Democratic leaders announced late Wednesday that they agreed with President Trump to pursue a legislative deal that would protect hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation and enact border security measures that don’t include building a physical wall. 
 
 The president discussed options during a dinner at the White House with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that also included talks on tax reform, infrastructure and trade. Trump has showed signs of shifting strategy to cross the aisle and work with Democrats in the wake of the high-profile failures by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 “We’re working on a plan for DACA,” Trump said as he left the White House on Thursday for a trip to survey hurricane damage in Florida. 
 
 Trump said that he and Congress are “fairly close” to a deal and that Republican leaders Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) are “very much on board” with a deal that would address DACA. The agreement must include “massive border security,” Trump said in response to shouted questions about whether he had reached a deal on the terms Schumer and Pelosi had described. 
 
 “The wall will come later” he said, apparently confirming a central element of the Democrats’ account. 
 
 Earlier Thursday, amid backlash from conservative supporters, Trump had sought Thursday to reach out to his GOP base with messages claiming his agenda would remain intact on signature issues such as the border wall. 
 
 In a series of tweets, Trump wrote that “no deal” was made on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama-era program that has allowed 690,000 dreamers to work and go to school without fear of deportation. He further wrote that agreements on “massive border security” would have to accompany any new DACA provisions, and insisted that “the WALL will continue to be built.” 
 
 But he again put lawmakers on notice that he favors some protections for the so-called “dreamers.” 
 
 “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?” Trump wrote in back-to-back tweets. Really! … They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own — brought in by parents at young age. Plus BIG border security.” 
 
 The WALL, which is already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls, will continue to be built. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017 
 
 A possible alliance between Trump and the Democrats on immigration would represent a major political gamble for a president who made promises of tougher border control policies the centerpiece of his campaign and pledged to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border. A majority of Republicans, especially in the House, have long opposed offering legal status, and a path to citizenship, to the nation’s more than 11 million undocumented immigrants. 
 
 In a sign of the potential trouble for the president, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an immigration hard-liner and early Trump supporter, wrote that if reports of a potential immigration deal are accurate, the president’s “base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.” 
 
 
 
 President Trump meets Sept. 6 with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other congressional leaders in the Oval Office of the White House. (Evan Vucci/AP) 
 
 Trump has vacillated over the fate of the dreamers, who have lived in the country illegally since they were children. Under mounting pressure from the right, Trump moved two weeks ago to begin dismantling the program. 
 
 In announcing the decision, the president made clear that he expected Congress to pursue a plan to protect the DACA recipients, offering a six-month delay until their two-year work permits begin to expire in March. 
 
 In a statement, the White House described the meeting as “constructive” and said the administration “looks forward to continuing these conversations with leadership on both sides of the aisle.” 
 
 A similar positive readout was given by Schumer, who said Thursday that he expected White House to “support enshrining the DACA protections into law.” 
 
 “What remains to be negotiated are the details of border security with a mutual goal of finalizing all the details as soon as possible,” Schumer said during a Senate floor speech. “While both sides agreed that the wall would not be part of this agreement, the president made clear he intends to pursue it at a later time and we made clear that we will continue to oppose it.” 
 
 “Details will matter, but it was a very, very positive step” to have Trump agree to seek legal protections for “dreamers.” 
 
 Schumer noted that lawmakers have in the past supported a bipartisan plan to spend billions of dollars on border security technology to track illegal border crossings and to hire more U.S. Border Patrol agents. 
 
 He dismissed talk of a border wall as “A ‘Game of Thrones’ idea for a world that is closer to ‘Star Wars.’” 
 
 Congressional aides familiar with the exchange said that Trump and the party leaders agreed to move quickly on legislation to protect dreamers, though aides did not disclose whether they agreed that the goal should be for dreamers to eventually be offered a path to citizenship. 
 
 In a statement, Schumer and Pelosi said they had “a very productive meeting at the White House with the President. The discussion focused on DACA. We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides.” 
 
 In a letter to her Democratic colleagues in the House, Pelosi said she hoped the deal could be done “in a matter of weeks.” 
 
 White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that DACA and border security were discussed, but she said excluding border wall funding from a package deal was “certainly not agreed to.” 
 
 While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to. — Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) September 14, 2017 
 
 Earlier in the day, Trump held a bipartisan meeting with a group of House members. Afterward, several Democrats involved in those talks said the president also had made clear that he did not expect border wall funding to be included in a legislative deal on the dreamers. They said Trump was not giving up on the wall but that he emphasized the money could be added to another bill, though he was not specific. 
 
