BORDER/LEGAL/TEXAS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “President Donald Trump is set to visit the southern border in Texas on Thursday [1-10-19] to make his case for building a border wall. And in the latest sign that he is considering extreme legal measures to secure funding for the project, he’ll be accompanied by an unusual guest: the White House’s top attorney. As an expert in constitutional law, White House counsel Pat Cipollone is at the center of the administration’s internal debate over whether and how Trump can unilaterally direct billions of dollars in funding to the project, which has become the subject of a partial government shutdown now into its third week.With Democrats in Congress adamantly refusing to allocate budget dollars to a wall or steel fence along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, Trump has directed Cipollone to explore legal ways to find the money without them. Cipollone and other administration lawyers have been urging caution. The options include using Trump’s extraordinary power to declare a ‘national emergency’ that would give him access to billions in military budget funds, although critics say the move would quickly face challenges in court.”
-Nancy Cook and Gabby Orr, “Trump will bring top White House lawyer to Mexican border,” Politico, January 9, 2019 3:08 pm