With these simple, pro-forma words, a national emergency was declared on Friday, February 15, to fund President Trump’s most important pet project, a wall (or should it be called a “barrier?”) along the southwestern U.S.-Mexico border: “NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America…hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States.” Enter another political bombshell into the Washington, D.C., maelstrom — one certain to end up on the dockets of the black-robed justices of the Supreme Court.

With this emergency declaration, Trump will have the power to tap billions of dollars in the Pentagon budget ordinarily off-limits without congressional approval: $600 million will be taken from the Treasury Department’s forfeiture funds account, $2.5 billion will be swiped from the Pentagon’s counter-drug programs, and $3.6 billion will be re-appropriated from military construction projects. In addition to the roughly $1.3 billion in the latest government funding bill, Trump will have a total of $8 billion at his disposal to expand physical border barriers west of the Rio Grande.