Summary
- President Donald Trump will address the nation on Tuesday night about the border in the midst of the ongoing government shutdown
- Trump will also visit the border on Thursday, the White House announced.
- The administration announced today that it will still pay tax refunds despite the fact that there is no money appropriated to keep the IRS and the Treasury Department open
- Former vice president Joe Biden is drawing closer to making a decision about a presidential bid.
NBC is reporting that only six people in the federal terrorism database were stopped at the southern border in the first half of 2018.
This contradicts a statement from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders that over 4,000 suspected terrorists were stopped at the border.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is reportedly interested in leaving the administration to become President of the University of South Carolina. The New York Times reports that the former South Carolina congressman has expressed interest in leading the university located in the state capital of Columbia.
NEW - w /@jmartNYT, Mulvaney as recently as late last year tried positioning himself to be U of S Carolina president. https://t.co/vN5YE5Msrw
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 7, 2019
The federal judiciary has found additional funds to keep operations going for an additional week despite the partial shutdown. The federal courts will now be able to function through January 18.
NEW: The federal judiciary now expects to have enough money from other sources to keep the courts largely business-as-usual during the shutdown through Jan. 18 (previously it was Jan. 11) — this is the latest from the Administrative Office of the US Courts (HT @hsu_spencer) pic.twitter.com/N2BU6n1gQg
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) January 7, 2019
The Trump administration has announced that the IRS will continue to pay out tax refunds during the partial government shutdown.
Past precedent would have prevented the IRS from doing this in advance of the April 15 deadline to submit federal tax returns.
How are you affected by the government shutdown?
Communities across the country are starting to feel the pain of the shutdown and many of the 800,000 federal workers furloughed, or forced to work without pay, have been collecting experiences under the hashtag #shutdownstories on social media.
We would like to hear from you if you are affected. What has the impact has been on you, your family and community? Tell us here. We will feature a selection of your contributions in our reporting.
Although it seems Trump’s remarks will be on cable news, there is a big difference between that and broadcast networks which are still determining what to do as Maggie Haberman of the New York Times notes.
According to all our reporting, networks are still deciding this, have NOT agreed. White House is claiming otherwise and it isn't true. They may still end up agreeing, but haven't yet. https://t.co/QKujUlNwib
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 7, 2019
Former President Jimmy Carter has become the last living president to weigh in and deny that he urged President Donald Trump to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump claimed last week that at least one former president told him that he regretted not building a wall. With Carter’s statement, all four living former presidents have now denied telling Trump this.
Clarification from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter:
— The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) January 7, 2019
"I have not discussed the border wall with President Trump, and do not support him on the issue.” -- Jimmy Carter
As Democrats make their final decision about mounting a presidential bid, it’s worth noting that there are already over 400 announced candidates, including Donald Trump.
The FEC maintains a page listing every person who has filed form F-2 announcing their candidacies. As of writing, there are 447 such individuals, 32 of whom declared before 2016 was over and 63 of whom declared their 2020 candidacies before President Trump was even inaugurated.
Brian Stelter at CNN reports that the networks are still deciding whether to grant Trump’s request to address the nation in primetime.
This just in from a network source: "Time has been requested tomorrow night for 9p. Networks are deliberating."
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 7, 2019
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Trump confirms primetime address
Donald Trump just tweeted that he will address the nation tomorrow night at 9pm EST.
I am pleased to inform you that I will Address the Nation on the Humanitarian and National Security crisis on our Southern Border. Tuesday night at 9:00 P.M. Eastern.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2019
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Iowa senator Chuck Grassley has some advice for Trump if he delivers a primetime address tomorrow.
@realDonaldTrump when u give ur tv speech Tuesday night deliver it as if u were conversing with Iowans not New Yorkers
— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) January 7, 2019
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Politico reports that Trump has been turned down by two people whom he has asked to serve as his secretary of defense. Both retired general Jack Keane and former senator Jon Kyl of Arizona have reportedly told Trump that they are not interested in succeeding James Mattis in that role.
Kyl just rejoined the law firm of Covington and Burling, where he previously served as a lobbyist before being appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by John McCain’s death. He resigned at the end of 2018 and was succeeded by Martha McSally, the losing Republican candidate for the other Senate seat in Arizona. Kyl previously had served three terms in the Senate from 1995-2013.
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The New York Times reports Trump wants to give a primetime address tomorrow about the shutdown and the border.
The White House has requested time from the networks to interrupt primetime programming.
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Senate Democrats will attempt to block that chamber from voting on any legislation until Senate leader Mitch McConnell moves to allow votes on House-passed bills funding the government.
If successful, this would not end the partial shutdown but force Trump to veto government funding legislation if he wants the showdown over the border wall to continue.
Schumer moving toward Van Hollen strategy backed by several other Ds, per senior aide:
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 7, 2019
"Schumer has notified the Dem caucus that he will vote against proceeding to S.1 because Senate Republicans should instead bring to the floor the House-passed bills to reopen the government" https://t.co/rZdSysZoKX
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Democrats set up a Facebook group to try to falsely link Senate candidate Roy Moore to prohibitionists during the 2017 special election in Alabama.
