President Trump’s state of emergency is still intact as of April 24th, 2019. Congress has failed to disable the state of emergency and it will most likely stay intact until the wall is built. The state of emergency allows President Trump to divert funding from the military to the border wall. The state of emergency still has to go through the court to get final approval but as of now it is in place.
President Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again,” which led to his supporters chanting this phrase at rallies along with “Build the Wall.” These slogans are what helped President Trump become elected into office. He has declared “Keep America Great” as his official slogan for his 2020 campaign.
Since 2014, Donald Trump has had ideas of the United States building a border wall in a Tweet saying, “SECURE THE BORDER! BUILD A WALL!”. Since Donald Trump has become president, he has been consistent on building a wall between the border of the United States and Mexico. He declared a government shutdown lasting 35 days that started on December 22nd, 2018 and ended on January 25th, 2019. He wanted to show people that he is serious about border security and the safety of the American people.
President Trump is moving very slowly on building the wall, but it is difficult when the Democrats will not help him at all in his efforts. On January 11th, Brian Kolfage started a Go Fund Me named “We the People Will Fund the Wall.” The campaign quickly raised over $20 million from about 330,000 people. The campaign ran into some complications, but Mr. Kolfage is determined to build the wall along with President Trump.
On February 27th, the eight border wall prototypes were torn down to make way for new installations. These prototypes were 30 feet tall and cost about $5 million in construction fees. President Trump has received a compromise from Congress for $1.375 billion to start building the wall. President Trump also attempted to declare a national emergency for border security, which Congress denied and would not pass. President Trump is requesting $5.7 billion more to build the complete wall spanning across the whole border between the United States and Mexico.
Democrats have offered to give up $5 billion to border security, but not for a wall. The funding would go towards more law enforcement and new technology at the border to help make it safer. President Trump did not agree with this offer, but it is a good sign that the President and the government will eventually reach common ground to do something about the border security issue.
On March 27th, the Pentagon approved for $1 billion to be moved from military funding to border wall funding and to “block drug smuggling corridors.” The Democrats in Congress have since sent a letter to the Pentagon disapproving of this action without permission from Congress. Although they cannot stop the Pentagon, they can change the laws to make the Pentagon get approval so this cannot happen again.
Overall, Trump has made progress on the border wall he originally proposed during his campaign. Although it is moving along very slow, he has made progress and will continue to fight the Democrats and Congress about the wall to help secure the American people.
![Natalie Au (‘26) portraying Pablo Picasso gives her presentation about Picasso’s life and achievements while Anna Park (‘26) records her as part of the project. Other students performing at the central tables in the library speak as their Spanish-speaking figures as well. “I had the most creative freedom during this project out of all my years [of Spanish] and [got] to bring in my passions from outside of Spanish class,” Natalie said. The project was an intriguing scene for anyone who saw students in their costumes; what happens behind the scenes?](https://webbcanyonchronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Duan-spanish-presentations-1200x900.jpg)
