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

Donald Trump declares national emergency to release funds for border wall

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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Key Points

• President signs government funding bill
• Trump declares national emergency to get border wall built

[15 February 2019 16:08 · Chris Riotta]

The president is praising the families of victims allegedly killed by undocumented immigrants, as well as law enforcement officials. 

“The order is signed,” the president declared. “We will have a national emergency, and we will then be sued … and we will possibly get a bad ruling and then we’ll get another bad ruling, and then we’ll go to the Supreme Court,” he continued, adding the nation’s highest court will “hopefully” provide a “good” ruling.

[15 February 2019 16:09 · Chris Riotta]

The president is now taking questions.

[15 February 2019 16:12 · Chris Riotta]

An important point to be made about the impact walls have on national security, according to Donald Trump's own intelligence briefings: 

[15 February 2019 16:22 · Chris Riotta]

Here's the moment Donald Trump began laying out his predictions for what comes next surrounding the border wall battle: 

[15 February 2019 16:28 · Chris Riotta]

Donald Trump said he “didn’t need” to declare a national emergency along the US-Mexico border while simultaneously claiming violent crimes and undocumented immigration was creating a national security crisis throughout the region. 

[15 February 2019 16:32 · Chris Riotta]

Donald Trump got in a tense verbal exchange with CNN’s Jim Acosta over crime figures surrounding the US-Mexico border.

Here’s the reporter’s response to the exchange on Twitter: 

[15 February 2019 16:35 · Chris Riotta]

Here's the moment in which Donald Trump lambasts CNN and the network's Jim Acosta as "fake news" during his press conference after declaring a national emergency along the US-Mexico border: 

[15 February 2019 16:37 · Chris Riotta]

Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer released a joint-statement as the president declared a national emergency, calling on their GOP colleagues “to join us to defend the Constitution.”

[15 February 2019 16:50 · Chris Riotta]

Here is how the president plans to pull enough money from different parts of the government in order to fund his border wall, via CNN:

$1.375bn (£1bn) from the Homeland Security appropriations bill towards barrier funding

$600m (£468m) from the Treasury Department's drug forfeiture fund

$2.5 billion (£1.9bn) from the Defence Department's drug interdiction program

$3.5 billion (£2.7) from the Defence Department's military construction budget

[15 February 2019 17:00 · Chris Riotta]

The White House office of the press secretary has released an email statement claiming a “victory” for the president over the border wall, despite receiving the least funding towards his wall in the latest funding measure than any previous bill put forth by Congress.