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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Gabrielle Canon in San Francisco (now) and Ben Jacobs in Washington (earlier)

More TSA employees skipping work as shutdown stretches on – as it happened

Donald Trump at the White House on 14 January.
Donald Trump at the White House on 14 January. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Summary

Thanks for following along today! You can read more on what’s happening with the SOTU here:

Here’s a breakdown of what else happened today:

  • Just weeks after Trump declared victory over ISIS and announced he would pull troops out of Syria, the terrorist group attacked a military convoy killing 19. Four Americans were among the victims. Senator Chuck Schumer responded with condolences while Senator Rand Paul released a statement of support for the President. Paul’s statement came after a meeting he and other Republicans had with Trump to discuss military policy in Syria.
  • The longest shutdown in US history will drag on as lawmakers failed to find solutions today. Trump signed a bill guaranteeing back-pay for furloughed federal workers, but many are struggling to make ends meet in the interim. TSA employees are not showing up for work at increasing rates while the USDA will call on workers to start coming in again tomorrow. Cardi B pushed her fans to do something in a scathing video on Instagram.

Cardi B has officially weighed in on the government shutdown, and she is not happy. In a video posted to Instagram the rapper criticized Trump and told her fans it was time for action, saying she felt bad for the federal workers who aren’t getting paid.

“Hey Ya’ll! I just want to remind you because it has been a little over three weeks” she quipped to her nearly 40 million Instagram followers, “Trump is now ordering, as in summoning, federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid”.

She advised commenters not to try to bring up the shutdown that occurred under Obama, during the dispute over the Affordable Care Act. “Yeah Bitch! For healthcare” she said before adding some colorful examples.

“We really need to take this serious” she added. “I feel like we need to take some action”.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has tweeted a response to the news that American service members were among the 19 killed by a suicide bomb in Syria, an attack that has been claimed by ISIS.

The bombing came just weeks after President Trump declared a victory against The Islamic State and announced that he was pulling troops out of Syria. According to The New York Times, there have been at least six attacks by ISIS this month and the terrorist organization.

The attack targeted an American military convoy in the northern city of Manbij while troops were inside the Palace of the Princes, a restaurant where they often stopped to eat during patrols, residents said. While the Americans were inside, a nearby suicide attacker wearing an explosive vest blew himself up.

The bombing raised new questions about Mr. Trump’s surprise decision last month to end the American ground war in Syria. Critics of the president’s plans, including members of his own party, said Mr. Trump’s claim of victory over the Islamic State may have emboldened its fighters and encouraged Wednesday’s strike”.

USDA to reopen offices despite shutdown

The US Department of Agriculture will call furloughed employees back to work on Thursday, reopening 980 agency offices that are responsible for processing farm loans and tax documents, Reuters reports.

In a statement released today, the agency announced that roughly 2,500 FSA employees are being asked to work without pay for the next three workdays.

“Until Congress sends President Trump an appropriations bill in the form that he will sign, we are doing our best to minimize the impact of the partial federal funding lapse on America’s agricultural producers,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. “We are bringing back part of our FSA team to help producers with existing farm loans”.

Representative Andy Harris, who was seen walking through the halls with far-right troll Chuck C. Johnson, has now released a statement saying the congressman was “unaware of [Johnson’s] previous associations”and was meeting to discuss genetic sequencing. “Of course I disavow and condemn white supremacy and anti-semitism”.

The Washington Post reports that a new policy being developed at the Pentagon may restrict recruitment of US citizens with foreign ties.

Anonymous sources told the Post that the memo outlining the plan will be distributed by February 15, and will likely affect thousands of new recruits:

The documents reveal how the Pentagon is grappling with the dual challenge of thoroughly screening prospective recruits for potential security threats and finding enough men and women willing to join the military. The Armed Forces have long sought green-card holders as recruits, marketing such jobs as a chance to attain U.S. citizenship”.

Worried that an official censure against Representative Steve King for racist remarks might set a precedent and open up members to politically-motivated attacks on speech, House Democratic leaders opted out of a vote and instead will pass the measure on to the House Ethics Committee.

