The President is threatening with a national-emergency declaration to get money for the wall
President Donald Trump and the Democratic Party leaders have met in the situation Room this Wednesday to talk about reopening the Government, however, after only 14 minutes the meeting ended abruptly when the president left the meeting. It seems the president asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about funding the wall if he were to reopen the Government and she stated they would not, then he just got up and left.
Mr. Chuck Schumer backed up the exchange, saying to reporters outside of the White House that “He asked Speaker Pelosi, ‘Will you agree to my wall?’ She said no. And he just got up and said, ‘Then we have nothing to discuss,’ and he just walked out. Again, we saw a temper tantrum because he couldn’t get his way.”
This comes just after one day since Mr. Trump talked about issuing a national-emergency declaration on his first televised Oval Office address to the nation. That would mean opening up defense department funding for the wall without congressional approval. But the Democrats do not agree with this, saying that the president has no legal basis for this action and it would be an extraordinary violation of constitutional norms that would not stand up to court challenges.
The shutdown began on 22 December and has affected 25% of the government and about 800,000 federal employees, out of which around 350,000 of them are furloughed – a kind of temporary lay off – while the rest are continuing to work without getting paid. This weekend the shutdown will become the longest in all US history.
Source: bbc.com
