Donald Trump has spent the better part of two months going all in on his long-sought border wall—despite holding an objectively weak hand. But now, finally, the president seems to be realizing he’s run out of support, and may have no choice but to back off. Democrats are still refusing to give him the nearly $6 billion in wall funding he’s demanded. Republicans are frustrated and appear unwilling to support either another shutdown, or his (possibly unconstitutional) plan to declare a national emergency at the southern border. And even some White House aides are reportedly attempting to talk him down.

The result? He’s no longer calling bipartisan negotiations a “waste of time,” ahead of a fast-approaching February 15 deadline, but is signaling to Republican allies that he may be open to a compromise. “He’ll consider any kind of reasonable proposition,” Senator Thom Tillis told Politico Thursday. “There’s a general openness.”

Trump’s possible change in tune comes after he ended a withering 35-day shutdown without a penny of the $5.7 billion in wall funding he’d requested, and about a week before the deadline to avert another impasse. The president bore most of the blame for the shutdown—he did, after all, accept ownership of it in a televised meeting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi—and Republicans are adamant about avoiding a second. Trump’s threat to bypass Congress by declaring a state of emergency is likewise unpopular among Republicans, who haven’t been shy about expressing their skepticism. “The president’s going to get sued and it won’t succeed in accomplishing his goal,” Senator John Cornyn said earlier this week. “It strikes me as not a great strategy.”

Trump is, essentially, stuck: either of his threats risks running afoul of his own party leadership. Per Politico, his team is “increasingly aware” of his untenable position, prompting advisers such as Mick Mulvaney and Jared Kushner to warn him about the “drawbacks of taking executive action or employing emergency powers.” (Sources familiar with Mulvaney’s thinking told the publication he has “described an emergency declaration as something he hopes to avoid.”)

The prospect that the president may be forced to cooperate with lawmakers has made some Republicans hopeful about the 17-member negotiation team’s chances. “He’s somewhat open, flexible,” Senator Richard Shelby told Politico after a “positive” lunch meeting with the president. But of course, this is Trump, whose attitude fluctuates in accordance with cable-news coverage and, presumably, the number of Diet Cokes he consumes in any given hour. The president seemed poised to concede to Chuck and Nancy in December, until backlash from his far-right base inspired him to torpedo the deal. As Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy put it to Politico: “I can’t predict what the president is going to do from tweet to tweet.”

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