President Donald Trump and his White House staff are hard at work, insiders say — and they’re getting a surprise ready for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Their plan is simple: Either Schumer and his allies fund $5 billion for the wall in the next few weeks… or Trump will declare a national security emergency as commander-in-chief and use $7 billion to build it himself.
Despite the Friday announcement that the government would be temporarily reopened for three weeks, the paperwork to get the wall built is still getting ready at this very moment.
Trump and his team are busy crossing the T’s, dotting the I’s, and getting ready to drop the bombshell right on Schumer’s desk for February 15th.
That’s according to The Hill, which said that internal document inside the White House “show the administration has identified more than $7 billion in funding for the wall if Trump opts to declare a national emergency.”
That’s two billion more than Trump originally asked Congress. Once the money is allocated, it will be nearly impossible for Schumer to stop.
Better cancel your dinner plans, Chuck.
The emergency declaration will read that the “massive amount of aliens who unlawfully enter the United States each day is a direct threat to the safety and security of our nation and constitutes a national emergency,” CNN reported.
Trump originally floated the idea of funding the much-needed steel barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border in early January, but opted to let Congress work on the solution internally.
Trump said at the time that an “easy solution is for me to call a national emergency … but I’m not going to do it so fast. This is something that Congress can do.”
With the negotiations between Schumer and Senate Republicans going nowhere — and hundreds of thousands of federal workers missing two paychecks — Trump looks ready to act, even after signing the temporary funding agreement.
— The Horn editorial team