Trump Signs Spending Bill, Reversing Veto Threat and Avoiding Government Shutdown

The president abruptly backed down from his threat to veto the spending bill in a head-spinning four hours at the White House that left both political parties in Washington reeling and his own aides bewildered about Mr. Trump's contradictory actions.

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the president was most angry about the lack of funding in the bill for a massive wall on the nation's southern border that he has billed as the centerpiece of his crackdown on illegal immigrants. The measure includes nearly $1.6 billion for border security -- including new technology and repairs to existing barriers -- but not Mr. Trump's wall, as he claimed on Twitter on Wednesday. It provides $641 million for about 33 miles of fencing, but prohibits building a concrete structure or other prototypes the president has considered, and allocates the rest of the funding for new aircraft, sensors and surveillance technology.

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If Mr. Trump were to have rejected the new spending bill, he would have defied Republican and Democratic leaders alike.

The president's apparent change of heart came as a surprise but hardly a shock to Republican leaders, who spent much of a snowy Wednesday privately imploring an agitated Mr. Trump to put aside his objections and back the measure, claiming it as a win.

That proved difficult for the president, and not only because of the dearth of wall funding. The measure itself dealt a broad rebuke to his vision for reordering the size and scope of government, rebuffing his efforts to gut many domestic programs even as it provided the sizable military spending increase that Mr. Trump wanted.

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Over the weekend, the White House offered to extend protections for hundreds of thousands of current DACA recipients for two and a half years, with no guarantee beyond that time, in exchange for $25 billion for the border wall, according to congressional aides.

Democrats countered by saying they would agree to the full $25 billion only if the president agreed to a pathway to citizenship for a much broader population of young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, well over a million people -- a deal that was similar to an earlier offer from Mr. Trump.

The White House rejected the Democratic offer.