U.S. intelligence chiefs are sounding alarms about an ever more perilous future for the United States, one in which the country is in danger of seeing its influence wane, its allies waiver and key adversaries team up to erode norms that once kept the country safe and the world more stable.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, along with the leaders of five other top intelligence agencies, delivered the grim assessment Tuesday, unveiling their annual worldwide threats report for lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Coats described the challenges facing the U.S. as a “toxic mix,” combing the exploits of the “big four” — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — and of non-state actors such as terrorists and criminal networks, and factors such as rapidly advancing technology, climate change and migration.

WATCH: Worldwide threats

​”It is increasingly a challenge to prioritize which threats are of greatest importance,” Coats said, sharing testimony that often and repeatedly contradicted past assertions by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“We face significant changes in the domestic and global environment that has resulted in an increasingly complex and uncertain world and we must be ready. We must be ready,” he added.

Driving many of the concerns, according to intelligence officials, is a growing alliance between Russia and China competing against the U.S. not just for military and technological superiority, but for global influence.

​Russia-China nexus

“China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s,” the report warns.

That relationship is only likely to strengthen as both Moscow and Beijing attempt to take advantage of what they see as a growing U.S. unilateralism, it added.

Officials say that is already playing out in Europe where both countries find openings, as traditional U.S. allies question Washington’s role and consider new partnerships.

The threat assessment, while not mentioning the Trump administration’s focus on “America First” policies or its repeated criticism of alliances like NATO, cautions that many of these U.S. allies are already “seeking greater independence from Washington in response to their perceptions of changing U.S. policies on security and trade.”

At the same time, China and Russia appear to be benefiting from different approaches.

Beijing is trying to win influence by selling would-be partners “a distinctly Chinese fusion of strongman autocracy and a form of Western-style capitalism as a development model and implicit alternative to democratic values and institutions,” Coats said.

In contrast, Coats warned Russia is using weapons sales, private security firms and energy deals with some success across the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.

​North Korea

The intelligence chiefs also broke with Trump over North Korea less than a month after the president touted what he called an “incredible” meeting with North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Yong Chol.

“We have made a lot of progress, as far as denuclearization is concerned,” Trump said at the time.

But Coats is skeptical that Pyongyang will ever give up its entire nuclear arsenal, pointing to “activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization.”

CIA Director Gina Haspel also said that despite indications North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “is trying to navigate a path toward some kind of better future,” his calculations on the need for nuclear weapons do not seem to have changed.

“The regime is committed to developing a long-range nuclear armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States,” she told lawmakers.

And while North Korea has not conducted a nuclear test in more than a year, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Robert Ashley likewise warned there is no reason to relax.

“They showed a capability to have an ICBM function,” Ashley said, pointing to older missile tests. “The capabilities and threat that existed a year ago are still there.”

​Islamic State

The U.S. intelligence community also expressed caution about the president’s willingness to declare the demise of the Islamic State terror group.

The IS caliphate, Coats said, has been defeated, reduced to just a “couple of little villages” in Syria. But he said underestimating the group’s resolve would be a mistake.

“ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria,” Coats said, using an acronym for the group.

“ISIS will continue to be a threat to the United States, and we’re going to have to continue … to keep our eyes on that and our interest in the realization that this terrorism threat is going to continue for some time.”

​Iran nuclear deal

U.S. intelligence analysts also appear to split with Trump over Iran and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“At the moment, technically, they are in compliance,” Haspel said of the 2015 deal between Iran and world powers meant to prevent Tehran from pursuing nuclear weapons.

The U.S. withdrew from the agreement last May, after Trump decried it as “defective to its core,” arguing that it would allow Iran to get economic relief and still have a path to nuclear weapons.

But for now, U.S. intelligence officials say Tehran is at least a year away from being able to produce a nuclear warhead, though they caution that with new U.S. and European sanctions, their willingness to stick with the agreement may be waning.

“We do see them debating amongst themselves as they’ve failed to realize the economic benefits they hoped for from the deal,” Haspel added.

At the same time, Coats said intelligence analysts expect Iran to put greater pressure on the U.S. in the Middle East, with Iranian-backed Shia militias likely to pose a growing threat to U.S. troops in Iraq.

​Cyber

Coats and the other intelligence chiefs warned lawmakers that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran would continue to pressure the U.S. in cyberspace.

“We expect these actors and others to rely more and more on cyber capabilities when seeking to gain political, economic and military advantages over the United States and its allies and partners,” he told lawmakers Tuesday.

Coats said despite successful efforts to protect “the integrity of the 2018 midterm elections,” the intelligence agencies expected Russia, China, Iran and others to target the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.

