Donald Trump is still wanting to build his border wall between the United States and Mexico. He shut down the government last month to get $5.7 billion to start construction on the wall, but wound up opening the government back up without getting anything. Now Congress is trying to negotiate a budget before the deadline of February 15th.
Trump is saying if he doesn't get his $5.7 billion in the new budget, he will either shut down the government again, or he will declare a national emergency to use other government funds to build his wall.
I doubt he'll shut the government down again. He took too big a hit in the polls last time. So did congressional Republicans. I doubt either will want to repeat that, and the Senate Republicans might even join Democrats to overturn a possible Trump veto.
That just leaves one option -- declaring a national emergency. And I'm starting to think that's exactly what Trump will try to do. There's a good chance it would be stopped by the courts (as being unconstitutional, since no real emergency exists). But I don't think Trump cares about that, and sees it as a win regardless of what the courts do.
If they let him get away with declaring an emergency, then he gets to start his wall. If they don't, then he'll just shrug his shoulders and tell his odious base that he tried, and the evil Democrats and terrible courts wouldn't let him do it. It's the only way out of the box he has put himself in.
But while it may be his only option, it's not one that will ingratiate himself with the public. By a large margin, the public is opposed to declaring a national emergency to build a wall. This is verified by three different polls -- the CBS News Poll, the CNN / SSRS Poll, and the Economist / YouGov Poll.
