President Trump declared a national emergency on Friday in order to unilaterally appropriate $3.6 billion for the construction of his long-promised border wall.
The announcement, made during a televised White House Rose Garden ceremony, came after Congress passed a bipartisan Homeland Security funding bill that allocated just $1.375 billion for the construction of new barriers on the southern border.
Those funds will be supplemented with the discretionary military funding appropriated through the national emergency declaration, as well as an additional $600 million withdrawn from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture fund, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney explained in a Friday morning call with reporters.