: Fritz Lang

text: Lang is credited with launching or developing many different genres of film. Phillip French of "The Observer" believed that Lang helped craft the "entertainment war flick" and that his interpretation of the story of Bonnie and Clyde "helped launch the Hollywood film noir". Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute believed he set the "blueprint for the serial killer movie" through "M".


title: Fritz Lang

text: The Academy Film Archive has preserved a number of Lang's films, including "Human Desire" and "Man Hunt".


title: Trump wall

text: The Trump wall, commonly referred to as "The Wall", is an expansion of the Mexico–United States barrier that started in the U.S. during the 1980’s to keep help enforce immigration laws in the United States. Prior to Donald Trump, border security & border wall legislation was passed during the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush & Obama Administrations. President Trump made this a serious campaign issue as many of his supporters seemed to rally behind the idea of supporting the United States immigration laws and thus this issue became a critical part of President Trump's campaign platform in the 2016 presidential election. Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump called for the construction of a border wall. He said that, if elected, he would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". Then-Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto rejected Trump's claim that Mexico would pay for the wall; all construction in fact relied exclusively on U.S. funding.


title: Trump wall

text: In January 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13767, which formally directed the U.S. government to begin wall construction along the U.S.–Mexico border using existing federal funding. After a political struggle for funding, including an appropriations lapse resulting in a government shutdown for 35 days, and the declaration of a national emergency, construction started in 2018.


title: Trump wall

text: The U.S. built new barriers along , of which previously had no barrier. Much of the remainder consists of steel bollard wall where previously there had been fencing or vehicle barriers. Additionally, a private organization called We Build the Wall constructed under of new wall on private property near El Paso, Texas. By August 2020, the portions constructed by the organization were already in serious danger of collapsing due to erosion, and the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment charging four people, including former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, with a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors by illegally taking funds intended to finance construction for personal use. An unpublished memo from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection leaked in March 2022 revealed that the "impenetrable" border wall had been breached more than 3,200 times by the time Trump left office in 2021.


title: Trump wall

text: Initially, on January 20, 2021, newly inaugurated U.S. president Joe Biden terminated the national emergency and halted construction of the wall, but the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security later hinted that the construction of the wall may continue under Biden's administration. In April 2021, the Biden administration cancelled all border wall projects that were being paid for with funds diverted from U.S. Department of Defense accounts. By October 2021, several border wall construction contracts have been cancelled and, in some cases, land that was acquired by the government from private property owners via eminent domain, were returned to their owners. The Biden administration announced it would fill gaps in Arizona near Yuma, an area with some of the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.


title: Trump wall

text: The Mexico–United States barrier is a series of vertical barriers along the Mexico–United States border aimed at preventing illegal crossings from Mexico into the United States. The barrier is not one contiguous structure, but a discontinuous series of physical obstructions variously classified as "fences" or "walls".


title: Trump wall

text: Between the physical barriers, security is provided by a "virtual fence" of sensors, cameras, and other surveillance equipment used to dispatch United States Border Patrol agents to suspected migrant crossings. As of January 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that it had more than of barriers in place. The total length of the continental border is .


title: Trump wall

text: The concept for the proposed expansion was developed by campaign advisers Sam Nunberg and Roger Stone in 2014 as a memorable talking point Trump could use to tie his business experience as a builder and developer to his immigration policy proposals. The idea for the wall was first aired publicly in January 2015 at the Iowa Freedom Summit hosted by Citizens United and Steve King. Trump proposed it again at Trump's June 2015 announcement speech for his 2015–2016 presidential campaign, along with a claim that Mexico would pay for it. Trump has repeated the claim many times.


title: Trump wall

text: In February 2017, Trump said "the wall is getting designed right here" but did not offer specifics. In March 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began accepting prototype ideas for a U.S.–Mexico border wall from companies and said it would issue a request for proposals by March 24.


title: Trump wall

text: In June 2017, Trump said his proposed border wall should be covered with solar panels as a means of making "beautiful structures" and helping pay for the wall. This suggestion was criticized by some as illogical or impracticable; Albert Pope of the Rice University School of Architecture of Houston, Texas, noted that solar farms cannot be efficiently dispersed along a wall. Others, including John Griese, co-owner of the solar installation firm Elemental Energy, estimated a profit of over $100 million per year from such panels. In July, Trump said the wall should be transparent to detect smugglers who "throw the large sacks of drugs over".


title: Trump wall

text: The Associated Press reported that more than two hundred organizations had expressed interest in designing and building the wall for CBP. By April 2017, several companies had released their proposed designs to the public; CBP does not publicly release bids, and intends to name only the winning bid. The proposals included placing solar panels along part of a wall; placing artwork along the wall ("a polished concrete wall augmented with stones and artifacts" related to the local region); incorporating ballistics resistance technology and sensors for above ground and below ground penetration; and the creation of a "co-nation" where the border is maintained by both countries in an open status.


title: Trump wall

text: In September 2017, the U.S. government announced the start of construction of eight prototype barriers made from concrete and other materials. On June 3, 2018, the San Diego section of wall construction began. On October 26, a stretch of steel bollards in Calexico, California, was commemorated as the first section of Trump's wall, although media coverage heavily debated whether it should be considered a "wall" or a "fence". Trump scheduled a visit to this section in April 2019.


title: Trump wall

text: A manufacturing company based in Pine City, Minnesota, was awarded a bid to help build the "virtual wall" along the border in 2018. Instead of using physical walls, this plan for a "virtual wall" would involve easily transportable "roll-up" towers with attached motion sensing and camera equipment. While initially small and mobile, when deployed the internal structure of the tower telescopes upwards to create a tall surveillance apparatus. Along remote parts of the border, this method could be cheaper and more practical than building permanent structures on location.


title: Trump wall

text: Trump requested that the wall be painted black, despite the protests of military leaders and border officials, who called it unnecessary. Trump felt that the dark color would be more forbidding, and make the steel too hot to touch during the summer. Painting the wall was expected to cost between $500 million and $3 billion.


title: Trump wall

text: In 2013, a Bloomberg Government analysis estimated that it would cost up to $28 billion annually to seal the border. While campaigning for the presidency in early 2016, Trump claimed it would be a one-time cost of only $8 billion, while Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said $15 billion, and the Trump administration's own early estimates ranged up to $25 billion. The Department of Homeland Security's internal estimate in early 2017, shortly after Trump took office, was that his proposed border wall would cost $21.6 billion and take 3.5 years to build.


title: Trump wall

text: One-time costs include land acquisition and construction of new or replacement fence; ongoing costs include maintenance of existing fence and Border Patrol agents who guard the area. Rough and remote terrain on many parts of the border, such as deserts and mountains, would make construction and maintenance of a wall expensive. On federally protected wilderness areas and Native American reservations, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may have only limited construction authority, and a wall could cause environmental damage.


title: Trump wall

text: As of December 2020, the total funding given for new fencing was about $15 billion, a third of which had been given by Congress while Trump had ordered the rest taken from the military budget. This funding was intended to build new fencing over , at a cost of about $20 million per mile; this would cover a little more than half the approximately that had no fencing when Trump took office.


title: Trump wall

text: A March 2021 review of the Trump work on the wall found only of new barriers where none had previously existed. While Trump had described the new wall as "virtually impenetrable", it was found that smugglers had repeatedly sawed through the wall with cheap power tools. Also, new dirt roads that had been used to access the wall construction served as new access roads for smugglers.


title: Trump wall

text: Different sources draw different conclusions about the actual or likely effectiveness of the wall. Research at Texas A&M University and Texas Tech University indicated that the wall, and border walls in general, are unlikely to be effective at reducing illegal immigration or movement of contraband. By contrast, the "American Economic Journal" found that wall construction caused a 15–35 percent reduction in migration, varying with proximity to the barrier.


title: Trump wall

text: Critics of Trump's plan note that expanding the wall would not stop the routine misuse of legal ports of entry by people smuggling contraband, overstaying travel visas, using fraudulent documents, or stowing away. They also point out that in addition to the misuse of ports of entry, even a border-wide wall could be bypassed by tunneling (compare the borders of the Gaza Strip), climbing, or by using boats or aircraft. Additionally, along some parts of the border, the existing rough terrain may be a greater deterrent than a wall. Trump reportedly suggested fortifying the wall with a water-filled trench inhabited by snakes or alligators, and electric fencing topped with spikes that can pierce human flesh.


