This is as good a summary and prediction as any.
House Democrats have reason on their side. Even knowledgeable immigration hawks think spending $5.7bn on a wall would be a waste of money. The number of people crossing the southern border illegally is at a 45-year low. Vastly more people fly into the country legally and then overstay their visas. If illegal immigration is the problem, Mr Trump should be focusing on that.
Yet it is also true that $5.7bn is peanuts in budgetary terms. The federal government spends that every 12 hours. And, despite what Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker says, there is nothing inherently “immoral” about a wall. A lot of wall and fencing was built on the southern border long before Mr Trump became president, and with plenty of Democratic support.
If this were just a fight about policy, it is clear what a deal would look like. Congress would pass a bill giving citizenship to those who arrived in the country illegally as children, amounting to about 700,000 people, and fund the wall in exchange. The president gets something he wants; Democrats get something they want; America gets back its government.
How the shutdown in Washington ends