TRUMP WEIGHS EXTREME OPTION
Vows to declare emergency, but obstacles remain
MCALLEN, TEXAS •Taking the shutdown fight to the Mexican border, President Donald Trump edged closer Thursday to declaring a national emergency in an extraordinary end run around Congress to fund his long-promised border wall.
Trump, visiting Mcallen, Texas, and the Rio Grande to highlight what he says is a crisis of drugs and crime, said that “if for any reason we don’t get this going” — an agreement with House Democrats who have refused to approve the $5.7 billion he demands for the wall — “I will declare a national emergency.”
Some 800,000 workers, more than half of them still on the job, were to miss their first paycheque on Friday under the stoppage, and Washington was close to setting a dubious record for the longest government shutdown in the nation’s history.
Asked about the plight of those going without pay, the president shifted the focus, saying he felt badly “for people that have family members that have been killed” by criminals who came over the border.
Trump was consulting with White House attorneys and allies about using presidential emergency powers to take unilateral action to construct the wall over the objections of Congress. He claimed his lawyers told him the action would withstand legal scrutiny “100 per cent.”
But such a move to bypass Congress’ constitutional control of the nation’s purse strings would spark certain legal challenges and bipartisan cries of executive overreach.
“We’re either going to have a win, make a compromise — because I think a compromise is a win for everybody — or I will declare a national emergency,” Trump said before departing the White House for visit to the border.
“I would like to do the deal through Congress,” he said. “It makes sense to do the deal through Congress ... It would be nice if we can make a deal, but dealing with these people is ridiculous.”
It was not clear what a compromise might entail, and there were no indications that one was in the offing. Trump says he won’t reopen the government without money for the wall. Democrats say they favour measures to bolster border security but oppose the long, impregnable barrier that Trump envisions.
No negotiations were taking place at the Capitol.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said at one point that he didn’t “see a path in Congress” to end the shutdown, then stated later that enough was enough: “It is time for President Trump to use emergency powers to fund the construction of a border wall/ barrier.”
Visiting a border patrol station in Mcallen, Trump viewed tables piled with weapons and narcotics. Like nearly all drugs trafficked across the border, they were intercepted by agents at official ports of entry, he was told, and not in the remote areas where he wants to extend tall barriers.
Still, he declared, “A wall works . ... Nothing like a wall.”
He argued that the U.S. can’t solve the problem without a “very substantial barrier.”
Joining him were Texas’ two Republican senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, as well as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Cruz, once a fierce rival of Trump’s during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, welcomed the president to Texas and declared that “the American people want the border secure.”
“Illegal immigration produces tragedies each day ... When we see politicians go on TV and say the border’s secure and there is no crisis, they are ignoring reality,” Cruz said.
Trump, sitting among border patrol officers, state and local officials and military representatives, insisted he was “winning” the shutdown fight and criticized Democrats for asserting he was manufacturing a sense of crisis in order to declare an emergency. “What is manufactured is the use of the word ‘manufactured,”’ Trump said.
On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Trump of engaging in political games to fire up his most loyal supporters, suggesting that a heated meeting Wednesday with legislators at the White House had been “a setup” so that the president could walk out of it.
In an ominous sign for those seeking a swift end to the showdown, Trump announced he was cancelling his trip to Davos, Switzerland, scheduled for later this month, citing Democrats’ “intransigence” on border security. He was to leave Jan. 21 to attend the World Economic Forum.