title: Trump wall

text: The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has frequently called for more physical barriers, citing their efficacy. "I started in the San Diego sector in 1992 and it didn't matter how many agents we lined up," said Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott. "We could not make a measurable impact on the flow [of undocumented immigrants] across the border. It wasn't until we installed barriers along the border that gave us the upper hand that we started to get control." Carla Provost, the chief of U.S. border patrol, stated "We already have many miles, over of barrier along the border. I have been in locations where there was no barrier, and then I was there when we put it up. It certainly helps. It's not a be all end all. It's a part of a system. We need the technology, we need that infrastructure".


title: Trump wall

text: Over the wall's first three years, Mexican smugglers sawed through the wall multiple times per day, usually with ordinary power tools, according to maintenance records from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The "Washington Post" reported "891 breaches during fiscal 2019, 906 during fiscal 2020 and 1,475 during fiscal 2021." The government patched these holes, spending approximately $800 per incident and often leaving visible evidence of the repair. One early report of this damage was in November 2019. People were sawing through steel bollards in areas where sensors to detect such breaches had not yet been installed. Though Trump claimed it was "very easily fixed" by "put[ting] the chunk back in", border agents argued that smugglers tend to return to previously sawed wall because the bollards are weakened.


title: Trump wall

text: In January 2020, a few wall panels under construction in Calexico, California, were blown over by strong Santa Ana winds before the poured concrete foundations cured. There was no other property damage or injuries as a result of the incident.


title: Trump wall

text: In October 2020, the DHS published data indicating that the new border barrier has been effective at reducing the number of illegal border entries. The barrier also reduced ongoing manpower costs in at least one area in which it had been built.


title: Trump wall

text: Throughout his 2015–2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump called for construction of a large fortified border wall, claiming that if elected he would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". Even before declaring his candidacy he declared he wanted "nothing to do with Mexico other than to build an impenetrable WALL". In his June 2015 announcement of his candidacy he promised "I would build a great wall, and no one builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great wall and I'll have Mexico pay for that wall." Throughout his campaign he described his vision of a concrete wall, high and covering of the border, with the rest of the border being secured by natural barriers. After taking office he suggested a "steel wall with openings" so border agents could see through it; starting in 2018 he referred to it as a "steel slat barrier".


title: Trump wall

text: Trump repeatedly said Mexico will pay for the construction of the border wall, but he did not explain how the U.S. government would compel Mexico to do so. Trump said, "there will be a payment; it will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form". The Mexican government has rejected Trump's statements and has rejected the idea of Mexico funding construction of a wall.


title: Trump wall

text: Upon taking office Trump signed an executive order to begin building the wall, but left open the question of payment. The Trump administration suggested that wall construction could be funded by a twenty percent tariff on Mexico imports, a proposal which immediately encountered objections from members of Congress of both parties. After the negative response, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus indicated that the administration was considering "a buffet of options" for funding a wall. In April 2016, Trump said he would "compel Mexico to pay for a border wall by blocking remittances and canceling visas unless Mexico makes a one-time payment of $5 billion to $10 billion to the U.S." Money wiring service companies have identified a number of legal, economic, and practical obstacles to such a proposal, saying it would be impossible to track all money transfers between Mexico and the United States, or to effectively block all remittances. Some economists argue that blocking remittances could harm the U.S. economy. Brookings Institution fellow Aaron Klein said a move to block remittances would be a reversal of the existing U.S. policy "to encourage the flow of money to come into the official system and to discourage the flow of funds through the underground network".


title: Trump wall

text: On January 25, 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13767, which formally directed the government to begin attempting to construct a border wall using existing federal funding, although actual construction of a wall did not begin at this time due to the large expense and lack of clarity on how it would be paid for.


title: Trump wall

text: Trump had planned to meet Peña Nieto at the White House on January 27, 2017, to discuss topics including border security and possible negotiations around the wall. However, the day before the meeting, Trump announced that the U.S. would impose a twenty percent tariff on imported Mexican goods as Mexico's payment for the wall. In response, Peña Nieto gave a national televised address saying Mexico would not pay for the wall and cancelled his meeting with Trump.


title: Trump wall

text: In March 2017, the Trump administration submitted an amendment for fiscal year 2017 that includes a $3 billion continuing budget for "border security and immigration enforcement". Trump's FY 2018 Budget Blueprint increases discretionary funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by $2.8 billion (to $44.1 billion). The DHS Secretary John F. Kelly told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during a hearing the Budget Blueprint "includes $2.6 billion for high-priority border security technology and tactical infrastructure, including funding to plan, design and construct the border wall".


title: Trump wall

text: In July 2017, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Austin, Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives would seek to pass a special supplemental appropriations bill to spend money on initial construction of the wall, a demand of the Trump administration. Such a supplemental spending bill was supported by then-House Speaker Paul Ryan. However, Senate Democrats expressed confidence that they can block an appropriations bill for wall construction, with the aid of some Republicans who also oppose the construction of a wall due to its enormous cost. Speaking at a Trump rally on August 22, 2017, Trump threatened to close down the government if Congress did not approve funding: "The obstructionist Democrats would like us not to do it, but believe me, if we have to close down our government, we're building that wall."


title: Trump wall

text: In August 2017, while speaking at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump said he would close down the U.S. government if necessary to force Congress to pay for the wall. He was harshly criticized by prominent leaders of his political base such as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh for failing to secure $5 billion in funding for the wall in the previous fiscal year's appropriations bill.


title: Trump wall

text: A January 2018 Trump administration proposal for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection called for $18 billion in funding for the wall over the following ten years. It called for " of additional barrier by September 2027, bringing total coverage to , or nearly half the border", according to the Associated Press, and called for of replacement fencing. While on the campaign trail in February 2016, Trump claimed the cost to be just $8 billion for the wall.


title: Trump wall

text: On March 13, 2018, Trump cited a study by the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies think tank, which claimed that a wall along the Mexican border could save taxpayers $64 billion by reducing the "crime and welfare costs" of undocumented immigrants in the ten years following its construction, thereby breaking even on construction costs and "paying for itself". Eric Boehm of "Reason" magazine disputed this claim, saying the study massively underestimated the actual cost of building and maintaining the wall. Boehm also criticized that the analysis overestimated the positive economic impact of stopping illegal immigration and how good the wall would be at preventing it, citing that a "third of all illegal immigrants" were simply overstaying their visa and had not actually entered the U.S. illegally. Ten days later, Trump signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill where Congress appropriated $1.6 billion of it towards the wall. He characterized it as a "down payment" that would be spent "building not only some new wall ... but also fixing existing walls". In the end, this specific appropriation ended up funding only about of barriers with Mexico. By May 2019, of barrier had been constructed from the appropriation.


title: Trump wall

text: The Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act of 2018 was introduced on October 12 by then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Estimated at $23.4 billion, the bill, along with the $1.6 billion from the $1.3 trillion spending bill, would have amounted to the $25 billion projected to complete the larger and fortified wall.


title: Trump wall

text: From December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019, the federal government was partially shut down due to Trump's declared intention to veto any spending bill that did not include $5 billion in funding for a border wall. On January 4, 2019, Trump claimed that former presidents had privately told him they should have built a border wall, but every living former U.S. president denied this. In a televised speech on January 8, Trump asserted that ninety percent of the heroin sold in America "floods across from our southern border", although virtually all drugs smuggled across the border flow through legal ports of entry rather than through open border spaces. During a visit to McAllen, Texas, on January 10, Trump said Mexico would not directly pay for the wall, despite his having said so during the 2016 campaign: "When during the campaign, I would say 'Mexico is going to pay for it', obviously, I never said this, and I never meant they're gonna write out a check, I said they're going to pay for it. They are. Mexico is paying for the wall indirectly, and when I said Mexico will pay for the wall in front of thousands and thousands of people, obviously they're not gonna write a check. But they are paying for the wall indirectly many, many times over by the really great trade deal we just made." Media fact-checkers determined this assertion to be false.


