Back in February, stonewalled by Congress and getting desperate, Donald Trump declared a state of emergency at the southern border to fund his long-promised wall. “We have so much money. But on the wall, they skimped,” he said in a deranged Rose Garden address, complaining that Congress had not given him the $5.7 billion in funding he wanted. Now, that declaration is coming home to roost. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that it will delay or suspend 127 military projects to eke out $3.6 billion to begin wall construction—something the president has frequently claimed is already underway.

In a letter to lawmakers notifying them of the budget change obtained by the New York Times, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that the requisitioned money would be used to build or replace about 52 miles of “pedestrian fencing” between Mexico and Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. In exchange, the Pentagon will defer construction projects slated for the fiscal year 2020 in both America and the two dozen countries where the U.S. has military bases, a move that outraged Congressional Democrats. The list of the affected projects was not included in the letter, but according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the West Point Military Academy would be affected. “[It is] a slap in the face to the members of the armed forces who serve our country that President Trump is willing to cannibalize already allocated military funding to boost his own ego and for a wall he promised Mexico would pay to build,” Schumer said in a statement, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly said in a call with her caucus that “stealing money from military construction, at home and abroad, will undermine our national security, quality of life and morale of our troops, and that indeed makes America less safe.”

Who exactly is paying for Trump’s precious wall has been a subject of some confusion. At first, of course, the president promised that Mexico would fund the thing. When Mexico essentially laughed in his face, he swore they’d pay for the wall through tariffs, and then “indirectly through NAFTA,” and then, improbably, that the French would pay instead. With none of those plans panning out, Trump turned to Congress to little avail, bailing on a $25 billion deal with Democrats, who offered the money in 2018 in exchange for protecting 700,000 Dreamers from deportation, and shutting down the government for nearly five weeks after the Democratically controlled House refused to give him $5 billion.

With those avenues exhausted, Trump has increasingly looked for alternative funding methods, including his national emergency declaration, which was immediately challenged in court. In theory, the declaration circumvents Congress and its Constitutionally derived power of the purse. But in practice, the various lawsuits are still making their way through the appeals process, leaving Trump free to, say, shift some $1.5 billion in Pentagon funding to border construction from its own programs, including its ballistic missile program.

Though MAGA Nation has generally been lenient on Trump for failing to fulfill campaign promises, such as repealing and replacing Obamacare, the wall may be a rare exception. Every time the president has bowed to practicalities and proposed something more reasonable, such as fencing, steel slats, or supplementing natural barriers like rivers and mountains with additional border fencing, his base has shouted him down. His more zealous supporters have even attempted to crowdfund the wall, to limited success. With election day drawing nearer, Trump seems to be feeling the pressure, going to great lengths to create the appearance of progress, and endeavoring to build the wall at any cost. As a senior official told the Washington Post last week, “They don’t care how much money is spent, whether landowners’ rights are violated, whether the environment is damaged, the law, the regs, or even prudent business practices.”

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