Could Trump Actually Use Military Funding for His Border Wall?

President Trump can’t seem to find the funds to fulfill his signature campaign pledge of building a border wall—and his Plan C could get even more complicated.

On the campaign trail, Trump insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall, a proposal that the Mexican government quickly shut down. Once in office, Trump looked to Congress to foot the bill, but lawmakers—many of whom are unconvinced there’s a need for additional construction—only allocated $1.6 billion for the wall in the $1.3 trillion spending package they passed earlier this month. The figure falls well short of the $25 billion that Trump asked for, and most of the funds are for repairing existing barriers, not mounting new ones.

Now, Trump has floated the idea of the U.S. military footing the bill—a move that would dramatically change how the government has approached border security in recent years. The Department of Defense has much deeper pockets than the Department of Homeland Security to pull from, but any attempt to use