title: Trump wall

text: On January 25, 2019, Trump agreed to endorse a stopgap bill to reopen the government, saying it was to allow for negotiations to take place to approve an appropriations bill both parties could agree on. He threatened to close the government again in three weeks if he was not satisfied with Congressional action. This 35-day government shutdown was the longest in U.S. history. The previous record was 21 days in 1995–1996.


title: Trump wall

text: In February 2019, Congress amended an existing appropriations bill, adding language that specifically prohibits new funding from being used to build border barriers at several sites, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, the La Lomita Historical park, the National Butterfly Center, and the area "within or east of" the Vista del Mar Ranch tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. Soon afterwards, however, Trump declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, which the administration claimed invalidated the restrictions imposed by Congress.


title: Trump wall

text: The funding restrictions, and the National Emergency executive order, became the center points of the legal challenge to the appropriation of funds to construct the wall.


title: Trump wall

text: On February 15, 2019, Trump signed a bill to fund the government for the balance of the fiscal year, but derided the bill as inadequate because it contained only $1.375 billion for border security. Trump had earlier insisted he needed $5.7 billion to extend the Mexico–United States barrier. At the same time, Trump signed a declaration that the situation at the southern border constitutes a national emergency. This declaration ostensibly made available $600 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, $2.5 billion from the U.S. Department of Defense (including anti-drug accounts), $3.6 billion from military construction accounts, for a total of $8 billion when added to the $1.375 billion allocated by Congress. However, a week after the bill was signed, it emerged that more than a third of those funds had already been spent for their original purposes, and were therefore unavailable.


title: Trump wall

text: On February 27, 2019, the House of Representatives voted in favor of a resolution rejecting Trump's declaration of a national emergency on the southern border. On March 14, the Senate did the same. The next day, Trump vetoed the bill. It was the first veto of his presidency. In September, the House and Senate again voted in favor of ending the declaration of emergency, and in October the president again vetoed it. The same month, a lawsuit filed in El Paso County produced a ruling that Trump's declaration of emergency was unlawful, as it fails to meet the National Emergencies Act's definition of an emergency.


title: Trump wall

text: In March 2019, the Pentagon issued a list of proposed military construction projects which could be postponed, under the president's emergency declaration, so that their funding could be used for the wall. The Pentagon authorized up to $1 billion to be transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers for the construction of additional barriers. In July, the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court achieved a majority to lift a May 2019 block placed by a lower federal court. Thus, the Supreme Court ruled to allow $2.5 billion of funds originally intended for Department of Defense anti-drug efforts to be reallocated to the wall. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged this ruling on behalf of environmental groups, but on July 31, 2020, the Supreme Court again ruled that the $2.5 billion could continue to be used to fund portions of the wall in Arizona, New Mexico, and California while legal proceedings continue. On August 7, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that House Democrats could proceed in a lawsuit against Trump's use of these funds.


title: Trump wall

text: In June 2019, Judge Trevor McFadden of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the House lacked standing to block Trump's spending $6.1 billion in unappropriated funds on the wall; ten months later, he ruled that two environmental groups could continue pursuing their suits challenging the same funding. In July 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that although they had begun replacement fencing, no new walls had yet been built. On September 16, it was announced that multiple border wall projects had been halted because of depleted funds. Over were planned to be built by the end of 2020, which would cost an estimated total of $18.4 billion. In September 2020, a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously vacated the June 2019 district court dismissal for lack of jurisdiction, reinstating the House lawsuit. The judges wrote that the administration's effort to divert funds without congressional approval "turns the constitutional order upside down".


title: Trump wall

text: On September 3, 2019, United States Secretary of Defense Mark Esper authorized the use of $3.6 billion in military construction funding for of the barrier. To fund 11 border barrier projects in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, the Pentagon will take funds from military construction projects in 23 states, three territories, and 19 countries, including schools and childcare centers for children of American soldiers. On December 10, a federal judge in Texas blocked the use of military funds for building the wall. Ten days later, Trump signed a spending bill with about $1.4 billion allotted for it. On January 8, 2020, a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of the Texas judge's order, freeing the $3.6 billion for the wall. On February 13, the Pentagon notified Congress that it would divert $3.8 billion from funding for the military's anti-drug activities and the war on terror to building the wall. The Pentagon's plan for that round of wall funding would include money taken from: two F35 combat aircraft, eight Reaper drones, four C130 transport aircraft, two V22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, and also for amphibious ships, equipment for the National Guard, and trucks for the Army. As of March 2020, nineteen states were suing the administration on the basis that the reallocation of funds was unconstitutional. On June 26, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2–1 that the use of military funding for the wall is unconstitutional. On July 14, 2020, the House approved a military spending bill which would prohibit defense funds from being reallocated to the wall.


title: Trump wall

text: On February 20, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, waived, in accordance with section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, ten U.S. government procurement laws applicable to border wall construction in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Unlike prior waivers concerning environmental impact reviews under the presidencies of Trump and George W. Bush, this was the first to be used for procurement laws and regulations. On April 14, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that $569 million would be given to BFBC, an affiliate of Barnard Construction, to build of wall in El Centro and San Diego, California. This averages to . There was no competitive bidding process.


title: Trump wall

text: At the February 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump reiterated that Mexico would be paying for the wall. "Mexico is paying for it and it's every bitit's better than the wall that was projected."


title: Trump wall

text: Construction progressed during the final year of the Trump administration, including the filing of land condemnation actions in court and the issuing of waivers. Another six waivers of environmental laws were effectuated March 16, 2020, with potential consequences to the range of the jaguar. According to the Center for Biological Diversity's Laiken Jordahl, residents of border communities fear that the pandemic will worsen in their areas because of continued construction. Jordahl criticized this continuation because opponents of the wall cannot currently engage safely in public protest. On June 29, the Supreme Court declined to hear the center's case against the Trump administration's waivers of certain environmental laws in order to expedite the wall's construction.


title: Trump wall

text: On June 23, Trump visited Yuma, Arizona, for a campaign rally commemorating the completion of . U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed that almost all of this was replacement fencing, but the fencing replaced was outdated or dilapidated.


title: Trump wall

text: We Build the Wall, a private organization founded by military veteran Brian Kolfage, raised over $25 million beginning in 2018, with Trump's encouragement and with leadership from Kris Kobach and Steve Bannon. Over the 2019 Memorial Day weekend, the organization constructed a half-mile (0.8 km) "weathered steel" bollard fence near El Paso on private land adjoining the U.S.–Mexico border using $6–8 million of the donated funds. Kolfage's organization said it has plans to construct further barriers on private lands adjoining the border in Texas and California. On December 3, 2019, a Hidalgo County judge ordered the group to temporarily halt all construction due to its plans to build adjacent to the Rio Grande, which a lawyer for the National Butterfly Center argued would create a flooding risk. According to Kolfage,


title: Trump wall

text: The organization also ignored a request by the International Boundary and Water Commission to stop construction and submit engineering plans. On January 9, 2020, federal judge Randy Crane called the claims of both the International Boundary and Water Commission and the National Butterfly Center "highly speculative", allowing construction to continue.


title: Trump wall

text: In July 2020, privately funded wall associated with the organization was reported to be structurally eroding. Trump distanced himself from the group despite its having received $1.7 billion in contracts from his administration.


title: Trump wall

text: On August 20, 2020, Bannon was arrested and charged on two counts of fraud; he allegedly "defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors", funneling over $1 million from We Build the Wall through one of his own non-profits and using a significant portion of it for personal expenses and to pay Kolfage. Kolfage, financier Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea were also charged. Kolfage was accused of taking $350,000 for personal use; he allegedly discussed the scheme with Badolato. Some funds were allegedly funneled through a shell company controlled by Shea. Kolfage and Badolato pleaded guilty and await sentencing, Bannon secured from Trump a blanket pardon covering the allegations, and in the trial prosecuting Shea set for May 24, 2021, the jury deadlocked 11 to 1.


title: Trump wall

text: By January 5, 2021, the U.S. had built new or replacement wall along . On January 12, Trump held remarks at the border wall in Alamo, Texas, after construction of the wall hit a milestone of .


