By the time bidding closed Tuesday, there was no lack of companies competing to build the wall President Trump has proposed for the border between the U.S. and Mexico. In fact, by The Associated Press’ count, upwards of 200 organizations had expressed interest in designing and building it for Customs and Border Protection.

Despite their common goal, the companies submitting bids have followed some radically different paths in their approach.

Among the submissions are walls with solar panels, wire mesh and sloped, slippery surfaces. There are even walls that are no walls at all — statements standing instead as protests of a policy that from the start has drawn a lot of resistance.

As NPR’s Richard Gonzales reports, the CBP plans to announce the finalists for the contract in June, at which point the companies still in the running would be expected to build a prototype roughly 30 feet long and anywhere from 18 to 30 feet tall. The AP notes the prototypes are expected to cost about $200,000 to $500,000 each; estimates for the cost of the wall covering the 2,000-mile border, however, range up to $38 billion.

Here’s a glimpse of just a few of the designs vying to stand between the U.S. and Mexico, complete with renderings and explanations of how they could take shape.

The WireWall

The proposal from Riverdale Mills Corporation employs wire mesh, which is already used along the Mexican border with California and Arizona. Riverdale says the material can be manufactured up to 20 feet tall and installed up to 6 feet below ground, to prevent tunneling.

“The configurations of the wire mesh make it virtually impossible to climb or cut,” Jane Meehan Lanzillo, director of corporate communications for Riverdale, tells NPR in an email.

Solar Panels

“I like the wall to be able to pay for itself,” Thomas Gleason, managing partner of Gleason Partners LLC, tells the AP.

The company’s proposal sets solar panels on sections of the wall, generating what it says would be approximately 2.0 megawatts of electricity per hour, according to the wire service.

Maximum-Security Wire Mesh

Composed of high-density steel packed into double wire mesh, the Penna Group’s proposed wall takes its cue from maximum security prisons. “Nearly impossible to climb,” it would also be built to withstand pick axes, acetylene torches and other handheld weapons, with the first 12 feet of its 30-foot height packed more densely.

Michael Evangelista-Ysasaga, CEO of the Penna Group, speaks to the aesthetics of the U.S.-facing side of the wall, telling NPR “the wire mesh panels will be emblazoned with the Seal of the United States.”

The Security Curtain Wall

With its face pitched at an angle, the proposed wall put forth by San Diego Project Management, PSC, borrows medieval concepts to give to give guards a better view of possible “villains” approaching the wall — and with its walkway toward the top, it gives those guards a place to patrol from a height.

“The surface finish on the south side of the wall is of the same quality as the finish on a smooth floor slab,” Patrick J. Balcazar, principal and managing partner at SDPM, writes in his proposal. “Smooth surface on the glacis [sloped] and [vertical] surfaces make climbing harder, and there are no handholds.”

Hadrian’s Wall

It’s impossible to avoid: For a man bidding to build a massive wall, Rod Hadrian has a rather serendipitous name. Namesake of the Roman emperor who built the wall that once marked off the northernmost edge of the ancient empire — the wall that still stands in ruins in the U.K. today — Hadrian Construction Company has proposed a wall constructed in prefabricated panels.

Its Tridipanel design makes for something of a zig-zag shape, which he says would create a 30-foot wall that’s at once lightweight and strong.

Adorned With Decoration

The border wall should be “a piece of art,” Russ Baumgartner, CEO of Concrete Contractors Interstate of San Diego, tells the AP. The wire service says the company’s proposal calls for stones and artifacts set in polished concrete, reflecting the areas the wall wends through and rendering both sides “aesthetically pleasing” — unlike the CBP’s callout, which asks only that the U.S. side be pleasant to look at.

Above, you can see a detail of the kind of decorative stones Baumgartner has in mind.

The Wall To End All Walls

It is reasonable to conclude that this proposal is not exactly what Trump has in mind for his signature campaign promise.

“We propose a trans-national ‘New Deal’ to build an innovative shared co-nation based on local economic empowerment, energy independence and revolutionary infrastructure and transit,” says the MADE Collective, a cross-disciplinary team that argues for the creation of what it calls the Otra Nation — a “regenerative co-nation shared by citizens of both Mexico and the United Stated and co-maintained by respective governments.”

