UNITED STATES—In a tweet sent on Sunday, July 29, President Donald Trump indicated that he would shut down the government if he does not receive the votes needed to make specific changes to border security. During a government shutdown, specific federal funds are frozen and certain federal employees are granted leaves of absence.

Trump has been adamant about building a wall across Mexico since his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump’s tweeted: “I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!”

Fox News hosted Republican Ross Kaminsky and Democrat Robert Patillo, who discussed the issue.  

“It is almost as if the Republicans want to step on the good economic numbers, step on the good national security, step on all of the good messaging by turning it back to a fight over immigration. Nobody wants the wall. Nobody wants to pay for the wall. If Donald Trump can get Mexico to pay for it, then by all means. But we’re not going to invest 25 billion plus dollars into building a wall when you can take that exact same money and employ every single homeless veteran right now,” said Robert Patillo.

“The Republicans want to do it (the wall) and the Democrats don’t…To me the key to this is really the difference in the mid-term elections between the House elections and the Senate elections. And what I think President Trump is probably doing here is trying to run up wins in the Senate as much as he can, [and] being willing to sacrifice the House,” said Ross Kaminsky.

Kaminsky continued, “For Republicans to pick up seats in the Senate they have to win in places that Donald Trump won, win seats that are currently held by Democrats, and they think that’s very doable. And you look at the Brett Kavanaugh thing right now, I think Trump would like to have a few more Republicans in the Senate, especially if he thinks he’s going to lose the House no matter what.”

The government was last shut down for two days from January 20 to January 22, 2018. The shutdown was the result of the failure to pass new legislation to fund government agencies before the old legislation expired.