The only problem: The immigration hardliners who were Trump’s earliest and most enthusiastic supporters aren’t too interested in accepting a pale imitation of the immigration crackdown Trump promised. So each new report of a potential concession from the White House has prompted a new round of grousing both from pundits like Ann Coulter and Mickey Kaus and from groups like the Center for Immigration Studies. The president cops to the danger—what’s the point of a wall deal if my immigration supporters aren’t satisfied with it?—and lurches away, upending the process all over again.

As things stand, then, Trump is transfixed between inexorable forces: Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi, who insists that a wall is 1) immoral and 2) not happening; and immigration hardliners who won’t buy any plan Democrats might sign off on. By refusing any deal that congressional leaders presented him before the shutdown, Trump signaled that the group he’s most stuck with is the hardliners. Which means this can end only one of three ways: Democrats unexpectedly buckle, or Republicans defect from the president in sufficient numbers to override his likely veto of a plan that did not include wall funding, or Trump tries to blow it all up with a national emergency. Who by now would be so naïve as to think option three is the least plausible?