Binance Support +1-855-855-4384 For BiN@nce Wallet Supp0ort Trump’s Emergency Powers Threat Could End Shutdown Crisis, but at What Cost?

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s repeated threat to declare a national emergency so he can build his border wall without congressional approval has been denounced by Democrats as extreme and an overreach. But it could be the only politically realistic way out of the shutdown crisis in the nation’s capital.

“I think we might work a deal, and if we don’t, I may go that route. I have the absolute right to do national emergency if I want,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.”

If the president does invoke emergency powers to circumvent Congress, it would be an extraordinary violation of constitutional norms — and establish a precedent for presidents who fail to win approval for funding a policy goal.

But Mr. Trump’s threatened move offers both sides a face-saving solution in the budget standoff between the president and congressional Democrats that has prompted a partial government shutdown, which, if it lasts to Saturday, will be at 22 days the longest in American history.

Both sides have taken absolutist positions that leave no room for the kind of split-the-difference compromise that usually ends budget impasses. Mr. Trump refuses to accept anything less than his demand for about $5 billion in wall spending, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said his wall along the southern border would be immoral.

But Mr. Trump’s claim that he can and may attempt to build his wall another way opens the door for him to sign a spending bill with no wall funding, reopening the government without capitulation by either side.