Tuesday night is Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, the annual event where the president speaks to a joint session of Congress with lofty rhetoric about where the country is and where he wants it to go. The Constitution doesn’t require the chief executive to deliver the State of the Union in person, but for decades the speech has been a major television event.
Unfortunately this is one political tradition President Trump doesn’t seem inclined to buck. Here’s what I’ll be watching for once he takes the rostrum in the House chamber. |
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| How will he address immigration? The most immediate matter before Congress is the question of “fixing” the gap left by the winding down of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Republicans are willing to concede an amnesty for these recipients in exchange for some more funding for a border wall and other enforcement measures.
The left-wing of the Democratic party, however, remains opposed to any wall construction. That’s given the Trump White House the confidence to add two more agenda items to their immigration proposal: ending both chain migration and the visa lottery. The bet is that there are nevertheless enough Democrats open to wall funding to reach a deal—if Trump can hold enough Republicans in line to support what hardliners call a mass amnesty.
The White House is promising a State of the Union address that strikes a tone of bipartisanship. Will he land it on what remains the most divisive issue in Washington? |
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Will we find out more about Trump’s infrastructure plans? An administration source says to expect a “30,000-foot view” on the president’s vision for building more roads, bridges, and the like—but that the promised unveiling of a legislative framework is coming later.
Here’s what I will be listening for on infrastructure: how Trump will characterize his preferred funding mechanism. Will he talk about “public-private partnerships” or the need to pass a big government spending bill? No matter what he says, it will also be worth watching how Republicans in the chamber react. |
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What about trade policy? One issue hiding in plain sight is the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The president is trying to renegotiate NAFTA with Mexico and Canada, but it seems likely he will pull the United States out of it. Were last week’s tariffs on washing machines and solar panels a harbinger of more protectionist policies? And what will President Trump call on Congress to do? Once again, the reaction from his fellow Republicans to any protectionist rhetoric will say a lot about whether the GOP remains the party of free trade.
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Quote of the Day—"The only thing the president has applied pressure to is to make sure we get this resolved so that you guys and everyone else can focus on the things that Americans care about. And that is making sure everybody gets the Russia fever out of their system once and for all, that you're reminded once again there was no collusion." —Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, January 29, 2018
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The FBI’s deputy director Andrew McCabe is out ahead of his expected retirement. The New York Times has the story: Though Mr. McCabe’s retirement had been widely expected soon, his departure was nevertheless sudden. As recently as last week, Mr. McCabe had told people he hoped to stay until he was eligible to retire in mid-March. Instead, Mr. McCabe made his intentions known to colleagues on Monday, an American official said, and will immediately go on leave.
In a recent conversation, Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, raised concerns about a forthcoming inspector general report examining the actions of Mr. McCabe and other senior FBI officials during the 2016 presidential campaign, when the bureau was investigating both Hillary Clinton’s email use and the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. In that discussion, according to one former law enforcement official close to Mr. McCabe, Mr. Wray suggested moving Mr. McCabe into another job, which would have been a demotion.
Instead, the former official said, Mr. McCabe chose to leave. |
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#ReleasetheMemo Watch—My colleague Jenna Lifhits has a report on the GOP House Intelligence Committee’s Monday vote to release a secret memo alleging corruption and partisan bias at the highest levels of the FBI: Democrats describe the memo as a misleading characterization of highly classified intelligence that is meant to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation includes any potential links between the Kremlin and the Trump team. Their effort to publicly release a counter-memo rebutting what they describe as “factual inaccuracies” in the GOP memo failed on Monday, much to their frustration.
“When I moved to have the minority memo released in the interest of full transparency, [the majority] evidently took the view that full transparency means only one side gets it and not the other,” Schiff told reporters, standing alongside eight other committee Democrats.
Republicans agreed Monday to make Democrats’ memo available for all House members to view in a classified setting. They said they would be open to a future vote on publicly releasing the document.
“When the Democratic memo has gone through the same process [as the GOP memo] then it should have the same day in court,” Florida congressman Tom Rooney told reporters. “It was about a week for the House to be able to read it, and then we’ll vote to release it down the road.” The only obstacle to the memo’s release now is President Trump himself, who has five days to decide whether to block the declassification. CNN reported last week that Trump was “inclined to allow the memo” to be released. But the White House declined to answer questions about the president’s intent ahead of the vote Monday, saying no one in the administration had yet read the document.
“It would be hard for us to make a decision or to speak about it before that would take place,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. “We want full transparency. It’s what we’ve said all along. And we’ll make a decision when and if that time becomes necessary.” |
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The latest episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol is a good one, featuring John Podhoretz talking about movies and Hollywood. Watch the episode here.
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Afghanistan Watch—President Trump on Monday condemned a week of terrorist violence in Afghanistan after a sequence of four attacks left more than 130 dead across the unstable nation.
Trump, who was at a lunch with members of the United Nations Security Council, said they were discussing “what more we can do to defeat the Taliban.” The Islamic fundamentalist group claimed credit over the weekend for a pair of the attacks, including one in which an attacker detonated an ambulance packed with explosives in Kabul, killing more than 100 and injuring some 200 more.
“Innocent people are being killed left and right. Bombing in the middle of children, in the middle of families—bombing, killing all over Afghanistan,” Trump said. “So there’s no talking to the Taliban. We don’t want to talk to the Taliban. We’re going to finish what we have to finish. What nobody else has been able to finish, we’re going to be able to do it.” |
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