“We expect them to refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other’s experiences and efforts in previous elections,” he said.

​Venezuela

Coats called the situation in Venezuela, where the U.S. has officially recognized Venezuelan legislative leader Juan Guaido as the country president, “tenuous.”

In an effort to support Guaido and constrain Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. on Monday slapped sanctions on the country’s state-run oil company.

But Coats said he expects Cuba, Russia and China “to prop up the Maduro regime’s security or financing,” and that the deciding factor could be the country’s military.

“The influence of the military on that decision … probably is key to what direction we might go in,” he said.

​U.S. border

Despite the heavy focus from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security on the need for a border wall, the intelligence chiefs made no direct mention of threats along the southern U.S. border with Mexico.

Coats said he expected Mexico would “pursue cooperation with the United States as it tries to reduce violence and address socioeconomic issues, but authorities still do not have the capability to fully address the reduction, the flow and trafficking of the drug cartels.”

Coats also warned that high crime rates and economic problems “will continue to spur U.S.-bound migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.”

The Worldwide Threat Assessment report also warned of increased migration pressures worldwide due to a combination of a slowing global economy and climate change.
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President Donald Trump is dismissing — and potentially bolstering sales — of a new tell-all book by a former White House aide, calling it “made-up stories and fiction.”

The book by Cliff Sims, called Team of Vipers, is the latest in a series of insider accounts by journalists and former Trump staffers that paint an unflattering picture of life in the West Wing. In it, Sims engages in score-settling with former internal rivals, fingers other administration officials as “leakers,” and casts the president as disloyal to his staff.

Trump, in a Tuesday morning tweet, dismissed Sims as a “low level staffer” who had written “yet another boring book.”

“He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer,” said Trump, who claimed Sims had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Indeed, Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of Trump’s re-election campaign, tweeted that the campaign was preparing to file suit against Sims for violating the agreement. Trump and his associates have a habit of announcing legal action and not following through.

Sims was read Trump’s tweet during an appearance on CNN and said he knew a mean tweet was a possibility.

Sims’ book was officially released Tuesday, the same day as another behind-the-scenes account of Trump’s team by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an informal Trump adviser and longtime friend. The book, titled Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics, paints a sympathetic picture of a president who has been ill-served by what he describes as a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.”

Christie, who challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 but endorsed Trump after dropping out, oversaw Trump’s transition team until he was fired shortly after the November election, allegedly at the urging of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Christie, during his tenure as a federal prosecutor, sent Kushner’s father — businessman Charles Kushner — to prison after winning his conviction on tax evasion and other crimes.

In his account, Christie paints unflattering portraits of a number of former Trump aides, including former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, whom he describes as “a fraud, a nobody, and a liar.” He also rails against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, panning him as a “walking car crash” and “train wreck from beginning to end.”

Sims began rolling out his book Monday with a media blitz that included an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America and a sit-down with late-night TV host Stephen Colbert of CBS.

Christie was due to visit with Colbert on Tuesday.
…

Russia and China pose the biggest espionage and cyber attack threats to the United States and are more aligned than they have been in decades, the leader of the U.S. intelligence community told U.S. senators on Tuesday.

While the two countries seek to expand their global reach, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said, some American allies are pulling away from Washington in reaction to changing U.S. policies on security and trade.

“China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways – to steal information, to influence our citizens, or to disrupt critical infrastructure,” Coats said.

“Moscow’s relationship with Beijing is closer than it’s been in many decades,” Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual hearing on worldwide threats, where he testified with the director of the CIA, FBI and other top intelligence officials.

He also said some U.S. allies are seeking more independence, responding to their perceptions of changing policies on security and trade and “are becoming more open” to new partnerships. “The post-World War Two international system is coming under increasing strain amid continuing cyber and WMD proliferation threats, competition in space and regional conflicts,” Coats said, using the acronym for weapons of mass destruction.

Election security

Coats also said U.S. adversaries likely are already looking to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election, refining their capabilities and adding new tactics.

He said Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities and criticizing politicians perceived to be anti-Russia.

Senator Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat, said in his opening statement that he was particularly concerned about Russia’s use of social media “to amplify divisions in our society and to influence our democratic processes” and the threat from China in the technology arena.

The United States on Monday announced criminal charges against China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, escalating a fight with the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker and coming days before trade talks between Washington and Beijing.

“Especially concerning have been the efforts of big Chinese tech companies — which are beholden to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) — to acquire sensitive technology, replicate it, and undermine the market share of U.S. firms with the help of the Chinese state,” Warner said.