Far from a boundary between two states, the Otra Nation proposal envisions the construction of a hyperloop transit system and the rights to cross open borders of the three North American countries without impediment.

The Wall Of Sound

One of at least three protest proposals ginned up by J.M. Design Studio of Pittsburgh, this one calls for “a semi-continuous wall of nearly 10 million pipe organs.” The long line of 30-foot organs breaks in regular intervals, offering border-crossers the opportunity to walk straight through — but not before playing a ditty of their choosing.

Jennifer Meridian — an artist who says Trump’s actual border wall is “preposterous for so many reasons,” according to the Wall Street Journal — also proposes a wall of hammocks and a wall of refugees’ gravestones for passersby to “consider the danger, terror, and horror they must have faced in trying to cross.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka laid out his vision for organized labor Tuesday, taking on both political parties for catering to moneyed interests instead of focusing on the plight of American workers — the hallmark of the presidential campaign.

“Republicans, and too many Democrats, have rigged our economy to enrich a select few,” the union chief told an audience at the National Press Club.

“Give every worker out there the right to bargain with their employer for better wages, better working conditions whether you have a union or not,” he said.

Trumka’s cautionary messages about allowing corporations to enrich themselves at the expense of workers, and the dangers of deregulation struck a familiar theme for unions. But the speech was also notable for the way it veered from traditional party politics, calling attention to a growing rift in the once-solid relationship between unions and the Democratic Party.

“We’ll stand up to the corporate Republicans who attack working people and the neoliberal Democrats who take us for granted,” Trumka said. During the last election, 37 percent of the AFL-CIO’s membership voted for Trump. Both parties, he argued, are struggling with an identity crisis.

In the early days, Trumka and other union leaders supported the Trump administration’s position against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. But more recently, he said, the administration has lost its focus on workers in favor of relaxing rules on employers.

“There is a Wall Street wing that seeks to undermine Donald Trump’s promises to workers, and there’s a competing wing that could actually win some progress that working people need,” he said. “I’m concerned that the Wall Street wing of the White House is starting to hijack the agenda.”

Unions are not what they were during Trumka’s childhood in Pennsylvania coal country, when about a third of all American workers were members of unions. That declined to about 20 percent in the early 1980s. Now, it’s half that. Trumka himself referenced unions’ efforts to reverse that trend, including organizing efforts with white collar workers such as graduate students and technology professionals, as well as hotel and fast-food workers.

Trumka also called on workers to advocate for their interests with their employers, whether or not they can join a union.

Aparna Mathur, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, said the message is a big departure from the decades-long emphasis unions have had on increasing membership.

“I think it is a recognition that, at some level, what unions did 50 years ago is not what they are able to do today,” she said.

Mathur said there are pragmatic realities facing unions. There is less interest in union membership among workers. Now, 28 states have right-to-work laws that prohibit unions from compelling the payment of dues or representation.

Unions are weaker, she said, and Trumka is trying to keep the worker movement going, with or without unions.

With an oversized check for $78,333, written to the National Park Service, White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday took the first step in fulfilling President Trump’s pledge to give away his presidential salary.

Spicer said that the sum equaled Trump’s salary for the first quarter of 2017, and that similar charitable contributions will be made each quarter.

But a five-figure check is pocket change compared to the wealth of Trump’s business empire — businesses now held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, and a newly released document opens new holes in the ethics wall between the president and that wealth.

Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon said, at a January press conference, that the revocable trust would prevent conflicts of interest.

“President Trump wants there to be no doubt in the minds of the American public that he is completely isolating himself from his business interests,” she said.

This afternoon, however, after Spicer brought out the big check, he had to fend off questions as to just how isolated from the Trump empire the president is.

He said he didn’t know of any changes in the trust since January. “I’m not aware there was any change,” he said. “Just because a left-wing blog makes the point of something changing doesn’t mean it actually happened.”

It wasn’t a left-wing blog, but rather Pro Publica — a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative journalism outfit — that first reported the change. A document dated Feb. 17 lets Trump draw out profits and principal from his businesses.

It says the trustees “shall distribute” funds to Trump at his request. It also requires them to send him money when appropriate and for “his maintenance, support or uninsured medical expenses.”

Essentially, the president can take money from his businesses whenever he wants.