The move to censure followed a resolution, which was resoundingly passed Tuesday, to rebuke racism. Per the Washington Post:

But Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) sought to go further by censuring King and pressed for a vote on Wednesday. After the House clerk read the resolution detailing King’s inflammatory comments over the years, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) moved to refer the matter to the Ethics Committee — a move that could bottle up the effort indefinitely”.

“I don’t know that it’s a good thing for us to talk about censure for things that are done outside of the business of the House of Representatives” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn told the Washington Post. “We should be very, very careful about doing anything that constrains, or seems to constrain, speech”.

Senator Rand Paul, who met with the president today to discuss foreign policy, tweeted his resounding support for Trump’s position on troop withdrawal.

The meeting to discuss US military presence, which included several Republican senators, assembled shortly after 19 people, including 4 Americans, were killed by a suicide bomber in northern Syria. The bombing has been claimed by the Islamic State.

In December, Trump announced that he would begin withdrawing troops from Syria, claiming “We have won against ISIS”.

Updated

As the shutdown continues into its 26th day, TSA employees are calling in sick at increasing rates. According to a press release from the agency, the rate of unscheduled absences doubled over the previous date in 2018, as “many employees are reporting that they are not able to report to work due to financial limitations”. Still, 1.6 million passengers were screened.

Updated

Just one day after the House overwhelmingly voted to reject white nationalism — a mostly symbolic gesture that falls short of an official censure — Huffpost reporter Matt Fuller spotted Chuck C. Johnson, an alt-right activist and Holocaust denier who was removed from Twitter in 2015 after trying to crowdfund violence against Black Lives Matter leaders, being welcomed by representatives.

Summary

Gabrielle Canon here, taking over for Ben Jacobs.

For those who are just joining us, here’s what’s happened so far today:

  • House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, asked the president to delay his State of the Union address until the shutdown ends, citing concerns over security. She told reporters Trump could deliver the speech from “the Oval Office if he wants”. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee followed up with a statement expressing his support. Meanwhile, Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pushed back, tweeting that her agency is able to handle the risks. An official disinvitation from the speaker has yet to be issued.
  • The Senate failed to advance a measure that would stop the Trump Administration from lifting sanctions against Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
  • The shutdown stalemate continues. Trump signed a bill guaranteeing pay for furloughed federal workers but they won’t see that money until the shutdown ends. Senator Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, told reporters a bipartisan plan to reopen short-term while negotiations continue is unlikely to be implemented and will only happen when “donkeys fly”.

Furloughed employees guaranteed back pay

Trump signed a bill today to guarantee pay for federal employees furloughed during the shutdown. The legislation means that they will paid eventually but have no means of covering bills in the meantime. It also doesn’t effect those on contracts with the government.

Updated

President Donald Trump is now meeting with several Republican senators at the White House from across the ideological spectrum about the U.S. military presence in Syria.

A new report from the inspector general of the General Services Adminstration says that the agency, which oversees government owned property, improperly ignored constitutional concerns over Donald Trump’s lease of the Old Post Office building in Washington for a hotel.

As the Washington Post puts it:

Trump’s company won the lease several years before he became president. After Trump was elected, the agency had to decide if his company would be allowed to keep its lease.

At that time, the inspector general found, the agency should have determined if the lease violates the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which bar presidents from taking payments from foreign governments, or individual U.S. states. But it did not, according to the report issued Wednesday.

“We…found that [the agency] improperly ignored these Emoluments Clauses, even though the lease itself requires compliance with the laws of the United States, including the Constitution,” said the report.

Beto O’Rourke seems to have started a road trip and it’s chronicled in an unusual Medium post for a potential presidential candidate.

Have been stuck lately. In and out of a funk. My last day of work was January 2nd. It’s been more than twenty years since I was last not working. Maybe if I get moving, on the road, meet people, learn about what’s going on where they live, have some adventure, go where I don’t know and I’m not known, it’ll clear my head, reset, I’ll think new thoughts, break out of the loops I’ve been stuck in.

Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the chair of the Homeland Security Committee has issued a statement supporting Pelosi on the State of the Union.

