Read: Trump’s bizarre, rambling announcement of a national emergency

Having lost face at the polls, Trump sought to demonstrate who’s still the boss by demanding tribute from ascendant Democrats—a mere $5.7 billion, not for a wall per se, but for “steel slats” along a few miles of the border. He didn’t get it. Indeed, Trump will sign a compromise today that appropriates only $1.375 billion for fencing and border-security enhancements—less than what the GOP-led Congress was prepared to allocate at the end of 2018. That compromise bill also imposes a 17 percent reduction on the number of beds available in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, which would be an irresponsible thing for the president to sign amid a genuine immigration crisis.

Amid this unambiguous series of defeats, Trump resolved to get his border-wall funding by other means: He said in a rambling press conference today that he would invoke the National Emergencies Act, under which he plans to circumvent Congress and reallocate approximately $8 billion apportioned to the Treasury and Defense Departments to construct his barrier along the border with Mexico. This is a staggeringly cynical maneuver not because it will finally hand Trump the MacGuffin on which he campaigned in 2016, but because it most likely won’t.

Legal observers expect the courts to impose an injunction on this national-emergency declaration as soon as it is made. Indeed, the president made the judiciary’s work easier on Friday when he admitted that he “didn’t need to do this,” a confession that there is, in fact, no ongoing national emergency. A judicial quagmire is the GOP’s fondest hope. That way, Trump can say he’s fighting for his wall in every possible way, and Republicans in Congress can cede their authority to check the executive branch by insisting that the whole matter is out of their hands. And all without ever having to expropriate private property along the border or prove the dubious efficacy of a physical wall. Everybody wins!

David Frum: A state of unreality

This is an especially dangerous game, in part because it further degrades the Madisonian scheme in which each branch of government is supposed to be a jealous steward of its constitutional prerogatives. Articles I and II seem especially eager to surrender their authority to Article III, if only to evade responsibility for having to execute their responsibilities. Trump’s game is dangerous, too, because it is contemptuous of Congress’s verdict on this domestic policy dispute. The president will radically expand the definition of what constitutes an emergency, the relevant statutes of which are supposed to be applied only when Congress cannot be consulted on the matter in a timely fashion. By appealing to the military to resolve a domestic policy dispute, Trump is actively eroding America’s sense of civic propriety.