The U.S. Justice Department on Monday charged Huawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran by doing business with Tehran through a subsidiary it tried to hide and that was reported on by Reuters in 2012.

“China is going to be a major competitor of ours in every way that there is,” said Republican Senator Jim Risch, an intelligence committee member who is also chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday accepted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to deliver his State of the Union address in the House chamber on Feb. 5. The speech comes as Trump faces an uphill battle to secure funding for his border wall, as well as a special investigation on Russian election meddling, and lawsuits alleging that his businesses violate anti-bribery laws. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone pleaded not guilty Tuesday to seven charges linked to the release of damaging hacked emails about Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in the midst of the presidential campaign.

The 66-year-old Stone, arrested last week at his Florida home in a pre-dawn FBI raid, was arraigned in a federal court in Washington on five counts of lying to Congress about his role in the WikiLeaks release of the emails, and single counts of witness tampering and obstructing a congressional investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Stone has vocally asserted his innocence in recent days but said nothing as he left court.

Some onlookers outside court chanted, “Lock him up,” and carried signs calling him a “dirty traitor.” But supporters nearby said he did nothing wrong and held up photos of him.

Unlike most defendants in U.S. criminal cases, Stone since his arrest has made the rounds of television news shows, to belittle the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and special counsel Robert Mueller, who brought the charges against him.

On his Instagram account, Stone, a long-time self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” whose hero is Richard Nixon, the disgraced U.S. president from the early 1970s, depicted Mueller in a cartoonish-image as a butler holding a tray with a hamburger roll, but with no meat in between.

The charges against Stone do not allege that he coordinated with Russia or with WikiLeaks on the release of the hacked emails, which U.S. authorities say were stolen from Democrats by Russian agents.

Stone told ABC news on Sunday that all he “did was take publicly available information and try to hype it” to disparage Clinton in support of Trump’s campaign.

The charging documents against Stone say that at one point, a senior Trump campaign official “was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had about Clinton, but does not disclose who gave the order to find out information from Stone.

Mueller probe

Stone’s arraignment occurred a half day after Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said on Monday that he thinks Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with Trump’s campaign will finish soon.

“The investigation is, I think, close to being completed, and I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as possible,” Whitaker said at a news conference in Washington.

Whitaker has been the acting attorney general since November when Trump ousted Jeff Sessions from the position. Trump had repeatedly complained about Sessions removing himself from oversight of the Russia probe, and Whitaker declined to recuse himself, despite calls that he should, based on his past criticism of Mueller’s investigation.

William Barr, a former U.S. attorney general, is awaiting a confirmation vote on his nomination to again take over the Justice Department. During his confirmation hearings, he pledged, without citing specifics, that he would publicly release as much of Mueller’s eventual report as possible.

So far, Mueller’s investigation has resulted in guilty pleas or convictions of five key figures in Trump’s orbit, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, campaign aide Rick Gates, foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn and former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Papadopoulos served a short jail term, while Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to surrender himself in early March.  Manafort, Gates and Flynn are awaiting sentencing.
…

The White House says President Donald Trump wants to avert another partial U.S. government shutdown but remains committed to erecting new barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, something most Democratic lawmakers still reject.

“The president doesn’t want to go through another shutdown — that’s not the goal,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday at a press briefing, where she urged Democrats to “get serious about fixing the problem at the border, including funding for a border wall.”

Federal agencies have reopened after the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Late last week, Trump signed a stopgap three-week funding bill designed to give congressional negotiators a window to craft a package enhancing border security.

The bipartisan conference committee, comprised of appropriators from both legislative chambers, is to begin consultations later this week. But the partisan fault line over border wall funding that sparked the shutdown persists.

“Democrats sharply disagree with the president on the need for an expensive and ineffective border wall,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said moments before Sanders spoke.

“What I believe is, at any given place along the border, we’ve got to have some combination of three elements: physical barriers, technology and personnel,” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said. “So, we need a complement of each of those things in this border security bill that hopefully we’ll be voting on in the coming weeks.”

Earlier, Trump said he sees less than a 50 percent chance that congressional negotiators will put together a deal acceptable to him.

The president told The Wall Street Journal Sunday he doubts he would accept less than the $5.7 billion in wall funding he has been demanding. He also cast doubt on granting permanent legal status to immigrants brought illegally to America as children, calling it a “separate subject to be taken up at a separate time.”

Meanwhile, conference committee members declined to speculate on what negotiations might produce.

“We’re going to try to get something that works,” Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt told VOA. “It’s going to have to be done somewhere other than in public. I’m of the view that we should make it as all-encompassing as we can.”

At the White House, Sanders echoed Trump’s threats to declare a national emergency and order wall construction if Congress fails to provide funding.

