Trump threatens to shut down the government if Congress fails to fund the border wall

President Trump
(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

President Trump on Saturday threatened to shut down the federal government in September if Congress does not appropriate funds for his much-promised wall construction along the southern border.

"We have to have borders, and we have to have them fast. And we need security. We need the wall. We're going to have it all," he said at a campaign-style rally in Michigan. "We come up again on September 28, and if we don't get border security we will have no choice: We will close down the country because we need border security."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.