“I wholeheartedly support Speaker Pelosi’s call to delay the State of the Union address until the government re-opens. The Secret Service is the lead federal agency in charge of facilitating security for the yearly State of the Union address, but because of the Trump shutdown, the agency is currently not fully operational. It would be completely inappropriate for President Trump to further deplete the agency’s resources and manpower for the sole purpose of having an hour of uninterrupted primetime television coverage.

“Today, nearly four weeks after the President shut down the government over his ineffective, wasteful border wall, hundreds of thousands of federal employees are still being held hostage – and our national security is becoming more vulnerable every day. President Trump needs to bring a swift end to his absurd temper tantrum and reopen the government immediately.”

A congressional colleague has come to Tulsi Gabbard’s aid as the Hawaii congresswoman has faced criticism for past homophobic remarks ahead of the launch of her presidential campaign.

Kirstjen Nielsen, the Homeland Security secretary tweets that her department would be fully prepared to handle the State of the Union even with the ongoing partial shutdown in the first response from anyone in the Trump administration to Pelosi’s letter this morning.

Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House of Representatives slams Paul Ryan, although not by name, for not taking action on Steve King during Ryan’s tenure in the House.

As Theresa May narrowly survived a confidence vote in the UK just now over Brexit, one Democratic presidential candidate has already weighed in on the British political crisis.

Former Congressman John Delaney of Maryland said yesterday:

“The truth is Brexit was never honestly sold to voters, which is why the UK finds itself in such a difficult position right now.

“Leaving the European Union will, in fact, hurt British citizens, but staying is not an option after a referendum, unless they have a second.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters earlier this afternoon that Trump can give the State of the Union “from the Oval Office if he wants.”

Steny Hoyer has walked back his comments on that “the State of the Union is off.”

However, another member of Democratic leadership seems to view the situation differently.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana is not optimistic, to say the least, about the possibility of a short term compromise to reopen the government.

Bernie Sanders is currently meeting with a number of former staffers who are concerned about a pattern of sexual misconduct and harassment on his 2016 campaign. The Vermont senator is considered likely to run for President again in 2020.

An effort to keep the Trump administration from lifting sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska just failed in the Senate.

The measure needed 60 votes to advance but only received 57. Its failure means that sanctions on Deripaska, who once employed Paul Manafort, will be lifted this week.

The White House has issued a statement on Trump’s meeting with the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus this afternoon.

The President and his team had a constructive meeting with bipartisan members of the problem solvers caucus. They listened to one another and now both have a good understanding of what the other wants. We look forward to more conversations like this.”

Axios reports that Trump’s derision for forward planning was inspired by Mike Tyson.

Trump is apparently fond of citing Tyson’s famous saying “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Instead, Trump reportedly views constant combat as a substitute.

We’ve just gotta fight every day and that’s how we win.”

“We can plan all this stuff out but it’ll change,” the president continued. “So let’s just not go through the effort.”

The Washington Post reports that T-Mobile CEO John Legere has become a regular guest at the Trump hotel in Washington as he seeks government approval for T-Mobile to merge with Sprint.

By mid-June, seven weeks after the announcement of the merger, hotel records indicated that one T-Mobile executive was making his 10th visit to the hotel. Legere appears to have made at least four visits to the Trump hotel, walking the lobby in his T-Mobile gear.

These visits highlight a stark reality in Washington, unprecedented in modern American history. Trump the president works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump the businessman owns a hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania.

Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House, makes plain “the State of the Union is off” in an interview with CNN.

It’s worth looking at this time capsule at the shock felt in Washington in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson became the first president to deliver the State of the Union in person since John Adams.

The Democrats meeting with Trump today have issued a statement that emphasizes “we must reopen the government” and that “we accepted the White House’s invitation to meet today to convey that message.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) squared off against Donald Trump’s pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency today, urging him to acknowledge the science that shows climate change is a crisis requiring unprecedented action.

Trump has referred to climate change as a hoax, but Andrew Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist who is headed toward easy approval by the Senate, said in his confirmation hearing that he would “not use the hoax word, myself.”