title: Trump wall

text: On January 20, U.S. president Joe Biden signed Proclamation 10142, terminating the national emergency and pausing the construction of the wall. In a letter notifying Congress of the proclamation, Biden wrote that the declaration of a national emergency had been "unwarranted". Before taking office, Biden said he would not remove parts of the wall constructed during the Trump administration, but would protect the border instead with "high-tech capacity" at the "ports of entry". On April 30, the Department of Defense announced that it was canceling all border wall contracts using funding originally allocated for military purposes.


title: Trump wall

text: On April 13, Representative Madison Cawthorn introduced the "Donument Act" (which a spokesperson for Cawthorn explained was a portmanteau of the words "Donald" and "monument"), proposing to designate the unfinished wall and 300,000 surrounding acres as a national monument.


title: Trump wall

text: On June 11, the Pentagon announced that it would restore $2.2 billion in funding redirected to the wall back to military projects.


title: Trump wall

text: In mid-2021, construction began on 13 miles of border wall in Hidalgo County, Texas. By October 2021, several border wall construction contracts had been cancelled and, in some cases, land that was acquired by the government from private property owners via eminent domain, was returned to their owners. On July 28, 2022, the Biden administration announced it would fill four wide gaps in Arizona near Yuma, an area with some of the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.


title: Trump wall

text: According to a 2020 study, the potential welfare benefits from constructing Trump's proposed border wall (if illegal immigration is reduced massively, with potential increases in the wages of local American low-skilled workers) are substantially smaller than the cost of constructing the wall.


title: Trump wall

text: The construction of a border wall, as envisioned in the order, could cause significant environmental damage, including habitat destruction and habitat fragmentation that would harm wildlife, including endangered species. Some of the species that may potentially be affected include bighorn sheep, black bears, and pygmy owls. A lawsuit arguing some of these points was brought forward by the National Butterfly Center, after employees discovered that parts of the planned wall would be built through the property. However, Judge Richard J. Leon dismissed the case against the Department of Homeland Security, leading the center to claim that they will refile or appeal the case.


title: Trump wall

text: A 2019 survey by the Center of Biological Diversity found the construction of the wall to be having a devastating impact on the ecosystem, with construction coming perilously close to the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge and an active migration corridor for the North American jaguar, as well as already damaging habitats in sites such as Slaughter Ranch. The survey also found unrestricted pumping of groundwater from local aquifers in order to produce concrete for the wall, which will have a destructive effect on subterranean ecosystems as well as surface ones that are sustained by groundwater. In mid-2020, the Defenders of Wildlife non-profit organization obtained a government report from June which found that a well used to make concrete for the wall "is significantly impacting wells located at San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge", which according to the Defenders, explains "why some ponds at the Refuge are void of water, and why it is so difficult to maintain water levels at other ponds that currently have threatened and endangered fish species", including the Yaqui catfish. In 2021, an endangered Mexican gray wolf was stopped from crossing from New Mexico into Mexico by a section of border wall.


title: Trump wall

text: In December 2020, explosives and bulldozers were used inside Coronado National Memorial to clear a path to build the wall.


title: Trump wall

text: By October 2019, bulldozing began within the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a Sonoran Desert ecological reserve created in 1976. The Corps of Engineers said it would relocate displaced cacti, although this appears to have not occurred in some cases. In February 2020, blasting began. The Organ Pipe monument includes 22 archaeological sites which host "unexcavated remnants of ancient Sonoran Desert peoples", some of which possibly date to 16,000 years ago. The Tohono O'odham Nation protested any new wall construction, as they have "historically lived in this area from time immemorial", according to the nation's chairman.


title: Trump wall

text: As of 2019, border patrol construction workers were coordinating with park officials to avoid causing damage.


title: Trump wall

text: Additionally, privately owned land adjacent to the border would have to be acquired by the U.S. government to be built upon. Property owners in southern Texas will lose easy access to significant portions of their land as the wall is built along but some distance from the Rio Grande.<ref name="NYT 2019/12/26"></ref> Historic gravesites in South Texas may be impacted. In 2017, satirical party-game publisher Cards Against Humanity purchased a plot of land on the border to prevent the wall from being built there.


title: Trump wall

text: Executive Order 13767 drew "furious condemnation" from some civil rights organizations and immigrant advocacy groups, who described the order as "meanspirited, counterproductive and costly and said the new policies would raise constitutional concerns while undermining the American tradition of welcoming people from around the world". Some religious personalities were also largely critical of the border-wall proposal. Hundreds of citizens gathered at Washington Square Park in New York City to protest the executive order.


title: Trump wall

text: In Congress, some Republicans praised Trump's executive order, such as U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith of San Antonio, Texas, who said "he appreciated Trump 'honoring his commitment' on immigration", and Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who said the wall would stop illegal immigration and compared it to the Israel–Egypt barrier. Other members of Congress from districts near the border were critical, such as Texans Will Hurd (Republican, San Antonio), Henry Cuellar (Democrat, Laredo), and Joaquin Castro (Democrat, San Antonio). Hurd criticized the order as "the most expensive and least effective way to secure the border" while Castro considered the wall "a lazy and ineffective strategy". Then-Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said during a hearing that while she believed Americans want a secure border, she has "not met anyone [who] says the most effective way is to build a wall across the entirety of our southern border. The only one who keeps talking about that is President Trump."


title: Trump wall

text: Most members of the Southwest Border Sheriffs' Coalition, a group of sheriffs across the four states on the U.S.–Mexico border, are strongly opposed to the construction of a wall, citing its massive cost and logistical difficulties, and saying the wall would not be effective. Tony Estrada, a member of the Coalition and the longtime sheriff of the border county of Santa Cruz County, Arizona, has emerged as an outspoken critic of Trump's border wall proposal, saying the wall will not stymie drug cartel violence fueled by demand for drugs in the U.S. On the other hand, several Southwestern sheriffs praised and welcomed the proposal, and also activated a crowdfunding to support the construction. Then-sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, asked "what is wrong with a wall."


title: Trump wall

text: Variant slogans include "Build a Wall" or "Build that Wall". It has inspired a number of counter-slogans among protesters of Trump policies, as well as parodies in popular culture, including memes. The slogan was not his official campaign slogan, which was "Make America Great Again".


title: Trump wall

text: The idea of the wall became popular enough among Trump's supporters that chants of "Build the Wall" became common at Trump rallies. After Trump won the 2016 election, reports emerged that the chant was being used by some children to bully their Latino classmates, and that the locations of these incidents were at least correlated with areas in which Trump received more votes.


title: Trump wall

text: A Rasmussen Reports poll from August 19, 2015, found that 51% supported building a wall on the border, while 37% opposed.


title: Trump wall

text: A February 2017 study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that "As was the case throughout the presidential campaign, more Americans continue to oppose (62%) than favor (35%) building a wall along the entire U.S. border with Mexico" (The Trump administration built border wall in some areas, however they did not pursue construction of border wall on the entirety of the U.S.-Mexico border). 43% of respondents thought a border wall would not have much impact on illegal immigration, while 54% thought it would have an impact (29% thought it would lead to a major reduction, 25% a minor reduction). 70% of Americans thought the U.S. would ultimately pay for the wall; 16% believed Mexico would pay for it. Public opinion was polarized by party: "About three-quarters (74%) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents support a border wall, while an even greater share of Democrats and Democratic leaners express opposition to building a wall across the entire U.S.–Mexico border (89%)." Younger Americans and Americans with college degrees were more likely to oppose a wall than older Americans and those without college degrees.


title: Trump wall

text: In a separate January 2017 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 39% of Americans identified construction of a U.S.–Mexico border wall as an "important goal for U.S. immigration policy". The survey found that while Americans were divided by party on many different immigration policies, "the widest [partisan split] by far is over building a southern border wall. Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (67%) say construction of a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border is an important goal for immigration policy, compared with just 16 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners."


title: Trump wall

text: A survey conducted by the National Border Patrol Council found that 89% of border patrol agents said a "wall system in strategic locations is necessary to securing the border". 7% of agents disagreed.


title: Trump wall

text: A poll conducted by CBS in June 21–22, 2018 found that 51% supported the border wall, while 48% opposed.


title: Trump wall

text: A poll conducted by the Senate Opportunity Fund in March 2021 found that 53% supported finishing construction of the border wall, while 38% opposed.