 “He said, the wall doesn’t have to be necessary,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) told reporters at the White House. “He said we’re going to add [wall funding] somewhere else. … We’ve told him we don’t want to tie this [together]. He said, ‘DACA, we’re going to do it early. We’re going to do some kind of border security.’ He brought up the wall. He said that doesn’t have to be on this DACA bill.” 
 
 Democrats, and some Republicans, have resisted funding for a wall, saying such a structure is not worth the billions of dollars it would cost. 
 
 Breitbart, the conservative news outlet headed by former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, called reports of an immigration deal a “full-fledged cave” by Trump on “amnesty” for the dreamers. 
 
 Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) have introduced legislation, called the Dream Act, that would offer dreamers a path to citizenship. The number of undocumented immigrants that would potentially be covered by that bill, however, is expected to be far larger than the number of those who have DACA protections, a prospect that would probably engender more Republican opposition. 
 
 Cuellar said that he told Trump the Dream Act has sufficient bipartisan support to pass and that the White House should be pushing for a vote. Trump, Cuellar said, told the group: “Oh, it will be on the floor.” 
 
 But Trump also instructed Democrats to consider tougher restrictions on legal immigration, including provisions of a bill called the Raise Act, introduced by Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and David Perdue (Ga.), which would slash legal immigration levels by half over the coming decade. Immigrant rights groups are strongly opposed to such measures, but Trump endorsed that legislation during an appearance with the GOP senators at the White House last month. 
 
 And Republican leaders are already wary of the spending agreement Trump brokered with Democrats last week on a three-month spending plan to raise the debt ceiling and keep the government funded. 
 
 Pelosi and Ryan met earlier Wednesday to begin discussing the broad parameters of the forthcoming immigration debate. Ryan’s team signaled that despite the administration’s eagerness to quickly seal the deal, it will take awhile. 
 
 AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman, said that regarding the plight of the dreamers, the speaker “reiterated that any solution needs to address border security and enforcement, which are the root causes of the problem. Discussions among the Republican conference will continue in the coming weeks.” 
 
 Ryan is already facing growing pressure from House conservatives who have begun to question his leadership and have even floated names of possible replacement as speaker. An agreement between Trump and Democrats on a bill to protect dreamers could potentially put Ryan in the position of having to decide whether to bring it for a vote with the prospects that it might pass with more Democratic support than among the GOP. 
 
 Brian Murphy and Anne Gearan contributed to this report. ||||| Democratic leaders in Congress announced a major agreement with President Trump on Wednesday night. “We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said of the program to protect the children of those who are here illegally from deportation, “and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides.” 
 
 That wall part, understandably, set off alarm bells among Trump's hard-line immigration base, and Trump and the White House responded Thursday morning that there was, in fact, “no deal.” But it turns out there, well, basically is. 
 
 Here's what Trump tweeted: 
 
 No deal was made last night on DACA. Massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent. Would be subject to vote. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017 
 
 The WALL, which is already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls, will continue to be built. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017 
 
 First off: Well, of course it's “subject to vote.” Every deal is. And Schumer and Pelosi didn't claim that the details on border security had been worked out. I read their comments more like “A deal has been reached in principle.” 
 
 As for the principles of that deal — and specifically the border wall — this is really a non-denial denial from Trump. He says the wall will “continue to be built,” but he doesn't say that it must be part of the deal. Democrats didn't claim the wall renovation would be halted in the deal or anything like that; they simply said the new deal would not include more funding for the wall, which Trump has promised. This, again, seems to be Trump stating the obvious. 
 
 
 
 Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). (Jose Luis Magana/AP) 
 
 White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was a little more definitive in a statement. “While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to,” she said shortly after Trump's tweets went out. 
 
 Okay, but if the wall part was “certainly not agreed to,” that seems to suggest the rest of it … was? And it's nearly impossible to believe that Democrats would have agreed to anything that further funds that wall. That's a red line for them, period. Excluding it would have to be part of any deal. 
 
 Update: And as he often has, Trump completely contradicted his spokesman on this in a matter of hours. “The wall will come later,” he said after emerging from his White House residence. He added that they are “fairly close” to a deal along the lines of what Pelosi and Schumer said. 
 
