Sometime Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump — just after a stop in California to inspect border wall prototypes — indicated he might be open to a short term deal on DACA in exchange for funding to build his promised border wall.

White House officials have told key Republican leaders on Capitol Hill that President Donald Trump is open to cutting a deal in an upcoming spending bill to protect young immigrants from deportation in exchange for border wall funding, according to four GOP officials briefed on the talks.

The offer could represent a dramatic shift for Trump. In January he insisted on a much broader package of immigration restrictions in exchange for any protections for immigrants commonly referred to as “dreamers” – foreign-born people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or who overstayed their visas as children. Some of them have been protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that Trump canceled in September.
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One idea under consideration is a three-year extension of the DACA program in exchange for three years of wall funding, according to a GOP official. This official said talks were fluid.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

By Wednesday afternoon, the White House commented: no deal.

White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said the administration does not support that effort but that the president could be open to a long-term fix if it were included in a spending bill.

“The White House opposes a so-called three-for-three deal,” Shah said. The White House has never stopped negotiating an immigration package. “If there were a deal cut and that could be added to the omnibus we would welcome that. But right now what was reported as a three-for-three deal is not something the White House would support.”

Congress is in the midst of negotiating an omnibus funding bill to meet a Mach 23rd deadline to avoid another government shutdown, and reports are they are unlikely to include either a short-term DACA fix in the bill or an allocation of funding for the wall.

DACA, an Obama program that shielded children of illegal immigrants born in the United States from deportation, was the issue du jour back in January when Democrats forced a government shutdown over Trump’s refusal to renew the program and his ending of the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program.

Despite the president’s willingness to offer a pathway to DACA recipients in exchange for funding the border wall, Democrats ultimately rejected the broader immigration changes but alluded to a willingness to deal on funding the wall.

Trump’s pronouncement that he’s willing to talk about a short-term DACA fix — but his rejection of a the “three-for-three” plan being floated on The Hill — indicates that he’s mostly interested in funding his border wall quickly using the upcoming spending bill.

Congress, meanwhile, is mostly interested in not letting him do that.