But he said he wouldn’t call climate change “the greatest crisis.”

“I consider it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler, the interim administrator of EPA, said he is limited by the laws Congress has passed and that adaptation efforts would help with rising sea levels, “absent additional congressional authority.”

Sanders pushed Wheeler to take a leadership role on climate. “We have people here who don’t believe in climate change,” he said, referring to senators including Jim Inhofe, a senior member of the committee who prominently doubts man-made climate change.

Protestors interrupted Wheeler’s initial statements and were escorted out by security. “Shut Down Wheeler, not the EPA,” they yelled from outside. All but EPA’s most critical functions have been shuttered for several weeks as the president has refused to fund the government without money to build a border wall.

One of Nancy Pelosi’s most stalwart opponents, Kathleen Rice, has been denied a slot on the House Judiciary Committee.

Politico reports that the New York Democrat was blocked after leading the effort to stop Pelosi from being re-elected as Speaker and voting against her on the floor of the House.

Pelosi lobbied for other members to join the panel over Rice, leaving the third-term New York Democrat off a list of her preferred members for the committee during a tense closed-door meeting Tuesday night, according to multiple sources. The effort came despite a full-court push from the New York delegation to secure a spot for Rice, a former prosecutor, on the panel that oversees everything from impeachment to guns to immigration.

The push by Pelosi was seen as payback by many in the room after Rice was one of the main megaphones behind a campaign to block the California Democrat from becoming speaker again.

“She was boxed out and the result was cooked before we walked in the room,” said a source in the room. “If you went by seniority then yes [she would have got the position]. But that’s not what happened. Scores being settled was first priority.“

In his nomination hearing to be EPA Administrator, Andrew Wheeler is not exactly coming across as a hawk on climate change.

A bipartisan group of senators are sending a letter to Trump in an effort to try to forge a compromise and reopen the government for three weeks while Congress debates border security.

Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts will speak to a local gathering of New Hampshire Democrats next month. Moulton, who was one of Nancy Pelosi’s most vocal foes inside the Democratic caucus before reaching a deal to support her as Speaker, had been attempting to increase his national profile before the midterms and visited Iowa. However, the buzz around a potential 2020 campaign around him had died down recently.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown will be traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina next month as part of a “Dignity at Work tour” as he edges closer to a presidential bid.

As Buzzfeed reports:

Dignity of work has been the core message for Brown since he won his third Senate term last fall — as his allies like to note, in a state President Donald Trump won decisively in 2016. The sentiment has roots in a Martin Luther King Jr. speech weeks before his assassination and meshes with Brown’s longtime advocacy for blue-collar workers and organized labor. He’s been a staunch opponent of trade pacts such as NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. And he’s known in Ohio for a populism that predates Trump and lacks the president’s nationalistic fervor.

Some history here on the State of the Union which mandated under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution.

Pelosi asks Trump to reschedule State of the Union

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked Donald Trump to reschedule the State of the Union because of the ongoing government shutdown. Pelosi asks Trump to either deliver the address in writing or to pick a different date because of shutdown related security issues.

Sarah Sanders declines to comment directly on Donald Trump’s views on Steve King but instead draws the contrast with Democratic silence on newly-elected congresswoman Rashida Tlaib who has invoked an anti-Semitic canard on social media.

While speaking to reporters in New York, Gillibrand says she doesn’t want her own superPAC and says other candidates shouldn’t have them as well.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says Trump has been briefed on the terrorist attack by ISIS in Manbij, Syria. There are reports that four American soldiers were killed in the attack.

“The President has been fully briefed and we will continue to monitor the ongoing situation in Syria. For any specific questions please contact the Department of Defense.”

Updated

Kirsten Gillibrand is holding a press event this morning in Troy, New York where she will have her campaign headquarters after announcing a bid for the White House on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night.

Good morning.

Donald Trump is meeting with the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus at the White House today as the partial government shutdown continues, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced she’d be exploring a presidential bid last night and the confirmation hearing for Trump’s attorney general nominee Bill Barr will continue today.

It’s Wednesday in American politics.

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