WASHINGTON �� President Donald Trump edged closer toward a radical move to fund his proposed border wall Sunday after the prospect of a deal with the Democrats to reopen government dimmed and the president's political leverage appeared to dissipate.
Trump renewed his threat to bypass negotiations with Democratic lawmakers and instead declare a national emergency on the southern border with Mexico. While the possibility of such action was revealed only a few days earlier, White House lawyers and budget staff have been looking into it for weeks, a person familiar with the matter said on the condition of anonymity.
Several advisers close to Trump are recommending that he declare an emergency, despite wide recognition that it would be immediately challenged in court. Democratic lawmakers said so last week after Trump floated the idea in public.
"I may declare a national emergency dependent on what's going to happen over the next few days," Trump said Sunday. Building a wall is "a very important battle to win," he said.
Trump views his campaign promise that he'd build a border wall as essential to his chance for re-election in 2020. He regards the government shutdown as mainly affecting Washington, not where his strongest supporters live, another person familiar with the matter said.
The use of a national emergency to re-appropriate money for wall construction would be an unprecedented executive action sure to draw opposition not only from Democrats on Capitol Hill who see the project as wasteful spending, but also their Republican counterparts who spent years decrying perceived overreaches by President Barack Obama. They would be wary of a precedent that could permanently erode Congress' power of the purse.
But Trump's consideration of such an extraordinary step indicates that some in the White House see the gambit as the president's only way to salvage his wall pledge as the consequences of the shutdown amplify and talks with Democrats fail. The president reiterated that he had no interest in resurrecting a deal that would trade wall funding for legal protections for undocumented children �� one of the few issues that could move Democrats toward compromise.
Meanwhile, a series of political stunts �� including the president's first appearance behind the White House briefing room lectern, flanked by supportive Border Patrol agents, and a televised Cabinet meeting lasting more than 100 minutes ��� have done little to generate legislative momentum for wall funding.
And Democrats have shown little interest in the "concession" offered by the administration for construction of a border barrier that uses steel rather than concrete. While the president thought such a design change could give Democrats some political cover, both he and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney made clear Sunday that their offer was simply a wall by a different name.
"We'll call it something different," Trump said when asked what he'd include in a compromise deal.
Democrats also appeared unmoved by the administration's repeated efforts to convince them that there is a crisis at the border. Trump conceded there was "not much headway made" after Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen briefed congressional staffers Saturday on the threat of crime and drugs posed by those entering the country illegally. And he pre-emptively predicted that little would come from a second round of talks Sunday afternoon.
Vice President Mike Pence, who is nominally leading the negotiations, has been frustrated by Democrats who say they would discuss further border security measures only if the administration endorsed their efforts to open unrelated government departments, according to the person familiar with administration discussions.
But Democrats see little reason to give in, believing that what little leverage Trump retained after Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives all but vanished when the president publicly declared in December that he would take responsibility for the shutdown.
Trump's embrace of heated immigration rhetoric in the closing weeks of the midterm election campaigns did little to help his party's chances and has shown little resonance beyond a Republican base that has remained devoted to him. And House Democratic leaders have said they'll spend the next week offering a series of bills that would reopen some government services, starting with the Internal Revenue Service so Americans receive tax refunds in the coming weeks. They believe such proposals would amplify pressure on the administration.
Trump, meanwhile, made it clear he was disinclined to give Democrats any ground on helping young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The president said his preference was to wait for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, believing that the justices would decide to overturn the Obama administration initiative. That, Trump argued, would provide him leverage for additional immigration restrictions he hopes to pursue later in his term.
Many furloughed federal workers will miss their first paycheck at the end of the week, and more government agencies are closing as they run out of reserve money. Food assistance for low-income Americans could be cut, tax refunds may not be delivered and there are reports that some federal employees �� including security screeners at airports �� are calling in sick as they enter their third week of work without pay.
"They have to do what they have to do," Trump said of the federal workers. "But many of those workers agree with me."
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(Jennifer Jacobs and Shannon Pettypiece contributed to this report.)
