“Rep. Madison Cawthorn has proposed a fresh alternative for the unfinished U.S.-Mexico border wall championed by former President Donald Trump: turn it into a national monument. The wall was a key piece in Trump’s election campaign in 2016. Cawthorn, a first-term Republican from North Carolina, is honoring Trump with the proposed bill, the ‘Donument’ Act” USA Today reports.
“‘For four years President Trump worked to secure the southern border of the United States by constructing a wall in places where there was little to no fencing,’ Cawthorn said in an April 13 statement on the proposed legislation, H.R. 2390. ‘The Donument Act establishes the southern border wall as the ‘Southern Border Wall National Monument,’ and gives the monument permanent protection from alteration.’ During Trump’s four years in office, over 400 miles of border wall were built along the 1,933-mile-long border. Only 80 miles of it was built where there was no wall before, according to BBC News in January. There were roughly 654 miles of fencing present before Trump was president. President Joe Biden paused border construction with an executive order on his first day in office, saying that the wall was ‘not a serious policy solution’ and a ‘waste of money.'”