Trump may not demand $5 billion for a border wall after all, signals White House

The White House may be ready to accept that Democrats are unwilling to agree to $5 billion in federal spending for President Trump's proposed border wall, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Tuesday, per The Washington Post.

"We have other ways that we can get to that $5 billion," she said. "At the end of the day we don't want to shut down the government, we want to shut down the border." Trump was demanding the sum in a federal spending bill for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, but Democrats said they were only willing to spend $1.6 billion on general border security. Without an agreement on federal spending, the government will shut down after Friday, which Trump said he'd be "proud" to do over the issue.

Sanders said the White House had "identified" different funding sources, "that we can couple with money that would be given through congressional appropriations," to find the $5 billion elsewhere. She said negotiations between the two parties are ongoing.

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Read more at The Washington Post, and read more about the familiarity of the imminent shutdown here at The Week.