title: Trump wall

text: The executive order soured relations between the U.S. and Mexico. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto addressed Mexican citizens via a recorded message, in which he condemned Trump's executive order and again said Mexico would not pay for the wall's construction. Following a Twitter feud between the two leaders in which Trump threatened to cancel a planned meeting with Nieto in Washington, Nieto decided to cancel the meeting himself.


title: Trump wall

text: Addressing supporters, Mexican opposition politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador condemned the wall order as an insult to Mexico, and demanded the Mexican government to pursue claims against the American government in the United Nations.


title: Trump wall

text: In March 2017, Mexican congressman Braulio Guerra of Querétaro illegally climbed, and partially crossed, an existing border fence on American soil dividing San Diego and Tijuana, saying that more walls would be ineffective.


title: Trump wall

text: The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Mexico opposed the border wall, and wrote that any Mexican company that participates in construction of the wall or supplies materials for construction would be committing "treason against the homeland".


title: Trump wall

text: At the annual summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in January 2017, representatives from Latin American and Caribbean countries condemned the wall proposal.


title: Trump wall

text: Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, applauded the plan, endorsing it as a "Great success. Great idea." Netanyahu declared "Trump is right" and likened the proposal to the Israeli West Bank barrier. After Mexican protests, the Prime Minister's office issued a statement saying that "[he] was addressing Israel's unique circumstances and the important experience we have and which we are willing to share with other nations. There was no attempt to voice an opinion regarding U.S.–Mexico ties."


title: Trump wall

text: Pope Francis has been critical of the project, saying in a March 2019 interview: "If you raise a wall between people, you end up a prisoner of that wall that you raised." He has made several references in speeches, and in a tweet, to building "bridges, not walls".


title: Trump wall

text: International reactions include artistic and intercultural facilitation devices. Projects have included exhibitions, signs, and demonstrations as well as physical adaptations promoting socialization such as a bright pink see-saw built through the wall that is accessible to people on both sides to enjoy together.


title: Trump wall

text: Many people "have voiced doubts about whether a wall would actually stem illegal immigration, or if it is worth the billions it is expected to cost". Critics have noted that the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. had declined for several years before the order was signed, in part because of the Great Recession.


title: Trump wall

text: Gil Kerlikowske, the former Commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection, said the rugged terrain in the Arizona desert is one of many natural obstacles in the construction of the wall. Kerlikowske also said the border currently has of fencing, and that the border is patrolled by various means, including by agents on motorcycles or ATVs and by drones. He said the current method was preferable to a wall.


title: Trump wall

text: After the executive order was signed, Jason Marczak of the Atlantic Council wrote: "Today's events are dangerous for the immediate and long-term security and economy of the United States. U.S.–Mexico cooperation is far-reaching: from intelligence sharing for the capture of drug traffickers to the flow of commercial goods that support the livelihoods of nearly five million American workers."


title: Trump wall

text: On September 12, 2017, the United States Department of Homeland Security issued a notice that Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke would be waiving "certain laws, regulations and other legal requirements" to begin construction of the new wall near Calexico, California. The waiver allows the Department of Homeland Security to bypass the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Noise Control Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Antiquities Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.


title: Trump wall

text: In 2020, two contractors who were employed by Sullivan Land Services Co. to provide security for wall construction filed a federal complaint alleging that the company and a subcontractor had performed illegal acts such as hiring undocumented workers, going "so far as to build a dirt road to expedite illegal border crossings to sites in San Diego, using construction vehicles to block security cameras", which was approved by an "unnamed supervisor at the Army Corps of Engineers".


title: Trump wall

text: Following Trump's executive order to proceed with the wall's construction in February 2019, two separate cases were filed in the United States District Court of the Northern District of California alleging that the Trump administration had overstepped its boundaries by authorizing funds to use to build the border wall without Congressional approval, citing the Congressional restrictions they had passed earlier in the month. One was filed by the state of California and 19 other states, while the other was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union for the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition. Both cases were heard together by Judge Haywood Gilliam.


title: Trump wall

text: On May 17, 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice argued in court that, because Congress had not explicitly stated in an appropriations bill that "no money shall be obligated" for construction of the wall, the administration was free to spend funds that were not expressly appropriated for border security. Douglas Letter, the general counsel for the House of Representatives, responded, "That just cannot be right. No money may be spent unless Congress actually appropriates it." On the following week, Gilliam granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Trump administration from redirecting funds under the national emergency declaration issued earlier in the year to fund a planned wall along the border with Mexico. Gilliam ruled that "Congress's 'absolute' control over federal expenditureseven when that control may frustrate the desires of the Executive Branch regarding initiatives it views as importantis not a bug in our constitutional system. It is a feature of that system, and an essential one." The injunction applied specifically to some of the money the administration intended to allocate from other agencies, and limited wall construction projects in El Paso, Texas and Yuma, Arizona. Gilliam's decision was temporarily upheld on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court on July 3, 2019.


title: Trump wall

text: The U.S. Department of Justice petitioned the Supreme Court, and on July 26, 2019, the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, issued a stay to Gilliam's ruling, allowing wall and related construction to proceed while litigation continues. The summary ruling from the majority indicated the groups suing the government may not have standing to challenge the executive order. However, the plaintiffs will return to the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court. Rulings for both the states' and the environmental groups' cases were issued on June 26, 2020, with the Ninth Circuit affirming that the funds for constructing the wall were transferred illegally against the Appropriations Clause.


title: Trump wall

text: The parties in the Sierra Club suit sought to have the Supreme Court lift their stay based on the Ninth's decision, but the Supreme Court refused to grant this on a 5–4 order on July 31, 2020, effectively allowing the wall construction to continue despite the decision of the Ninth; Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor dissented. On August 7, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice petitioned the Supreme Court challenging the Ninth Circuit's ruling in both the California and Sierra Club cases on the questions of standing and the legality of the appropriations transfer. On October 19, 2020, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the case.


title: Trump wall

text: The House of Representatives also filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the administration in 2019 for misappropriation of funds. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden dismissed the lawsuit in June 2019, determining the House could not show damages and thus had no standing to sue. On appeal, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, in September 2020, finding that expenditures made without the approval of the House of Representatives are an injury for which the House has standing to sue.


title: Trump wall

text: The case was made moot with the ceased construction and delegated to lower courts for any necessary further processing.


title: Trump wall

text: In April 2017, the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, and U.S. Representative Raúl Grijalva from Arizona, the ranking Democratic member on the House Committee on Natural Resources filed a lawsuit in federal court in Tucson. In their complaint, Grijalva and the Center argue that the government's wall construction plans fail to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, and seek to compel the government to carry out an environmental impact study and produce an environmental impact statement (EIS) before building the wall. The lawsuit specifically seeks "to stop any work until the government agrees to analyze the impact of construction, noise, light and other changes to the landscape on rivers, plants and endangered speciesincluding jaguars, Sonoran pronghorns and ocelotsand also on border residents". Two separate cases, also arguing about the government's failure to complete an EIS, were later filed, one by the groups the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the second by California's Attorney General Xavier Becerra.


title: Trump wall

text: The three lawsuits were consolidated into a single case within the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California by Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel. Oral arguments were heard in February 2018, and Curiel ruled by the end of the month in favor of the government, citing that the Department of Homeland Security has several waivers in its authorization to expedite construction of border walls, which includes bypassing the EIS statement. Curiel had written his opinion without consideration of the other political issues regarding the border wall, ruling only on the environment impact aspect. The ruling was challenged to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, but the Court denied their petition for writ of "certiorari" by December 2018, allowing Curiel's decision to stand.


title: Trump wall

text: About two-thirds of the U.S.–Mexico border runs along private or state-owned lands, and the federal government would need to acquire such land through purchase or seizure (eminent domain) to build any border wall. The "process is likely to cost the government millions and could take years of complex litigation", as was the case for pre-existing border walls. In his budget request to Congress, Trump requested funds for twenty U.S. Department of Justice lawyers "to pursue federal efforts to obtain the land and holdings necessary to secure the Southwest border". In 2017, he also revived condemnation litigation against land owners that had been dormant for years. There are of it in Southern Texas; are privately owned. By December 2019, the Trump administration had acquired three miles (4.8 km).


title: Trump wall

text: The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville has challenged the government's right to build part of the wall on the grounds of a historic chapel, La Lomita Chapel in Mission, Texas. At a hearing in McAllen, Texas, on February 6, 2019, U.S. District Judge Randy Crane said the diocese must allow surveyors onto the grounds. The diocese is hoping that, once the survey is completed, the government will reconsider. If not, the diocese plans to assert its rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law which prohibits the government from placing a "substantial burden" on the practice of religion. According to Mary McCord, a Georgetown University ICAP attorney representing the diocese, "a physical barrier that cuts off access to the chapel, and not only to Father Roy and his parish but those who seek to worship there, is clearly a substantial burden on the exercise of religious freedom."