Spicer dismissed a question of whether Trump already has done so, saying, “The idea that the president is withdrawing money at some point is exactly the purpose of why the trust — a trust — is set up regardless of the individual.”

But the purpose of presidential trusts has been to avoid conflicts of interest.

The new document also sheds new light on how the trust works. It’s run by two trustees, Donald Trump Jr. and an executive of the Trump Organization, who cannot give the president reports on the trust’s finances. But Trump’s second son, Eric, can do that as chair of the trust’s advisory board, and told Forbes magazine last month that he plans to give his father big-picture financial briefings every quarter or so.

Before Trump, recent presidents sold their assets or put them into a blind trust
when they took office.

“This is a ploy, okay?” said Kathleen Clark, a professor of law and ethics at Washington University in St Louis. “It’s a public relations ploy to give people the impression that Trump has done something meaningful about the massive conflicts of interest he faces.”

Those conflicts center mainly around his hotels and brands overseas, U.S. environmental laws that affect his golf courses, and his Washington, D.C., hotel.

A look at what President Donald Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping looks like from Beijing.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now we’re going to get a different view of the summit this time from Beijing. We turn to NPR’s Beijing correspondent Anthony Kuhn. Anthony, greetings. Thanks so much for talking with us.

ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: You’re very welcome, Michel.

MARTIN: So what does China want to get out of the summit?

KUHN: Well, remember, Michel, that this is a political transition year for China. President Xi Jinping is due to get a second five-year term this fall, so they do not want ties with Washington blowing up or getting in the way of that. They want high-level contacts with Washington to be regular, and they want more stability in their relationship than they’ve had so far under this administration.

Also remember Donald Trump was the candidate that I think most Chinese wanted to see win, and many Chinese like the fact that he’s a businessman. And they think they can negotiate with him. Some believe that he may even give China a chance to advance its global interests, perhaps, at the U.S.’s expense.

MARTIN: That actually leads me to where I wanted to go next. I mean, on the one hand, both Xi Jinping and Trump think of themselves as different from their predecessors. On the other hand, Trump had very strong language about China over the course of the campaign, and, you know, does any of that affect the chemistry at this meeting – or what do you think about that?

KUHN: Right. Well, you could, I suppose, argue that both of these men consider themselves sort of political strongmen, really stronger than men who came before them. They’ve both tried to increase the power of their offices and demanded loyalty from their subordinates. But I don’t think that’s necessarily enough to spark a budding bromance. Just because they have these ambitions it doesn’t mean that either of them will succeed in achieving them.

MARTIN: And Xi Jinping has made comments suggesting that China is poised to fill the vacuum that the U.S. says it wants to leave by pulling out of international commitments. What does he mean by that?

KUHN: Well, on a couple of occasions, you know, President Xi Jinping has spoken out for free trade, open markets, globalization, the Paris agreement on climate change, and Xi has been using these opportunities to show China as a heavyweight in global governance, providing public goods for the international community and defending the international order.

One thing I think that is pretty clear is that many people in China believe that the U.S. is losing soft power and moral high ground. So when the U.S. government hammers China over issues like torture, press freedoms, treatment of ethnic minorities, nepotism, corruption and conflict of interest in government, it rings pretty hollow. And we know this because we’ve been reading months worth of sort of crowing, jeering commentaries to that effect in China’s state-run media.

MARTIN: OK. So North Korea – nuclear weapons, wouldn’t that be a shared item of interest and a very pressing issue on the agenda for both countries? Is there anything that they can really hope to accomplish in this meeting?

KUHN: Well, they’ve got to do something about it because time is really running out before North Korea will get missiles with nuclear warheads capable of targeting U.S. territory. The problem is there is so much daylight between the U.S.’s and China’s positions. Both sides think the other side has to do the heavy lifting on this problem.

As far as Beijing is concerned, it wants the U.S. to provide North Korea with some sort of security guarantee in exchange for either freezing its nuclear programs or denuclearizing, as it’s already promised to do. The other problem is that both sides realize that the North Korean nuclear issue is tied into so many other things. So if Washington and Beijing get into a spat over trade, over Taiwan, over the South China Sea, the chances of cooperation on the North Korean nuclear issue will be very slim.

MARTIN: That was NPR’s Beijing correspondent Anthony Kuhn joining us from Beijing. Anthony, thanks so much for speaking with us.

KUHN: You bet, Michel.

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