Trump offers temporary protections for ‘dreamers’ in exchange for Wall funding

The president’s proposal “strikes a fair compromise by incorporating priorities from both sides of the aisle,” McConnell said in a statement after the president’s speech.

President Donald Trump, facing a growing public backlash over the partial government shutdown, shifted course Saturday and offered Democrats a deal: temporary protections for roughly 700,000 young immigrants in the country without authorization in exchange for $5.7 billion in funding for a wall along the southern border.

But the proposal, which Trump unveiled in a 13-minute address from the White House, appeared dead on arrival in the Capitol. Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected it even before Trump spoke, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, denounced the offer as “not a compromise but more hostage taking.”

With the shutdown entering its fifth week and polls showing a majority of the public blaming Trump, the president’s advisers have been searching for an exit strategy. Saturday’s speech grew out of talks that Vice President Mike Pence and the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, have had in recent days with lawmakers including Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader.

The proposal was Trump’s first public offer to Democrats since the partial shutdown began nearly a month ago. It came after an acrimonious week of tit-for-tat politics, in which Pelosi told the president he could not deliver his State of the Union address in the Capitol until the shutdown was over, and the president retaliated by grounding a plane that was supposed to take Pelosi on a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan.

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Trump mulls emergency powers ahead of prime-time speech

President Donald Trump is weighing declaring a national emergency in order to circumvent Congress's opposition to his building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Vanessa Johnston has the story.

In casting the plan as a compromise, the president sought to shift pressure to Democrats — who have repeatedly refused to give Trump any money for his border wall — to end the shutdown. But Democrats continued to insist they will not negotiate with Trump over border security until the government reopens.

Over the course of his administration, Trump has repeatedly sought to curb both legal and illegal immigration. He has revoked Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which offers crucial protections for immigrants, for people from some Latin American and African countries. And he has moved to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama-era program that shielded the young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation.