As Monday begins, the government is still shut down.
Donald Trump and the White House have greeted the government shutdown, which has been in effect since the Senate was unable to pass a continuing budget resolution by early Saturday morning, as an opportunity to push this point: Democrats are extremists on immigration. “We will not negotiate the status of unlawful immigrants while Democrats hold our lawful citizens hostage over their reckless demands,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a statement late Friday night. “This is the behavior of obstructionist losers, not legislators. When Democrats start paying our armed forces and first responders we will reopen negotiations on immigration reform.” President Trump forwent a weekend trip to Mar-a-Lago and instead spent Saturday in the West Wing. The White House released a few photographs of the president, donning a white “Make America Great Again” cap, in the Oval Office and with members of his staff. The official line was that photos showed Trump “working” to “end the Democrats [sic] government shutdown.” But despite the show of activity at the White House, nearly all of the work on finding some kind of budget agreement was taking place at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Read more... |
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The divisions between the two parties over immigration are what have driven this shutdown, as well as the internal split within the GOP. Though there seems to be consensus among most in Washington that some protection from deportation is needed for those immigrants brought into the country illegally by their parents, the dispute is over what amount of border security and immigration enforcement provisions ought to be coupled with the amnesty. The president, frustratingly for lawmakers in his own party, has been unclear about what kind of deal, exactly, he’d be for. Here’s the New York Times on the “paralysis” in Washington regarding the central issue leading to the shutdown: Both sides have reason to be confused. Each time Mr. Trump has edged toward compromise with Democrats, he has appeared to be reined in by his own staff, which shares the hawkish immigration stance that fueled his campaign. And Republican leaders, bruised by past experience with a president who has rarely offered them consistent cover on a politically challenging issue, are loath to guess at his intentions. The result has been a paralysis not only at the White House but on Capitol Hill, complicating the chances for an ultimate resolution of how to protect hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants, the problem underlying the shutdown. And it has raised questions not only about Mr. Trump’s grasp of the issue that animated his campaign and energizes his core supporters, but his leadership. |
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National security adviser H.R. McMaster has selected a replacement for one of his deputies, Dina Powell, who left the West Wing last week. Politico reports that Dr. Nadia Schadlow, a member of the National Security Council staff, will be the new deputy national security adviser. Here’s more from Politico: In plucking Schadlow to succeed Powell, McMaster is making a switch that brings a longtime colleague with a rare academic background into President Donald Trump’s West Wing . . . But Powell’s departure deprives McMaster of a close ally known for her unparalleled network of relationships both inside and outside the West Wing, according to White House aides and outside advisers. That threatens to leave McMaster, who has struggled to overcome a rocky relationship and general difficulty communicating with Trump, more isolated in the West Wing. Schadlow was the lead author of President Trump’s National Security Strategy, which the White House released last month.
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Must-Read of the Day—In the new issue of the magazine, Christopher Caldwell continues his compelling reporting on America’s opioid crisis with an article on how overdoses are becoming a big problem in the unlikeliest of places: the suburbs. “In nine days in early December, eight young people died of overdoses in Fairfax County, Va., the second-richest of the 3,007 counties in the United States,” he writes. Read the whole thing.
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Screw-Up of the Day—From the Yale Daily News, a speaking appearance from former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal practically bankrupted the student-run Yale Political Union.
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