After a record 35-day-long government shutdown over funding for a southern border wall was put on hold for lawmakers to hash out a continued spending bill, it now appears that the Trump administration will declare a national emergency to appropriate funds for the wall.

The president is in Washington, D.C., to sign a massive $328 billion bipartisan spending bill that would have only allocated $1.4 billion for the construction of 55 miles of fencing, well short of the $5.7 billion he had previously demanded. As the New York Times and other sources are reporting, the president is expected to sign the bill as well as declare a national emergency. The government was set to shut down again on February 15 if no compromise over the issue had been reached by then.

On the Senate floor today, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Trump “is prepared to sign the bill” and that “he will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time.” Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Senator McConnell’s comments, and added that the president would also take unspecified “other executive action.”  The president had been threatening to fund the border wall through alternative means for months, but any plan to do so could face a legal challenge from Democratic lawmakers and nonprofit groups, as well as the possibility that the Senate would rescind the declaration via a two-thirds majority vote.

Statement on Government Funding Bill: pic.twitter.com/DrNv9D4rEi

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) February 14, 2019

A national emergency would allow the Trump administration to pull funds from other accounts, such as disaster relief spending (including reconstruction money designated for Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria), and the military budget.

Update: On February 15, president Trump officially declared a national emergency and will direct $8 billion towards the construction and repair of 234 miles of wall along the U.S.’s southern border. That figure includes the previously allocated $1.375 billion, as well as $3.6 billion diverted from military projects, $2.5 billion from the Pentagon’s drug prevention program, and $600 million claimed from the drug forfeiture program.