Shutdown

A stopgap government funding bill was signed into law by President Biden late Saturday, keeping the government open for another forty-five days, through November 17. The proposed bill, which passed the House of Representatives earlier Saturday afternoon, does not include the $6 million that the Senate’s own funding measure would have. It will, however, increase federal disaster assistance by $16 million, meeting President Biden’s full request.  The bill passed the House of Representatives 335-91, despite resistance from MAGA Republicans that led to a standoff over spending for weeks. Ninety House Republicans led by Representative Matt Gaetz, voted against the bill.

Authorities have finally done something about the aggressive, rabid critters that lurk around our nation’s capital and slink from their dens on the Hill to assault honest people for no good reason. Cockburn has encountered all sorts of such creatures on various Capitol Hill pub crawls, but the type the police just decided to address was neither a blundering elephant nor an indignant jackass. Neither was it a Blue Dog, one of those endangered porcupines that rarely appear in the Swamp, nor even a squawking chicken hawk. It was a red fox. A cute little lady fox with a majestically bushy tail, black-tipped ears and feet, white markings on her chest and muzzle, and shining black eyes. People first started posting images of the fox on Monday.

Less than 24 hours after California governor Gavin Newsom closed 'non-essential' businesses and ordered Californians to stay inside to avoid spreading the coronavirus, New York governor Andrew Cuomo followed suit. 'This is about saving lives,' Cuomo said during a press conference on Friday. 'If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.' Cuomo’s assertion that saving 'just one life' justifies an economic shutdown raises questions that have not been acknowledged, much less answered, as public officials across the country compete to impose ever more draconian anti-virus measures: Is there any limit to the damage we are willing inflict on the world economy to mitigate the infection?

Congressional leaders reached ‘an agreement in principle’ Monday night on a budget deal to prevent another government shutdown, Sen. Richard Shelby told reporters, according to Reuters. The tentative deal is far short of the $5.7 billion for border security that President Trump had demanded to keep the government open in December. Instead, this plan sets aside $1.4 billion and allows the building for an additional 55 miles of barriers to be added to the approximately 700 miles of barriers that already exist, Congressional aides say. President Trump has repeatedly said that a wall is not required along all of the nearly 2,000 miles of border that Mexico shares with the United States.

Donald Trump’s reputation took a battering during the shutdown. He said he would own it, and he did. He took the blame and then he took the hit when he agreed to end the partial federal closure without winning funding for his border wall. So what was the point? A new set of polling figures reveals the point with hard numbers. It turns out that while his stand was broadly unpopular across the country, his no-nonsense stance resonated with one critical cohort of voters – people in key battleground districts, those that voted Trump in 2016 but swung Democratic in the midterms. They gave him the win on the wall and border security.

Trump caved, Trump caved, Trump caved. That’s the incantation, and if you repeat it long enough, the words begin to feel right. The president’s capitulation was ‘total’, say the media heads. He has been ‘humiliated.’ Nancy Pelosi ‘took him to the cleaners’ and ‘kicked his behind.’ This, apparently, qualifies as high-level political analysis. The trouble is, it isn’t true. Trump didn’t cave. He backed off. He may have folded, temporarily, but what journalists and many Democrats struggle to understand is that elections are not won and lost in news cycles. The irony is that many of Trump’s opponents accuse him of having ADD, of being a Twitter addict who watches too much 24-hour rolling news.

There are at least two tasty dishes in the smorgasbord today: one is the latest action of the fourth branch of the US government, the one run by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller. The other is an announcement from the head of the second branch, the executive, that the month-long government furlough would be suspended for three weeks, until February 15, while House leaders pretend to negotiate with President Trump over the issue of border security and, in particular, appropriating funds to build a wall along vulnerable parts of our Southern border. Both dishes look promising, so let’s take a taste of both. First, the Stone soup, or perhaps I should say Stone in soup, for that would seem to be where Roger Stone, colorful Trump ally and Wikileaks expert, has been firmly placed.

After his soporific performance last night on national television, Donald Trump is back in form. He just engineered a fresh shutdown this afternoon. At a meeting with congressional Democrats this afternoon, Trump threw a temper tantrum, slamming his fist on the Resolute Desk and exiting the Oval Office. He tweeted, ‘Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!’By the bye, Trump is insisting that Republicans have never been more unified.

This is the sort of stage Donald Trump relishes. An Oval Office address during prime time is his chance to seize the political crisis crippling the federal government and turn it into a decisive win. It plays to his strengths: the connection with ordinary Americans; on-screen charisma; the opportunity for a big reveal. The Nancy and Chuck show – the Democratic party’s rejoinder to be broadcast from the Capitol – offers nothing in the way of that star power. But Trump needs to do more than turn up and rely on the Resolute Desk to do the work for him, channeling the power of previous presidents who have addressed the nation in time of crisis. Make no mistake, he is backed into a corner.