 Pelosi and Schumer, meanwhile, agree that Trump's comments don't change anything. “President Trump's tweets are not inconsistent with the agreement reached last night,” they said in a just-released statement. “As we said last night, there was no final deal. …” 
 
 Back to Trump's tweets: 
 
 Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!..... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017 
 
 ...They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own - brought in by parents at young age. Plus BIG border security — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017 
 
 And here we have the president basically defending a deal that he says hasn't been reached. 
 
 So this is basically an argument over the word “deal.” (The Post, notably, is calling it an agreement “to work on [a] deal,” which seems the best way to phrase it.) Democrats say they have reached an agreement with Trump; Trump and the White House were suggesting there is an agreement, but emphasizing that there is no “deal” since it hasn't been finalized. Nobody really disagrees. 
 
 The White House's responses Thursday morning seem to be more an effort to cover their own hides with the base than anything else. Maybe the agreement will eventually fall apart when the particulars of the deal begin to be worked out, and Democrats balk at the amount of border security? Maybe the White House has gotten cold feet after the likes of Breitbart and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) have utterly denounced the deal? (The former is calling him “AMNESTY DON.” The latter says such a deal would mean the “Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair.") 
 
 But the indications we're getting from both sides are actually pretty similar. ||||| President Donald Trump and Democratic congressional leaders reached a tentative agreement Wednesday night to provide a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants known as Dreamers — but after a conservative backlash, the president and his aides sent conflicting signals about how firm the agreement was. 
 
 After a meeting with Trump at the White House on Wednesday night, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi said they had come to terms with Trump on a plan that would provide protection for Dreamers in exchange for beefed-up border security — but, notably, no additional funding for a border wall. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 "We all agreed on a framework: Pass DACA protections and additional security measures, excluding the wall. We agreed that the president would support enshrining the DACA protections into law," Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Thursday. 
 
 The news triggered an outcry from the right, which accused Trump of abandoning his tough-on-immigration campaign stance. So Trump and his aides rebutted Democrats' claims that an agreement had been struck — while at the same time acknowledging the outlines of a deal. 
 
 “No deal was made last night on DACA. Massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent. Would be subject to vote,” Trump tweeted. 
 
 Added White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters: "By no means was any deal ever agreed upon." 
 
 Yet it seemed to be a matter of semantics. Speaking briefly to reporters shortly after his tweet, Trump said he and the Democratic leaders were close to a deal on the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but that any agreement would hinge on "massive border security," adding that funding for a border wall will come "a little bit later." 
 
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 He also said he had spoken to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and that both are "on board" with a DACA-for-border-security deal with Democrats. The meeting Wednesday night did not include Ryan and McConnell, whom Trump spurned for Pelosi and Schumer on a fiscal deal last week. 
 
 "Well, we want to get massive border security, and I think that both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, I think they agree with it ... we're fairly close, but we have to get massive border security," the president said. "Ryan and McConnell agree with us on DACA. We're very much on board. I spoke to them, yes." 
 
 Responding to accusations he was backing "amnesty," Trump also said Thursday: "We’re not looking at citizenship. We’re not looking at amnesty. We’re looking at allowing people to stay here." 
 
 Contrary to Trump's suggestion before boarding Air Force One that he had already conferred with Republican leadership about a DACA deal, Ryan said he spoke to Trump about the deal while the president was in the air Thursday. The speaker was insistent that no deal has been struck and that true negotiations have not even begun. 
 
 "There is no agreement. The president and the chief of staff called me from Air Force One today to discuss what was discussed. And it was a discussion, not an agreement or a negotiation," the speaker told reporters Thursday. "We have not begun negotiations. What we're doing is talking with ourselves here in our majority to make sure we're all on the same page ourselves before we proceed on all of these things, and it's right and proper that the president talks with the other party, the Wisconsin Republican said. "These were discussions, not negotiations. There isn't an agreement." 
 
 Following Trump's tweets on Thursday morning, Schumer and Pelosi said that while the details still need to be hammered out, Trump was not directly contradicting the pact reached at dinner. They said they agreed to forgo the wall as part of this deal with the president — though he would still pursue it — and that a border security package still had to be hammered out but could include new technology and roads. 
 
 "If you listened to the president's comments this morning, [Budget] Director [Mick] Mulvaney's comments this morning, it is clear that what Leader Pelosi and I put out last night was exactly accurate," Schumer said. 
 