“If they don’t come back with a deal, it means Democrats get virtually nothing,” the press secretary said. “That will make the president — force him — to take executive action that does not give Democrats the things that they want.”

Such talk is counterproductive, according to Democrats.

“When the president injects maximalist partisan demands into the process, negotiations tend to fall apart,” Schumer said. “The president should allow the conference committee to proceed with good-faith negotiations. I genuinely hope it will produce something that is good for the country and acceptable to both sides.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the five-week partial shutdown caused a $3 billion loss to the U.S. economy. The funding lapse caused federal services to be curtailed or paused and created a financial hardship for 800,000 federal workers who were either furloughed or worked without pay.
…

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has re-invited President Donald Trump to address the nation Feb. 5 from the Capitol.

In a formal letter sent Monday, Pelosi issued the invitation, asking Trump to “deliver your State of the Union address before a Joint Session of Congress.”

The House and Senate must still pass a resolution to invite Trump.

His original 2019 address was scheduled for Tuesday, but Pelosi asked Trump to wait until after a partial government shutdown had ended or to submit the speech in writing.

In asking for a postponement, Pelosi cited security concerns due to the shutdown. Trump considered going ahead with the address at a different location, but then decided to wait.

The longest shutdown in U.S. history ended Friday when Trump and congressional leaders agreed to refund the government until Feb. 15.
…

The probe of possible Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is wrapping up, Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told reporters on Monday.

“I’ve been fully briefed on the investigation and I look forward to Director Mueller delivering the final report,” he said at a press conference on U.S. charges against China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. “Right now the investigation is I think close to being completed and I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as possible.”

The investigation most recently ensnared a long-time confidant of President Donald Trump, political operative Roger Stone, and has led to the conviction of Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

Mueller has been tight-lipped about when the months of closed-door grand jury sessions and plea deals will conclude, leaving questions over how far into the White House his probe will reach and what will happen to his findings. Trump’s nominee to fill the attorney general post permanently, William Barr, recently pledged to make public as much of the report as possible, saying Mueller is required to file it confidentially.

Russia denies any wrongdoing in the 2016 election. Trump has repeatedly said he was not involved in any collusion with Russia and has often referred to the probe as a “witch hunt.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump says he sees less than a 50 percent chance congressional negotiators can put together deal to fund a southern border wall that he will accept.

Trump told The Wall Street Journal Sunday there are some “very good people” on the bipartisan negotiating team. But he said he doubts he will accept less than the $5.7 billion in wall funding he has been demanding, adding “I have to do it right.”

The president also said he doubts he would accept citizenship for the so-called “Dreamers” as part of an agreement. He said the futures of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children is a “separate subject to be taken up at a separate time.”

Trump said another government shutdown is “certainly an option” if he does not get what he wants to build a wall. He also said he could declare a national emergency which would allow him to fund the wall without congressional approval — a tactic Democrats are sure to challenge in the courts.

Trump agreed Friday to reopen the shuttered federal government for three weeks with no wall funding. In the meantime, a panel of nine Democrats and eight Republicans will try to work out a border security agreement that both Congress and Trump would accept and keep the entire government operating at least through the rest of the fiscal year.

​

The month-long partial shutdown created a financial hardship for 800,000 federal workers who were either furloughed or working without pay. They included homeland security and law enforcement officers and air traffic controllers.

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday that the next thee weeks are “a chance for Democrats to see if they believe in border security” to thwart illegal immigration and stop the flow of illicit drugs. 

Mulvaney said the White House is “seeing Democrats starting to agree with the president” on the need for a wall along nearly 400 kilometers of the 3,200-kilometer U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump’s chief congressional Democratic opponents, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, have staunchly refused his demand for wall construction money. But Mulvaney said the negotiation period will give Democrats a chance to answer the question, “Are you telling people the truth” about favoring border security, “or doing something that’s politically expedient?”

Democrats insist they are interested in border security, but say a wall is impractical and a waste of money. They suggest such measures as more controls at ports of entry, more border agents, and more technology are more effective.

On the same Fox News show, Senator Joe Manchin, the only Democrat to vote last week for wall funding in a failed Republican-sponsored bill, said Democrats would “look at a wholistic approach” to determine border security needs. “We’ll let the experts tell us what’s needed, help us find the right path.”

After Trump and Congress agreed on the three-week hiatus to end the shutdown, some government operations started to open again Saturday and many federal workers will be back at work on Monday.

But federal contract workers may not ever recoup the money for the time they were out of work unless Congress enacts legislation to pay them.

