WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will not trigger another partial government shutdown but is going to declare a national emergency in order to build a border wall without congressional approval, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday.

Declaring a national emergency to fulfill a campaign promise is an unprecedented use of presidential powers, and is a legally dicey move. As recently as last week, Republican leadership publicly warned Trump that if he attempted to use emergency spending to build the wall it would be challenged in the courts through the end of his current term in office.

But on Thursday McConnell said on the Senate floor that he would support the emergency declaration.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the move in a statement Thursday afternoon, saying Trump will sign the congressional spending bill and “take other executive action — including a national emergency — to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border.”

Trump had spent the day mulling Congress’s newest spending package, which contained only $1.375 billion to build 55 miles of fencing. Trump had sought $5.7 billion for 200 miles of border barriers Congress has repeatedly rebuffed him.

Trump lost significant leverage this month when Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. Despite the border wall fight causing the longest government shutdown in US history, Trump ended up with less border security funding than was on the table in December.

Congress passed a spending bill Thursday to fund nine federal departments until Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year (the rest of the federal government has already been funded through that date). Trump will have until end of day Friday to sign it into law and avert another government shutdown.



Trump had threatened an emergency declaration for weeks if he did not get funding for his border wall, a cornerstone of his campaign. The move is being made under the 1976 National Emergencies Act, under a provision that the administration contends would allow him to redirect federal funds toward building a wall on the southern border.

At odds with Trump's emergency declaration for the border is the fact that the numbers of people arrested at the border in between official border crossings has been on a decline since 2000's peak of 1.6 million.

In comparison, US Border Patrol agents arrested 396,579 people along the southern border in 2018. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of families showing up at the border. In 2018, about one-quarter of the 396,579 people arrested between official border crossings were families, compared to just 3% in 2012. For the most part, this group of people and also unaccompanied minors tend to seek out border agents once they cross into the US.

The emergency declaration, however, is likely just another salvo in the fight over wall funding — with congressional and legal challenges almost certain to follow in the days and weeks ahead. While McConnell said he would support the president’s national emergency, it’s unlikely that the Democrat-controlled House will agree.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that Democrats "may" file a legal challenge against the president's national emergency, calling that "an option," though noting that Democrats would have to see what Trump says first. "We will review our options. We will prepare to respond appropriately to it,” she said.

In a joint statement, she and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump's plan "a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall," adding, "this is not an emergency, and the president’s fearmongering doesn’t make it one."

There are a couple of ways Congress could stop the president from moving forward with his plan to bypass the Senate and the House in order to fund the border wall.

Congress can pass a disapproval resolution, rejecting an emergency declaration. In addition to needing Republican support, the Senate and the House would also need to be prepared to pass the resolution with a two-thirds majority vote in order to override an almost certain Trump veto.

It's not clear how much support Trump will have from his own party on the national emergency. Shortly after the news broke, Thursday, Republicans seemed caught off guard. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called the move "a bad idea," while Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin called it "a pretty dramatic expansion of how this was used in the past."

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said he wasn't aware of the news, but noted, "I'm not in favor of operating the government by national emergency."



Texas Sen. John Cornyn, said he believed a national emergency wasn't "practical ... because there would be a lawsuit filed immediately. And the money would presumably be balled up."

In January, the White House considered a plan to declare a national emergency and take $13.9 billion in disaster relief funds from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the wall. That included recovery funds allocated to California and to Puerto Rico, which is still struggling to rebuild after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló indicated earlier this month that he is prepared to take legal action if the White House attempts to divert disaster relief funds from the island a wall and reiterated that on Thursday.