Trump news: President begrudgingly signs border bill and declares national emergency at US-Mexico border
President predicts lengthy legal battle over national emergency reaching all the way to Supreme Court
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has declared a national emergency in a bid to fund his promised wall at the US-Mexico border without congressional approval, an action Democrats vowed to challenge as a violation of the US Constitution.
The Republican president’s move to circumvent Congress represented a new approach to making good on a 2016 presidential campaign pledge to halt the flow of undocumented immigrants into the country, whom the president says bring crime and drugs.
He also later signed a bipartisan government spending bill Congress approved on Thursday that would prevent another partial government shutdown by funding several agencies that otherwise would have closed on Saturday.
Mr Trump made no direct mention in rambling Rose Garden comments of the funding bill. It represents a legislative defeat for him since it contains no money for his proposed wall - the focus of weeks of conflict between him and Democrats in Congress.
He had demanded that Congress provide him with billions in wall funding as part of legislation to fund the agencies. That triggered a historic, 35-day December-January government shutdown that hurt the US economy and his opinion poll numbers.
By reorienting his quest for wall funding toward a legally uncertain strategy based on declaring a national emergency, Mr Trump risks plunging into a lengthy legislative and legal battle with Democrats and dividing his fellow Republicans.
At least 15 Democrats in the Republican-controlled Senate introduced legislation on Thursday to prevent Mr Trump from invoking emergency powers to transfer funds to his wall from accounts Congress has already committed to other projects.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, and top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer swiftly responded to Trump’s declaration.
“The president’s actions clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our Founders enshrined in the Constitution,” they said in a statement. “The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the courts, and in the public, using every remedy available.”
Reuters contributed to this report. Check out The Independent's live coverage of the president's national emergency declaration below:
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The president is opening his remarks discussing negotiations with China that is going "very well."
"Who knows what that means," he added.
The president is now discussing the US-UK trade relationship and Brexit, saying the country plans to increase trade with the UK as "time goes by".
Donald Trump is now discussing the relationship between the US and North Korea, saying the regime leaders have "taken advantage of the United States" yet "has tremendous potential" as an economic power.
Donald Trump is now discussing his rally in El Paso, Texas, earlier this week and the crowd sizes. He is also addressing human trafficking across the border and falsely claiming the issue does not occur at ports of entry. "You don't have to be very smart to know, you put up a barrier and ... that's it, unless they look left and right" and find somewhere to enter, the president said.
Donald Trump is calling the mission of US forces along the border "very successful" while claiming multiple "monstrous caravans" have been "broken up".
"Others have gotten through," he claimed.
“I’m going to be signing a national emergency,” Donald Trump has announced, before describing the history of past national emergencies.
Here's more analysis on Donald Trump's border wall national emergency announcement:
Donald Trump is signing a federal funding bill to avoid another government shutdown and announcing a series of executive actions along the US-Mexico border, including the declaration of a national emergency — setting the stage for a major legal showdown.
The border security compromise was approved by the US Congress on Thursday afternoon as the president threatened to declare a national emergency if the billions of dollars he requested to go towards building a wall was not included in the bill.
The measure reportedly includes just $1.4bn (£1bn) for “border barriers,” much less than what the president had previously demanded, and less than previous bipartisan measures had approved for barrier funding.
“It’s a great thing to do because we have an invasion of drugs, an invasion of gangs, an invasion of people, and it’s unacceptable,” the president said while announcing the national emergency he declared along the US-Mexico border on Friday.
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