The shutdown was having a cascading effect on the U.S. economy, with Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings saying the government closures cost the economy about $6 billion.
…

Federal employees are going back to work after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history ended late last week. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, President Donald Trump signed a bill funding the government for three weeks, meaning the threat of another shutdown persists with the president and congressional Democrats still at odds over funding for wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Roger Stone, a long-time friend and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, said Sunday he would consider cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and discuss his conversations with the U.S. leader.

Stone, charged last week with lying, obstruction and witness tampering in connection with Trump’s campaign, told ABC’s “This Week” show, the extent of his cooperation with Mueller’s 20-month probe would be something he would “have to determine after my attorneys have some discussions.”

He added, “If there’s wrongdoing by other people in the campaign that I know about, which I know of none, but if there is, I would certainly testify honestly.”

The 66-year-old Stone, arrested in a pre-dawn FBI raid Friday on his Florida home, has denied wrongdoing, saying hours after his apprehension, “I will plead not guilty to these charges, I will defeat them in court. I believe this is a politically motivated investigation.”

As he left court Friday after posting a $250,000 bond to secure his freedom pending trial, Stone said, “I have made it clear that I will not testify against the president, because I would have to bear false witness against him.”

Stone told ABC that if he cooperates with Mueller, “I’d also testify honestly about any other matter, including any communications with the president. It’s true that we spoke on the phone, but those communications are political in nature, they’re benign, and there is certainly no conspiracy with Russia.”

Stone said he never discussed cooperation with Russia with Trump.

“Everything that I did… is constitutionally protected free speech. That is what I engaged in – it is called politics,” Stone said.

Stone is the sixth key figure in Trump’s orbit to be accused of criminal offenses as a result of the Mueller investigation. Five men – former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, campaign aide Rick Gates, foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn and former personal attorney Michael Cohen — have pled guilty or been convicted of various offenses.

Papadopoulos served a short jail term, while Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to turn himself in in early March. Manafort, Gates and Flynn are awaiting sentencing.

After Stone’s arrest, Trump sought to distance himself from his one-time aide, saying on Twitter, “Roger Stone didn’t even work for me anywhere near the Election!”

 
…

U.S. government agencies closed during the 35-day partial shutdown began reopening Saturday, two days before the Internal Revenue Service will begin processing 2018 tax filings.

The shutdown ended Friday night, after President Donald Trump signed a three-week spending bill passed by Congress to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget sent a memo late Friday to closed federal government departments and agencies to inform them that their divisions were now open and that their employees could return to work. The memo also called on the agencies to “reopen offices in a prompt and orderly manner.”

A note “to all IRS employees” on the department’s website said employees were expected to report to work “no later than four hours after this announcement is posted on Friday, January 25, 2019, at 9:30 p.m. ET.” Beyond that, the post advised employees to “report to work at the beginning of your next scheduled workday.”

​Other agencies

Some websites of other departments that had been affected by the shutdown — State, Transportation, Agriculture, Justice and Interior — had notices that the departments would be back up and running as soon as possible. The Interior Department, however, still had a video titled “Seasons Greetings from Interior.”

Many parks — from the Virgin Islands National Park to the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area in Minnesota — reopened Saturday, but a statement from Grand Canyon officials said the park, in the southwest U.S. state of Arizona, would not be entirely operational until the end of next week.

In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo are to reopen Tuesday.

Roughly 800,000 federal employees missed their second consecutive paychecks on Friday. Earlier this week, Congress passed and Trump signed legislation ordering federal agencies to issue back pay to workers “at the earliest date possible.” But officials cautioned that it could take several days for federal employees to receive back pay.

VOA parent

On Saturday, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other organizations, sent employees two emails regarding “Return to Work and Back Pay Processing Instructions,” which included information that the agency’s payroll office would offer several informational sessions on the processing of back pay claims.

The bill funding the government through Feb. 15 does not include money for the construction of Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. The president said that a bipartisan committee would be formed to evaluate border security, but, contrary to previous claims, he was not asking for a concrete wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

On Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California named the Democratic House members who will serve on the bipartisan committee to evaluate border security. They are Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey of New York, Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security Chairwoman Lucille Roybal-Allard of California, David Price of North Carolina, Barbara Lee of California, Henry Cuellar of Texas and Pete Aguilar of California. House Republicans had yet to name members to the committee by late Saturday.

In the Senate, those who will serve on the bipartisan committee are Democrats Jon Tester of Montana, ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Republicans Richard Shelby of Alabama, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Roy Blunt of Missouri.

Trump tweets

The president issued a series of tweets Saturday morning about the shutdown and the wall, saying that after two previous caravans of thousands of migrants had been turned away at the southern U.S. border, a new caravan with at least 8,000 people had formed in Mexico and was headed for the U.S.