 Trump also didn’t deny Thursday morning that building the border wall could be separate from any DACA deal. But he emphasized that the wall, which he says is currently under construction “in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls, will continue to be built.” Schumer and Pelosi vowed to continue opposing it. 
 
 The agreement came as a surprise to most Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, according to two GOP aides, the second time Trump has blindsided them this month after his deal with Pelosi and Schumer on the debt ceiling. 
 
 Trump seems to enjoy spending time with the Democrats. A senior White House official said the dinner was "jovial" and there was frequent laughter — and Trump seemed very pleased afterward. The official expects more meetings among the president and the two top Democrats. 
 
 But some Republicans accused Trump of backing away from his core campaign promises. Rep. Steve King of Iowa said if the deal is true, the "Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible." 
 
 
 
 After much waffling, Trump last week said he would follow through on his campaign promise to end DACA. But the president, who has often expressed sympathy for Dreamers, first gave Congress six months to come up with a legislative solution. 
 
 The news of a deal with Democrats drew swift condemnation from conservatives, including from media outlets and pundits that have traditionally bolstered the president. Breitbart News, helmed by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, featured headlines including "Amnesty Don" and "Dems declare victory as Trump caves on DACA." 
 
 Conservative commentator Laura Ingraham was similarly critical of the reported deal, slamming the president in a series of posts to her Twitter account. "'BUILD THE WALL! BUILD THE WALL!'...or...maybe...not really," Ingraham wrote online Wednesday night. 
 
 "When does American working class w/out real wage increase in 15yrs & who send their kids to overcrowded public schools get amnesty?" Ingraham asked on Twitter on Thursday morning. 
 
 Trump spent all day Wednesday talking about cutting such a deal, floating a similar framework while huddling with bipartisan members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus. Three sources in the room from both sides of the aisle said Trump suggested he would accept new border security measures for a fix of the Dreamer program he sought to rescind — and that he’d let his demands on the wall pass, for now. 
 
 One lawmaker present said Trump specifically suggested he could accept the DREAM Act, which includes a path to citizenship for those who migrated to the U.S. as minors. 
 
 "He said, ‘We got to get the wall done, but maybe we could do them separately,'” one person in the room told POLITICO on Wednesday afternoon, several hours before Trump’s meeting with Democratic leaders. "He said maybe we do border security, but maybe not the wall." 
 
 The sources briefed on the meeting declined to estimate how much border security would be provided under the plan or what the specifics would entail, a key part of any agreement, given the wide range of possibilities that border security could contain. This spring, Congress approved more than $1 billion in new border security. 
 
 The leaders and the president also did not agree on when such a package would be passed; both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans. But one person briefed on the meeting said Trump and the Democrats want it done “sooner rather than later.” 
 
 Another person at the Problem Solvers Caucus meeting earlier Wednesday said: “He’s not giving up on the wall, and we’re not giving up on the wall. But it doesn’t have to be on DACA." 
 
 Trump may still push for the border wall in a spending bill in December, according to congressional Republican aides, but White House staff publicly backed off that path this week as well. Instead, Trump focused on cutting a deal with the political opposition on DACA. 
 
 In an earlier meeting between House leaders, Pelosi told Ryan that Democrats want to see action on DACA in the next few weeks — a deadline most congressional Republicans consider unrealistic. 
 
 House Republican leaders insist they have six months, until March, to codify protections for Dreamers. But Democrats want to see a legislative solution by Oct. 5, the deadline for current DACA recipients whose permits expire during the six-month period to renew their applications. 
 
 The meeting with Schumer and Pelosi kicked off with a long discussion about trade and China, a second aide briefed on the meeting said. 
 
 Heather Caygle contributed to this report.
– In a move that stunned many Republicans, Democratic leaders announced Wednesday night that they had reached a deal with President Trump to protect Dreamers from deportation in return for funding extra border security—but not a wall. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced the deal after a White House dinner, the AP reports. "We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that's acceptable to both sides," they said in a joint statement. A source says the deal also includes a pathway to citizenship for the almost 800,000 young immigrants involved. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that DACA and border security were discussed at the meeting, though "excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to," the Los Angeles Times reports. This is the second time in two weeks that Trump has bypassed Republicans to cut a deal with Democrats and immigration hardliners are furious over what they see as an amnesty, the Washington Post reports. If reports of the deal are true, Trump's "base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair," said GOP Rep. Steve King. "No promise is credible." Breitbart.com called the deal a "full-fledged cave" and dubbed the president "Amnesty Don."