Trump declares border in crisis
National emergency tests limits of his authority
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump was brushed off by Mexico, outfoxed by Democrats and feeling abandoned by Republicans.
So on Friday, he declared the national immigration emergency he had been threatening for months, casting the fate of his signature campaign promise – a wall along the southern border – into the hands of a court system he acknowledged would be unpredictable.
It’s a risky strategy, one that drew strong rebukes from fellow Republicans. But Trump is betting that the potential payoff with his political base is worth the long-term risks to the institution of the presidency and the short-term divisions within his party.
Yet Trump, explaining that he “was a little new to the job” when he came to office in 2017, said he felt he had no choice now that his other efforts had failed over the last two years.
“We’re going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border,” Trump said in an event at the White House Rose Garden in which he delivered a long, rambling defense of his policies, touching on trade, drug control, the economy and the border.
“It’s all a big lie, a big con game,” he said of his opponents’ arguments against border barriers. “Walls work 100 percent,” he said.
Once he puts the emergency order into place, “we will then be sued ... we will possibly get another bad ruling,” he said, reciting a litany of courts in a singsong voice. “We’ll end up in the Supreme Court,” where, he said, he hopes to “get a fair shake.”
The declaration is intended to circumvent Congress, which has refused to spend the billions needed to deliver a wall he had long insisted would be paid for by Mexico.
Administration officials say Trump will try to use emergency powers to divert money from other projects, mostly military construction efforts, to build or rebuild as much as 234 miles of border fences.
The emergency order would free an additional $6.6 billion for barrier construction, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, told reporters.
That potentially would bring total spending on construction to $8 billion, including the $1.375 billion authorized by Congress in the spending bill, which passed Congress on Thursday and which Trump signed Friday afternoon.
Of the total, about $3.6 billion would come from the military construction projects. Most of the rest would come from an account for projects to combat drug trafficking.
With the expanded military budget that he’s pursued, the Pentagon can afford to divert some funds to the border, Trump said. “This is a very, very small amount” of the military budget, he added.
The administration decided not to try the more politically controversial step of tapping disaster relief money intended to help Texas and Puerto Rico, Mulvaney said. Officials also abandoned plans that had been considered earlier to try to take money away from California water projects.
Officials declined to specify which projects would lose money or suffer delays as a result of the decision to shift funds, though they insisted the military’s readiness would not be diminished.
Aides for key lawmakers also said they had yet to receive any information on which specific military construction projects would be targeted under the national emergency declaration.
Claude Chafin, a spokesman for the Republican minority on the House Armed Services Committee, said by their assessment about $21 billion in military construction funding – $11 billion from prior years and $10 billion from last year – had yet to be assigned to particular projects and could, in theory, be available for transfer.