Trump then noted, “21 days goes very quickly. Negotiations with Democrats will start immediately. Will not be easy to make a deal, both parties very dug in. The case for National Security has been greatly enhanced by what has been happening at the Border & through dialogue. We will build the Wall!”

The date for Trump’s delivery of his State of the Union address to Congress was still unknown. It was originally scheduled for Jan. 29, but Pelosi delayed the address, citing the shutdown.
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A dozen immigrant workers at one of President Donald Trump’s golf clubs in New York who are in the U.S. illegally were fired this month, even though managers knew about their legal status for years, a lawyer for the workers said Saturday. 

As the president railed against immigrants coming into the country illegally during the government shutdown, a manager at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County called a dozen immigrant workers into a room one by one Jan. 18 and fired them, said lawyer Anibal Romero. 

Many of them had worked at the club for a dozen or more years, he said, and managers knew they had submitted phony documents but looked the other way. 

The firings came after workers at another Trump club in New Jersey came forward last month to say managers there had hired them knowing they were in the country illegally, and had even helped one obtain phony documents.  

The crackdown at the New York club was first reported by The Washington Post. 

A message seeking comment was left with the Trump Organization.  
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The longest government shutdown in U.S. history ended Friday when President Donald Trump delayed his demand for funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, signing a three-week spending bill that will reopen shuttered agencies and get back pay to 800,000 federal workers. But as VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, the short-term funding is meant to buy lawmakers time to address border security.
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U.S. President Donald Trump broke from his non-interventionist foreign policy this week, when he recognized Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guiado as the country’s interim president. The move increased tensions between Caracas and Washington, as President Nicolas Maduro kicked out American diplomats and the U.S. president said “all options are on the table.” White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.
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Roger Stone, the Republican political operative indicted Friday by the grand jury investigating Russian election interference, is a longtime friend and confidante of President Donald Trump who helped pave the way for the real estate mogul’s unforeseen ascent to the White House.

A self-described “dirty trickster” with a taste for loud suits and colorful language, Stone, 66, has known Trump since the late 1970s when Stone, a young veteran of Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election team, was campaigning for another Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, and courting supporters for his campaign in New York.

As Stone recalled in a 2016 interview with PBS’ Frontline program, Trump, a brash real estate developer and a registered Republican at the time, offered to help the campaign even though “he emphasized that he was a businessman, that he wasn’t that political.”

“For those who say he’s not a conservative, he’s not a Republican, he was there in the Reagan revolution,” Stone said.

​In Trump orbit

Stone has remained in Trump’s orbit ever since, by turns serving as a lobbyist, business consultant, and political confidante.

In the 1980s, Trump hired Stone, then a Washington lobbyist, to represent him in the nation’s capital to deal with “a number of small but important issues” involving the businessman’s Atlantic City casinos and other properties.

For his part, Stone, viewing Trump as a larger-than-life figure “who’s got it all” — charisma, wealth, standing — pressed Trump to run for president.

In 1988, as Reagan’s second term was winding down, Stone arranged for Trump to travel to New Hampshire, site of the nation’s first presidential primary, to address a crowd of 2,000 well-wishers. Trump liked the “publicity” and the “notoriety” but was not “serious about running,” Stone recalled in the interview.

Trump made a more serious albeit ultimately unsuccessful run for the White House in 2000, but it wasn’t until Trump declared his candidacy for president in 2015 that Stone began to see his decadeslong push to put Trump in the White House within reach.

Stone joined his friend’s long-shot campaign early on in 2015 but left shortly thereafter for reasons that remain in dispute. The campaign said at the time that Stone had been fired, but Stone maintained that he’d left on his own.

Whatever the case, the parting of ways did not stop Stone from serving as loud cheerleader of Trump’s presidential bid. He set up a super PAC, the Committee to Restore America’s Greatness, paying for a billboard in New York’s Times Square depicting Trump as Superman.

As the campaign shifted into high gear, Stone drew wide scrutiny after WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy activist group, released thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Prosecutors say Russian military intelligence agents hacked the emails and then funneled them to WikiLeaks as part of Moscow’s effort to disrupt the election.

After the first WikiLeaks email dump in July 2016, Stone insinuated in social media comments that the website was planning to release Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.

In an August tweet, Stone wrote, “Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary.” In October, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account.

​Merely ‘bluffing’

Peter Flaherty, chairman and chief executive officer of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center and a friend of Stone, said Stone was merely “bluffing and double dealing as all political consultants do.”

“If you want to make that a crime, the jails around Washington, D.C., would be pretty full,” Flaherty said.

