A significant part of the federal government is shut down indefinitely because President Trump is insisting on $5 billion for a border wall (or steel fence) and Democrats are saying no. But Trump's "wall" fixation actually began as little more than "a memory trick for an undisciplined candidate," Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Peter Baker report at The New York Times.
As Mr. Trump began exploring a presidential run in 2014, his political advisers landed on the idea of a border wall as a mnemonic device of sorts, a way to make sure their candidate — who hated reading from a script but loved boasting about himself and his talents as a builder — would remember to talk about getting tough on immigration. [The New York Times]
Many of Trump's fellow immigration hardliners view his wall as a counterproductive, minor-to-insignificant part of broader restrictions on legal and illegal immigration. You can read more about the genesis of Trump's wall, and its critics on both sides of the immigration debate, at The New York Times.
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