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector (, "Pravyi sektor") is a right-wing to far-right, Ukrainian nationalist organization. It originated in November 2013 as a right-wing, paramilitary confederation of several radical nationalist organizations at the Euromaidan revolt in Kyiv, where its street fighters participated in clashes with riot police. The coalition became a political party on 22 March 2014, at which time it claimed to have roughly 10,000 members. Founding groups included Trident ("Tryzub"), led by Dmytro Yarosh and Andriy Tarasenko, and the Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA–UNSO), a political and paramilitary organization. Other founding groups included the Social-National Assembly and its Patriot of Ukraine paramilitary wing, White Hammer, and Carpathian Sich. White Hammer was expelled in March 2014, and Patriot of Ukraine left the organization, along with many UNA–UNSO members, in the following months.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector has been described as right-wing, far right, hardline right-wing nationalist, or neo-fascist political party and paramilitary movement, and part of the European radical right. Right Sector was the second-most mentioned political group in Russian media during the first half of 2014, and Russian state TV depicted it as neo-Nazi. In March 2014, Associated Press found no evidence that the group had committed hate crimes.


title: Right Sector

text: In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Yarosh won a parliament seat as a Right Sector candidate by winning a single-member district with 29.8% of the votes. Right Sector spokesperson Boryslav Bereza also won a seat as an independent candidate and district with 29.4% of the votes. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Right Sector took part on a united radical right nationwide-party list with the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh, National Corps, and Svoboda, winning no seats.


title: Right Sector

text: The Right sector fought in the Russo-Ukrainian War with its own paramilitary wing, the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps. On 5 April 2015, Yarosh was appointed an advisor to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On 11 November, Yarosh formally stepped down as the group's leader. On 27 December, he announced that he and his team would be withdrawing from the group entirely, declaring that Right Sector had fulfilled its purpose "as a revolutionary structure" and was no longer needed. He stated he and his faction were against pseudo-revolutionary activity that threatens the state, fringe radicalism, and were against violent revolts against the government. In a statement issued in response to Yarosh's departure, Right Sector said the schism was due to continuing a "revolutionary path". The departure of Yarosh resulted in at least 20% of Right Sector members leaving with him. In February 2016, Yarosh started a new organisation called the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh. Since 19 March 2016, Tarasenko has been the new chairman of Right Sector. In December 2021, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine refused to disclose any details on cooperation with Yarosh, citing the confidentiality of the information requested.


title: Right Sector

text: The organization's name in Ukrainian is "Правий сектор" (transliterated "Pravyy sektor"), translated as "Right Sector". (General-audience publications often transliterate it as "Pravy Sektor" or "Pravyi Sektor".) One account derives the name from the group's effort to protect the right-hand side of the Euromaidan protestors at one point during the Maidan protests. Dmytro Yarosh owns the trademark "Right Sector". Russian language-speakers may refer to members of the Right Sector as "pravoseki" (); singular: "pravosek" ().


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector was formed in late November 2013 as a confederation of street-fighting soccer fans and right-wing nationalist groups: Patriot of Ukraine (Andriy Belitsky), the Social-National Assembly, Trident (Dmytro Yarosh), UNA–UNSO (Yuriy Shukhevych), White Hammer, and Carpathian Sich. The BBC reports that Right Sector's Kyiv organization is primarily formed by Russian-speaking soccer ultras who share nationalist views.


title: Right Sector

text: The organization views itself within the tradition of Ukrainian partisans, such as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought in the Second World War against the Soviet Union and both for and against the Nazi Germany. Yarosh, Right Sector's leader, has trained armed nationalists in military exercises since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Co-founder Andriy Tarasenko told LIGA news agency in January 2014 that most participants were "ordinary citizens not related to any organizations".


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector became one of the main actors in the January 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots, a part of the Euromaidan protests, in their later and more violent stages. On 19 January 2014 the organization encouraged its members to bring bottles to the protests to produce Molotov cocktails and bombs. The Yanukovich government classified it as an extremist movement and threatened its members with imprisonment.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector has been described as the most organized and most effective of the Euromaidan forces when it came to confronting police. Right Sector claims that it was the main organizer of violent resistance against armed attacks by the state at Euromaidan. Yarosh stated that the group had amassed a sizable arsenal of weapons; these include guns taken from police stations in Western Ukraine.


title: Right Sector

text: The Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" reported antisemitic incidents involving Svoboda and Right Sector during the demonstration, where their militants were calling political opponents "Zhyd" and flying flags with neo-Nazi symbols. According to Haaretz, these organizations were also distributing translated editions of "Mein Kampf" and the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to the demonstrators in Independence Square.


title: Right Sector

text: On 4 March 2014, the organization called on readers of its Vkontakte social-media page to "correct th[e] misunderstanding" that had been created in English and Russian Wikipedia that Right Sector is fascist and neo-Nazi. According to political science professor Olexiy Haran, Right Sector's role in Ukrainian politics was "extremely exaggerated" by Ukrainians associated with Yanukovich.


title: Right Sector

text: Mustafa Nayyem stated that he was with members of the Right Sector when they entered Viktor Pshonka's luxurious mansion and that the Right Sector recovered numerous GPU files from Pshonka's mansion after members of the Yanukovych government fled in exile to Russia. These files included the secret bookkeeping of Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions' Black Ledger () or Barn Book (), which implicated numerous persons to improper payments from pro-Kremlin and pro-Vladimir Putin sources including Paul Manafort for which the book included the handwritten records of 22 payments over five years to Manafort, nine of which had been signed by Vitaly Anatolyevich Kalyuzhny (), who was the Verkhovna Rada's foreign relations committee chairman. On 17 August 2016, Donald Trump removed Manafort as Trump's campaign chairman following Trump's first national security briefing directly because of the records in the secret ledger.


title: Right Sector

text: After Trump won the 2016 United States presidential election, Manafort demanded that the White House, Trump himself, and later Rudy Giuliani actively pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit Leshchenko and others because Leshchenko had published information from the Yanukovych Secret Ledger that was highly critical of Manafort's work in Ukraine. Manafort provided information to Giuliani and his company Giuliani Partners, including its employees Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to smear Leshchenko and others in Ukraine and entered into a joint legal defense agreement between Manafort's attorneys and Trump's attorneys. Manafort and Giuliani also discussed how to deal with Marie Yovanovitch.


title: Right Sector

text: In February 2014, Yarosh and the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine agreed to establish a "hotline" to prevent provocations and coordinate actions when issues arise. The group assists in the protection of Jewish sites in Odessa. In April 2014, Yarosh allegedly demanded to be appointed Vice Prime Minister for the law enforcement matters but his demand was rejected; he was offered a post of the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine instead but Yarosh rejected this position as being beneath him. There were discussions of appointing Yarosh deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, but these discussions quickly petered out for unknown reasons.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector became a dominant theme of Russian propaganda, which grossly exaggerated its strength and influence in the new Ukraine. It was portrayed as a mortal threat to Russian speakers and Jews that necessitated a Russian military intervention. By April, Right Sector was being mentioned on Russia television almost as frequently as Putin's own United Russia party. In Crimea and the East, a "Right Sector" vandalism spree targeting synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and Holocaust memorials was widely seen as a Russian false flag attack. In Simferopol, a synagogue was defaced with the wolfsangel symbol used by the Ukrainian far-right, but in the mirror-image of its normal orientation; in Odessa, vandals defaced a Jewish cemetery with graffiti reading "Right Sector" but misspelled the group's name. The next day Yarosh met with the Chief Rabbi of Odessa to show solidarity with Ukrainian Jews and was photographed helping paint over the graffiti.