Flaherty said Stone’s role in Trump’s election has been exaggerated.

“Roger and Donald Trump have had an on-again, off-again relationship over the years,” he said. “Trump respected his opinion on many things but I don’t think he was his closest adviser or somehow quarterbacked the presidential race. It’s just not the case.”

Stone has long denied advance knowledge of the email release.

In September 2017, he appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, testifying that he had no direct contact with WikiLeaks during the campaign, did not direct anyone to contact WikiLeaks, and that he did not discuss his conversations with an intermediary to WikiLeaks with the Trump campaign.

But prosecutors say those statements were all false. Stone, they say, was in close contact with the Trump campaign as he was trying to find out when WikiLeaks was planning to publish its next batch of damaging emails and documents about the Clinton campaign.

After WikiLeaks released its first batch of the Podesta emails on Oct. 7, an associate of a senior Trump campaign official sent a text message to Stone that read “well done,” according to the indictment.

Stone was arrested by FBI agents at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, early Friday after a grand jury in Washington handed down an indictment, charging him with five counts of making false statements, one count of obstruction of a legal proceeding, and one count of witness tampering.

According to the indictment, not only did Stone lie to Congress about his interactions with WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign, but he also tried to prevent an associate, Randy Credico, from providing testimony to Congress that would contradict Stone’s version of events.
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While other Democrats around the country are preparing for presidential runs, a retired Army paratrooper and former West Virginia lawmaker Friday became the first to call off his White House bid after about two months as a candidate.

Richard Ojeda says he isn’t getting the money or attention needed to sustain a campaign.

“The last thing I want to do is accept money from people who are struggling for a campaign that does not have the ability to compete,” he wrote in a statement on social media.

The tattooed veteran who recently ran for Congress announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president on Veterans Day at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington.

Ojeda said he was told as a child that anyone could grow up to be president.

“I now realize that this is not the case. Unless someone has extreme wealth or holds influence and power it just isn’t true,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

Ojeda was elected to the West Virginia Senate in 2016 and became a champion of teachers during their fight for better pay and benefits. He sponsored successful legislation to make medical marijuana legal, and has stressed health care and economic issues in a district reeling from lost coal jobs.

On Friday, he said he’ll make an announcement soon about his future.
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Potential Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said Friday that Donald Trump’s presidency “cannot be helped” and was “dangerous” for the country.

The former New York City mayor also described the partial government shutdown, now at a record 35th day, as “a complete failure of presidential leadership.”

The billionaire businessman said that for fellow New Yorker Trump, “the art of the deal is simply cheating people and not caring about how badly they get hurt and now he’s doing it to the American people.”

Bloomberg also told a meeting of the Democratic Business Council of Northern Virginia that he thinks “it’s clear that this president, at this point, cannot be helped.”

The remarks by Bloomberg, a former Republican who registered as a Democrat only last fall, were some of his toughest against Trump since Bloomberg’s speech to the Democratic National Convention more than two years ago. Back then, Bloomberg warned of the prospect of a Trump presidency: “God help us.”

Bloomberg reflected upon that 2016 speech repeatedly on Friday, and he went further, suggesting that the government shutdown has proved that his initial warning about Trump was correct.

“The presidency is not an entry level job. There’s just too much at stake,” Bloomberg said. “And the longer we have a pretend CEO who’s recklessly running this country, the worst it’s going to be for our economy and our security.

He added: “This is really dangerous.”

Bloomberg’s warm reception at the business-friendly audience highlighted the chief political challenge should he enter the 2020 race. Liberal activists, who like to attack what they call “corporate Democrats,” play a far more prominent role in the primary process than do the kind of business executives who gave him a standing ovation Friday.

One of the most prominent early Democratic candidates, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has warned against the role of billionaires in the presidential primary process.

Bloomberg tried to make the case for both capitalism and a centrist candidate, suggesting that Democrats don’t need to choose between “energizing the base” and “pragmatic leadership.”

Asked about his 2020 intentions, he acknowledged that he has “a good life” and can make a difference even if he doesn’t run.

“Having said that, I don’t like walking away from challenges.”
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Jerome Corsi, a right-wing political commentator and conspiracy theorist, confirmed on Friday he is “Person 1” cited in the indictment of Roger Stone and said he no longer believed he would be charged as part of the U.S. special counsel’s Russia probe.

Stone, a self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” and ally of U.S. President Donald Trump for 40 years, was arrested on Friday on charges of lying to Congress about the release of stolen Democratic Party emails during the 2016 campaign.

The indictment details multiple communications about the emails and WikiLeaks’ plans to release them to the public between Stone and “Person 1” and “Person 2”, who are described in broad terms but not identified by name.

