If Trump works around Congress on this, I think he will find it to be a Pyrrhic victory. Future authorization and appropriation bills will contain language specifically forbidding the use of funds for this purpose. Prohibitions are much easier to write into laws than authorities and Senate GOP appropriators are not going to be all that willing to give the Executive, even one of their own party, a blank check to spend money as he sees fit despite the appropriations bills.
My guess is that this is part of a negotiating strategy that has as its central message that the Administration is willing to shut down the government for as long as it takes to get its way. Considering the stakes…which is pretty much Trump’s credibility with the people who elected him in 2016…making a show of rolling out the military to start wall construction may not be a bad political move in the short run and it may be a move that Trump has no choice but to make.
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