Trump Inches Closer to Declaring Emergency for Wall as Negotiations Stall

By David Smith, Guardian UK

01 February 19

President is making plans in the event he carries out his threat as Democrats refuse to fund his long-promised border wall

onald Trump is moving closer to using emergency powers to get $5.7bn to help build a wall on the US-Mexico border.

The president is still smarting from arguably the biggest defeat of his presidency, a partial government shutdown over wall funding that dragged on for a record 35 days, laid off hundreds of thousands of workers or forced others to work without pay. And left him empty-handed.

Trump finally signed a three-week deal to reopen the government but threatened to declare a national emergency and bypass Congress if it fails to reach a compromise, and is now making plans in the event he carries out that threat.

Negotiations have so far gone nowhere as Democrats, with increased power in the House of Representatives after last November’s midterm elections, refuse to fund Trump’s long-promised wall.

“I think Nancy Pelosi is hurting our country very badly by doing what’s she doing and, ultimately, I think I’ve set the table very nicely,” Trump told the New York Times on Thursday in a wide-ranging interview that touched upon the budget negotiations and the Mueller investigation.

“I’ve actually always gotten along with her, but now I don’t think I will any more,” Trump also said, referring to speaker Pelosi. “If she doesn’t approve the wall, the rest of it’s just a waste of money and time and energy because it’s desperately needed,” he added, though he fell short of saying explicitly he was preparing to declare a national emergency.

“I’ll continue to build the wall, and we’ll get the wall finished,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Trump had claimed Pelosi would reverse her position because of the threat posed by caravans of immigrants heading to the US from Central America. “If you go to Tijuana [in Mexico] and take down that wall, you will have so many people coming into our country that Nancy Pelosi will be begging for a wall,” he told reporters at the White House. “She’ll be begging for a wall. She will say: ‘Mr President, please, please give us a wall.’”

He insisted that wall construction is already under way and ongoing. “I’m not waiting for this committee. I’ve told a lot of people I don’t expect much out of this committee … If they don’t have a wall, I don’t want to even waste my time reading what they have.”

The president acknowledged: “I was elected partially on this issue, not as much as people say, but partially on this issue … If we don’t put up a physical barrier, you can forget it. Our country’s going to be an unsafe place.”

Trump’s comments come after a day of intense speculation about the president’s plans. “Trump met with his budget chief, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Jared Kushner and other top officials, including White House lawyers, on Tuesday to walk through the logistics of such a move,” Politico reported. “And White House aides have been quietly meeting with outside conservative political groups to build support for the president to take such an action. Those talking points, which emphasize Trump’s legal authority, have begun to show up in such conservative media outlets as Breitbart News.”

A national emergency would enable Trump to take existing funds appropriated by Congress for other purposes, for example military budget from the Pentagon and disaster relief money. There is bipartisan opposition to such a radical measure, typically reserved for wartime, terrorist attacks such as 9/11, or health emergencies.

Such a move would almost certainly trigger a legal challenge. Even Trump’s own Republican party has warned that it would set a dangerous precedent, emboldening any future Democratic president to use emergency powers for their own priorities – such as climate change or healthcare.

But Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator who has become a close confidant of Trump, tweeted on Monday: “If White House and Congress fail to reach a deal then President @realDonaldTrump must act through emergency powers to build wall/barrier.”

And on Wednesday night, appearing on conservative-leaning cable network Fox News, Graham told host Sean Hannity: “To everybody who’s wondering how this movie ends, it ends this way: we’re going to build a wall one way or the other. I just talked to the president 10 minutes before I came on your show.”

Graham added: “He has all the power in the world to do this. To my Republican colleagues: stand behind him and, if you don’t, you’re going to pay a price.”

A border wall has been a centrepiece of Trump’s candidacy and presidency but so far he has been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives and a veteran political operator.

On the first day of talks, congressional Democrats offered a border security plan that includes new money for customs agents, scanners, aircraft and boats to police the border, and to provide humanitarian assistance for immigrants. But it did not include money for a wall.

Pelosi told reporters on Thursday: “There’s not going to be any wall money in the legislation. It is not a negotiation for the president to say … ‘It doesn’t matter what Congress says.’ The president wants to have Congress be completely irrelevant in how we meet the needs of the American people? No, c’mon. Let them work their will. I’m an appropriator.”

The negotiating committee will probably have to wrap up its work around 10 February to meet the 15 February deadline set last week. There are slender hopes that a compromise can be achieved, partly over language. Trump has now said he wants “steel slats” along the border rather than the “concrete wall” he promised during his campaign.

But Trump made clear his own lack of faith in congressional talks, tweeting: “Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee are wasting their time. Democrats, despite all of the evidence, proof and Caravans coming, are not going to give money to build the DESPERATELY needed WALL. I’ve got you covered. Wall is already being built, I don’t expect much help!”