The New York Times reports that the “Dry Alabama” Facebook group was created by Democratic activists in order to falsely tar Moore with support for making Alabama a dry state. (Currently 25 of the state’s 67 counties are at least partially dry with Clay County allowing liquor sales in two cities starting in 2016).
As the Times describes the effort:
In a political bank shot made in the last two weeks of the campaign, they thought associating Mr. Moore with calls for a statewide alcohol ban would hurt him with moderate, business-oriented Republicans and assist the Democrat, Doug Jones, who won the special election by a hair-thin margin.
Trump to visit the border
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced that Donald Trump will go to the U.S-Mexico border on Thursday.
President @realDonaldTrump will travel to the Southern border on Thursday to meet with those on the frontlines of the national security and humanitarian crisis. More details will be announced soon.
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) January 7, 2019
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Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio will decide whether to pursue a presidential bid in the next two months.
His wife, Connie Schultz, told CNN that the rust belt progressive would make his decision soon. “I think we’re going to know within the next two months. I mean, we have to,” she said.
Brown was just re-elected to his third term in the Senate in November.
Joe Biden considers presidential bid
The New York Times reports that Joe Biden is in the final stages of making a decision of whether to pursue a presidential bid in 2020. The former vice-president, who ran for the White House in 1988 and 2008, passed up a presidential bid in 2016.
The septuagenarian spent 36 years representing Delaware in the Senate before being elected vice-president as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008.
In one of his calls over the holidays, Mr. Biden repeated a variation of a line he has used publicly: “If you can persuade me there is somebody better who can win, I’m happy not to do it,” he said, according to the Democrat he spoke to, who shared the conversation on condition of anonymity to discuss a private talk.
But then Mr. Biden said something he has not stated so bluntly in public: “But I don’t see the candidate who can clearly do what has to be done to win.”
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Elizabeth Warren just finished her first campaign swing through Iowa, making several stops in the central and western parts of the state.
The Massachusetts Democrats attracted large crowds on her trip, which came days after she announced she was exploring a presidential bid on New Year’s Eve.
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is already taking steps to avoid any dissent on the floor of the 2020 convention in Charlotte.
Politico reports:
The president’s reelection campaign is intent on avoiding the kind of circus that unfolded on the convention floor in 2016, when Never Trump Republicans loudly protested his nomination before a national TV audience. The effort comes as party elites like Utah senator Mitt Romney are openly questioning Trump’s fitness for the job, and it’s meant to to ensure that delegates to next year’s convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, are presidential loyalists – not anti-Trump activists looking to create a stir.
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Only weeks after cancer surgery, the supreme court has announced that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not participate in oral arguments today. It will be the first time she has missed a sitting of the court since her confirmation in 1993.
JUST IN: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not taking part in today’s oral arguments before the court. According to Oyez, an online resource about the court, Ginsburg has not missed a day of arguments since she was sworn in in 1993.
— NPR (@NPR) January 7, 2019
Updated
Former congressman John Delaney has bulked up his presidential campaign in Iowa.
The Des Moines Register now reports he has 24 staffers in the Hawkeye State alone, including veterans of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign and Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Delaney has 24 (!!) staffers in Iowa now https://t.co/8dxPI3fiz1
— Hanna Trudo (@HCTrudo) January 7, 2019
USA Today has a helpful explainer on Trump’s suggestion that he can declare a national emergency in order to build the wall.
The 1976 National Emergencies Act was passed in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era to create more structured procedures for the president’s use of emergency powers.
Under that law, the president must cite the specific emergency powers he is activating under existing statutes. According to the Congressional Research Service, there are hundreds of “provisions of federal law delegating to the executive extraordinary authority in time of national emergency”.
“Under the powers delegated by such statutes, the president may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens,” says a 2007 CRS report.
The most recent precedent for something like this was when Harry Truman took control of the steel industry during a national strike in 1952 in the midst of the Korean war. This was ruled unconstitutional in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v Sawyer.
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The shutdown is starting to create economic fallout nationally.
The Washington Post reports that it is starting to having a severe impact in towns and cities across the US.
Many of the affected federal workers – including 10,000 people in Utah, 6,200 in West Virginia and 5,500 in Alabama – have salaries far below the average $85,000 for government employees. But those paychecks drive local economies, and workers are starting to make tough choices about how to spend them – eating out less, limiting travel and shopping at food pantries instead of grocery stores – creating a ripple effect through the neighborhoods and towns where they live.
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The Trump administration’s latest offer in the ongoing partial shutdown is $5.7bn for a “steel barrier” accompanied by $800m to “address urgent humanitarian needs”.
It represents a shift from concrete to steel in the building material for the border wall. As Trump told reporters yesterday:
“I informed my folks to say that we’ll build a steel barrier. Steel. It’ll be made out of steel. It’ll be less obtrusive, and it’ll be stronger. But it’ll be less obtrusive, stronger, and we’re able to use our great companies to make it, by using steel ... They don’t like concrete, so we’ll give them steel. Steel is fine. Steel is actually – steel is actually more expensive than concrete, but it will look beautiful and it’s very strong. It’s actually stronger.”
Updated
Opening summary
It’s day 17 of the partial government shutdown, Donald Trump is tweeting about “Fake News” and Elizabeth Warren just finished her first campaign swing in Iowa.
It’s Monday in American politics.
Updated