title: Right Sector

text: On 7 March 2014, Tarasenko told Interfax-Ukraine that the "informal movement" would be transforming itself into a political party at a congress on 15 March. On 11 March 2014, Russian Duma opposition leader Valery Rashkin called on Russian special services to "liquidate" Yarosh and Right Sector's leader for West Ukraine, UNA–UNSO member Oleksandr Muzychko. He said that Muzychko had fought for Chechen separatists against Russian troops and been charged with banditry. Muzychko (who was given the nom de guerre "Sachko Bilyi") had also become known for the farcical Right Sector video, "Sachko Communicates with a Prosecutor", in which he yells at a local prosecutor, snatches his tie and threatens to drag him to Independence Square with a rope.


title: Right Sector

text: Muzychko was shot to death in Rivne, Ukraine, on 24 March 2014. A witness told a local news service that a dozen men took Muzychko out of a cafe, handcuffed him, and beat him and two bodyguards. Others said that they later heard two shots fired near the cafe. Ukraine's Interior Ministry stated that he was shot after opening fire on police and Sokil special forces. He was captured alive and arrested but died from his wounds before paramedics arrived. Police said he was being detained on suspicion of organized crime links, hooliganism and threatening public officials.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector representatives held Interior Minister Arsen Avakov accountable for his death and vowed to avenge him. On 27 March 2014, Right Sector supporters demanded Avakov's resignation and tried to storm the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament). The next day, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, stated, "I strongly condemn the pressure by activists of the Right Sector who have surrounded the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Such an intimidation of the parliament is against the democratic principles and rule of law." A few days later, the group released an app that allows its members to organize tactics at events without being identified. On 31 March 2014, a drunken Right Sector activist started shooting near a restaurant in central Kyiv. Three people were wounded, including the deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration.


title: Right Sector

text: In April 2014, Right Sector announced that it had begun to form a special Donbas battalion for its paramilitary operations in the War in Donbas. On 22 April 2014, pro-Russian insurgents in Slovyansk detained American journalist Simon Ostrovsky for several days on suspicion of spying for the group.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector was officially registered as a political party by the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice on 22 May 2014. A regional chief told "The Wall Street Journal" that it was less interested in running for office than in getting politicians to keep their promises. In the 25 May 2014 presidential race Yarosh received 127,000 votes, 0.7% of the total cast. In a mid-May 2014 poll by the sociological group Rating, the party itself scored 1.7%. On 13 June 2014, a prosecutor's office in Kyiv was stormed by people who claimed to be Right Sector activists. Yarosh denied his organization's involvement and claimed that he could not have given orders to picket "the man who helped Euromaidan". On 15 October 2014, around 125 masked men with Right Sector insignia blocked the company Zaporizhstal; Right Sector denied involvement in this blockade and labelled it as an attempt to discredit the organization. In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Yarosh as a Right Sector candidate won a parliament seat by winning single-member district number 39 located in Vasylkivka Raion with 29.76% of the votes. The party had competed in 35 districts. Yarosh did not join a faction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament). In the same election, Boryslav Bereza, Right Sector's chief of information, also won a seat as an independent candidate by winning a district in Kyiv with 29.44% of the votes. Bereza also did not join a faction. Right Sector did not take part in the October 2015 Ukrainian local elections.


title: Right Sector

text: On 10 July 2015, Ukrainian government forces clashed with Right Sector forces in the city of Mukacheve, located in Western Ukraine. Two people were killed. According to President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko's parliamentary faction leader Yuriy Lutsenko, these events "result[ed from] the conflict of interests between illegal armed groups and a mafia overtly cooperating with law enforcers." Some local leaders indicated the conflict ensued when Right Sector forces attempted to clamp down on the lucrative illegal cigarette smuggling trade to Western Europe, in which local law enforcement have been complicit. Immediate fallout from the events included the sacking of the leadership of the local Zakarpatya district customs service. Ukrainian MP Mykhailo Lanyo, fingered in the smuggling ring, reportedly fled Ukraine. Right Sector leader Yarosh called for calm, and denied that Right Sector troops were being withdrawn from eastern Ukraine.


title: Right Sector

text: Yarosh resigned as Right Sector leader on 11 November 2015. Late December 2015 he announced that he was forming a new political party that would start in February 2016. In February 2016 he started a new organisation called "Governmental Initiative of Yarosh". The departure of Yarosh resulted in at least 20% of Right Sector members leaving with him. At a party congress of 19 March 2016, Andriy Tarasenko was elected chairman of Right Sector. Before Euromaidan, he and Yarosh were the leading figures of Trident (Tryzub). Tarasenko vowed in March 2016 that Right Sector would take part in all elections in Ukraine.


title: Right Sector

text: On 19 November 2018 Right Sector and fellow Ukrainian nationalist political organizations Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and C14 endorsed Ruslan Koshulynskyi candidacy in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. In the election Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the votes.


title: Right Sector

text: In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Right Sector joined a united party list with the political parties Svoboda, Governmental Initiative of Yarosh and National Corps. Yarosh was placed third on this party list, while Tarasenko placed fourth. In the election, they won 2.15% of the votes, less than half of the 5% election threshold, and no parliamentary seats via the national party list. The party did also not win a single-mandate constituency parliamentary seat.


title: Right Sector

text: In the 2020 Ukrainian local elections, the party gained 3 deputies (mathematically this was about 0.00% of all available mandates).


title: Right Sector

text: On 2 November 2021, Yarosh said on social media he had been appointed Adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In response to a (December 2021) request by "Ukrayinska Pravda" the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine refused to disclose details of its alleged cooperation with Yarosh citing the confidentiality of the information requested. Prior to this request the (army) post of public advisers had been liquidated.


title: Right Sector

text: In January 2022, captain Dmytro Kotsyubaylo "Da Vinci" was awarded the title Hero of Ukraine and decorated with the Order of the Golden Star for courage on the battlefield by the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector seized military weaponry from an Interior Ministry arsenal in western Ukraine, near Lviv, towards the end of the Maidan revolution. Right Sector delivered some weapons to Ukrainian authorities in the aftermath of the revolution, and kept others. Following the collapse of the Yanukovych government, with police having largely abandoned the streets of Kyiv, groups of young men, including members of Right Sector, patrolled them armed mostly with baseball bats and sometimes with guns. According to Yarosh, Right Sector has recruited retired officers of the interior ministry and the security agencies. He told "Newsweek" that, "as in any army", it has specialists who are trained to use S-300 antiaircraft missiles. As of 2022, the group remains armed and operative; in an interview with Deutsche Welle in late 2015, Petro Poroshenko stated that Right Sector was going to be disarmed and taken out of operations in Donbass.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector has its own volunteer battalion that is fighting in the War in Donbas, the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (). It was formed late April 2014. On 19 July 2014 Right Sector said it was ready to contribute 5,000 people to fight, if the military provided suitable combat equipment. Right Sector lost twelve fighters when ambushed outside Donetsk in August 2014. Yarosh, the group's leader, vowed his group would avenge the deaths. On 17 August 2014 Right Sector accused the Interior Ministry of harbouring counterrevolutionary forces seeking to destroy the Ukrainian volunteer movement. It said that Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Yevdokimov's followers among the police had illegally searched or detained dozens of Right Sector volunteers and confiscated weapons they had taken in combat. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov replied, saying that he had already submitted a request to President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko that Yevdokimov be dismissed. Right Sector's military unit includes about fifty citizens of Russia and Belarus as of 2015. Members come from all parts of Ukraine including the Donbass and Crimea, Russia and other former Soviet republics, and Western countries. In December 2015, group leader Dmytro Yarosh announced that the 5th and 8th battalions, and the medical battalion, would be incorporated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine following his departure from Right Sector. The DUK, if possible, would become part of the National Guard of Ukraine and will in the near future report to the Ministry of Internal Affairs or would be incorporated into the Ukrainian Ground Forces.


title: Right Sector

text: In the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Right Sector volunteers fought in the Siege of Mariupol and Eastern Ukraine offensive. In the latter operation, Taras Bobanych, commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps's 2nd Separate Battalion, was killed near Izium.


title: Right Sector

text: The party's ideology is based on the Ukrainian national idea. The party believes that idea of a nation is more broad than the concept of people as ethnos, yet nothing even close to the cosmopolitan concept of "political nation", with nation being a conscious and effective unity of people united around the idea of freedom that is based on ethno-social and spiritually cultural factors.


title: Right Sector

text: According to the party, Ukrainian nationalism is an ideology of national freedom, freedom of people, and person; an idea and cause in the name of Ukraine; an ideology of defense, preservation, and state assertion of the Ukrainian nation; and a philosophy of national existence. The main component of Right Sector's natiocentric outlook is natio-existential "Shevchenko Thought", based on protection, development, and revival of the nation based on national imperative or absolute order. According to its literature, an idealistic worldview is intrinsic to Ukrainian nationalism.


title: Right Sector

text: Scholars Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovtsov wrote in 2014 that Right Sector formed as a loose collection of small groups, outside parliament, that were ultraconservative and included a neo-Nazi fringe. In 2021 political scientists Daniel Odin Shaw and Huseyn Aliyev described Right Sector as ultranationalist, and described the paramilitary arm of Right Sector, the UDA, as holding a "generic form of Ukrainian ultranationalism", which allowed the inclusion of ethnic minorities, including Muslim Crimean Tatars and Chechens, and ethnic Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and Romani.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector has been described by "BBC News" as a "Ukrainian nationalist group" and an "umbrella organization of far-right groups", while "Time" has described it as a "radical right-wing group ... a coalition of militant ultra-nationalists", with an ideology that "borders on fascism". "The New York Times" has described it as a "nationalist group" and a "coalition of once-fringe Ukrainian nationalist groups". "The Guardian" has identified it as a "nationalist Ukrainian group", Reuters as a "far-right nationalist group", Agence France Presse as a "far-right" group, and "The Wall Street Journal" as an "umbrella group for far-right activists and ultranationalists". "Die Welt", the "New York Times", and "Le Monde diplomatique" have described some of Right Sector's constituent groups as radical right-wing, neofascist, or neo-Nazi, but also that it distanced itself from antisemitism. "The Washington Post" stated that the party espouse neo-Nazi ideology.


title: Right Sector

text: Writing for "Foreign Policy", Hannah Kozlowska stated that Russian propaganda tried to demonize the Ukraine government and build a case for the annexation of Crimea by depicting Right Sector as a powerful neo-Nazi force bent on taking over the government. During the first half of 2014, Right Sector was the second-most mentioned political group in online Russian mass media. The Associated Press has called it a "radical ultranationalist group ... demonized by Russian state propaganda as fascists". The AP reported that it had found no evidence of hate crimes by the group. The Russian News & Information Agency has portrayed Right Sector as a "radical far right opposition group" and said that "Russian state media have tried to cast the demonstrations as a predominantly Fascism-inspired movement".


title: Right Sector

text: In an interview, Yarosh stated that Right Sector and Svoboda "have a lot of common positions when it comes to ideological questions," but that Right Sector "absolutely do[es]n't accept certain racist things they [Svoboda members] share." Tarasenko cited Stepan Bandera, stating: "We are enemies to those saying that there [is] no Ukraine, or Ukrainians, or … Ukrainian language."


title: Right Sector

text: According to journalist Oleg Shynkarenko, Yarosh has indicated that Right Sector opposes homosexuality and has also implied that the right of the nation trumps human rights. "The New York Times" has written that "Right Sector, a coalition of ultranationalist and in some cases neo-Nazi organizations," has attempted to distance itself from antisemitism, citing Yarosh's pledge to fight racism in Ukraine. According to "Spiegel Online", Dmytro Yarosh has stated that antisemitism is not a part of Right Sector's ideology. Tarasenko has stated that the group has no "phobias", that it respects every other nation, and that it supports the nation state model.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector's website says that its members distrust the "imperial ambitions" of both Russia and the West. Yarosh told "Spiegel Online" that anti-Christian organizations are in active operation in the European Union and that the European Commission, rather than the member nation, has control of lifestyles such as gay marriage. He does not see Europe or NATO as a potential partner and believes that they are part of a coalition against Ukraine.


title: Right Sector

text: Right Sector has the position that the population should keep and bear arms, as in Switzerland. Yarosh told "The New York Times" that the organization's lawyers were drafting a bill modeled on Swiss notions of firearms possession.


title: Right Sector

text: According to historian and political scientist Andreas Umland, Right Sector is ultra-Christian conservative and radical-right nationalist.


title: Right Sector

text: On 2 June 2015, the party sent an open letter to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko asking him to cancel a pride parade to be held two days later citing "danger of provocations". The letter also quoted Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav Shevchuk stating "Ukraine rejects the false values as gender ideology". The letter also claimed Europeans still have an ambiguous attitude about "LGBT" stating "in Poland abortion is banned in general, not to mention same-sex marriages".


title: Right Sector

text: In a Facebook post on 6 June 2015, Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh claimed the gay pride parade "spit on the graves of those who died and defended Ukraine", and promised that the group's members will "put aside other business in order to prevent those who hate family, morality, and human nature, from executing their plans. We have other things to do, but we'll have to deal with this evil too." Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadskyi stated about the pride parade that "gay propaganda is destructive and doing harm to our Christian nation, we can't allow that". The pride parade was held, and during the march five policemen were injured in scuffles after unidentified people attacked the rally with smoke bombs and stones. Right Sector denounced the violence, and Skoropadskyi stated: "We can't beat weak persons like gays – that's a disgrace!"


title: Right Sector

text: According to the report by UN Human Rights Council on 4 May 2016, Right Sector is one of "potentially violent militias that acted seemingly on their own authority, thanks to a high level of official toleration, and with almost complete impunity, both in the Donbass region and in wider Ukraine" that "use violence or threats of violence to exert pressure on persons holding dissenting views, the judicial system and other mechanisms of accountability": "The Special Rapporteur is concerned by cases of physical attacks on journalists, writers, defence lawyers and judges, including the cases of Oles Buzina (who was killed in April 2015 in Kyiv) and Sergei Dolgov (who was arrested or disappeared on 18 June 2014 by masked armed men in civilian clothes in Mariupol and whose whereabouts continue to be undetermined despite indications that he might have been killed). The Special Rapporteur is also concerned at an apparent pattern of intimidation of lawyers and judges by civilian armed groups in connection with their defence or investigation work related to the violence of 2 May 2014." Neither of Buzyna's accused killers (Andrey Medvedko and Denis Polischuk) nor those accused of abducting Dologov (the SBU / Anti-Terrorist Center) are associated with Right Sector, though Polischuk belonged to UNSO, whose political arm later merged into Right Sector.


title: Right Sector

text: Academic and media sources have described some of Right Sector's constituent groups as right-wing nationalist, ultranationalist, neo-fascist, right-wing, far right, ultra-conservative, paramilitary, and including neo-Nazi elements. A plurality or majority of Right Sector's members belong to street fighting soccer-fan clubs, or have no specific affiliation.


title: Right Sector

text: Sich (Carpathian Sich, "Карпатська Січ") is a Cossack battalion from Transcarpathia. Its name derives from the Ukrainian Cossack term for a command and administrative center.


title: Right Sector

text: Tryzub is a far-right Ukrainian paramilitary organization founded in 1993 by the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (former Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). Its full name is the Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Organization "Tryzub" and states that its main goal is to create a Ukrainian united independent state. According to Tryzub, its enemies in achieving this goal are ″imperialism and chauvinism, fascism and communism, cosmopolitanism and pseudo-nationalism, totalitarianism and anarchy, any evil that seeks to parasitize on the sweat and blood of Ukrainians″.


title: Right Sector

text: The Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA–UNSO) is a Ukrainian political organization perceived as far-right in Ukraine and abroad. The faction supplied a volunteer battalion that in 1993 participated in the war in Abkhazia, which was depicted in a documentary film "Shadows of War" by Georgiy Gongadze. While the Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA) acted as the organization's legal political party-wing; on 22 May 2014 it merged into Right Sector. The UNA-UNSO continues to operate independently.


title: Right Sector

text: After the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war, many volunteers formed their own groups as territorial defense battalions; however, these battalions were legal parts of various Ukrainian security agencies, most of them serving under the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of Interior. Their volunteers were required to follow orders of the commanders appointed to these agencies. In May 2014, the group became registered as a social organization under Ukrainian law. The status of the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps is not official.