Corsi confirmed to Reuters that he was “Person 1.”

“I can confirm everything they report in the indictment about ‘Person 1’,” Corsi said. “I don’t see that I am being charged with any wrongdoing of any kind. I think that’s appropriate because I’ve done nothing wrong.”

July 2016 email

Among other communications, the indictment references an email from Stone in late July 2016 in which he urged Corsi to go to see Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who is living in Ecuador’s embassy in London, and to “get the pending… emails”.

Corsi, who was in Europe at the time, responded to Stone in an email on Aug. 2: “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” Corsi wrote, according to the indictment.

Corsi has said he did not receive any inside knowledge or advance notice of the planned email releases from Wikileaks and figured it out on his own based on his own research.

Corsi said in November that he had received a plea offer from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office under which they were asking him to plead guilty to one felony count of providing false information to them in return for a lighter sentence.

Deal rejected

Corsi, who said he rejected the deal because he never intentionally lied during his 40 hours of interviews with Mueller’s team, expressed concerns at the time that he would be indicted as part of the special counsel’s probe.

Corsi said he would advise Stone not to underestimate the amount of information already in Mueller’s possession.

“The Special Counsel has everything and they are extremely thorough,” said Corsi, who has filed a lawsuit against Mueller, the FBI and other agencies, claiming the government violated his Fourth Amendment due process rights.
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U.S. authorities expect to soon hand down a sentence in the case of Maria Butina, the 30-year-old Russian woman now held in a U.S. jail who has pleaded guilty of conspiring to influence American politics, accused of conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent. VOA’s Ricardo Marquina-Montanana traveled to the Siberian city of Barnaul to speak with Butina’s family about a case being watched around the world. Igor Tsikhanenka narrates.
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The Trump administration on Friday will start forcing some asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases proceed through U.S. courts, an official said, launching what could become one of the more significant changes to the immigration system in years. 

The changes will be introduced at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing, according to a U.S. official familiar with the plan who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity. San Ysidro is the nation’s busiest crossing and the choice of asylum seekers who arrived to Tijuana, Mexico, in November in a caravan of more than 6,000 mostly Central American migrants.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the Migrant Protection Protocols will return some asylum seekers to Mexico as they wait for their cases to be processed in the U.S. The announcement said Mexico will provide the migrants will all appropriate humanitarian protections for the duration of their stay.

DHS said the U.S. is “facing a security and humanitarian crisis on the Southern Border” and that is why it has implemented the MPP “to address the crisis and execute our missions to secure the border, enforce immigration and customs laws, facilitate legal trade and travel, counter traffickers, smugglers and transnational criminal organizations, and interdict drugs and illegal contraband.”

“Families and individuals traveling to the border are not a national security crisis,” said Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “They are people like you and me, except that many have left their home to seek protection form persecution and violence. We must not abandon those who have lost everything and are trying to rebuild their lives.”

Huang is a member of an international delegation traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border to observe the impact of the U.S. policy on migrants.

DHS said MPP will “discourage individuals from attempting illegal entry and making false claims to stay in the U.S., and allow more resources to be dedicated to individuals who legitimately qualify for asylum.”

DHS said it is “working closely” with the Justice Department “to streamline the process.” The agency added that it is also looking to “conclude removal proceedings as expeditiously as possible.”

The policy, which is expected to face a legal challenge, may be expanded to other crossings. It does not apply to children traveling alone or to asylum seekers from Mexico.

The plan calls for U.S. authorities to bus asylum seekers back and forth to the border for court hearings in downtown San Diego, including an initial appearance within 45 days.

The Trump administration will make no arrangements for them to consult with attorneys, who may visit clients in Tijuana or speak with them by phone.  

U.S. officials also will begin processing only about 20 asylum claims a day at the San Diego crossing but plan to ramp up to exceed the number of claims processed now, which is up to 100 a day, the official said.

​’Credible fear’

The policy could severely strain Mexican border cities. U.S. border authorities fielded 92,959 “credible fear” claims — an initial screening to have asylum considered — during a recent 12-month period, up 67 percent from a year earlier. Many were Central American families.

The “Remain in Mexico” policy is President Donald Trump’s latest move to reshape immigration policy, though it may prove temporary. Other major changes have been blocked in court, including a ban on seeking asylum for people who cross the border illegally from Mexico and generally dismissing domestic and gang violence as grounds for asylum.

It is also an early test of relations between two populist presidents — Trump and Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office Dec. 1. 

Mexican officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday. 

Roberto Velasquez, spokesman for Mexico’s foreign relations secretary, emphasized earlier this week that there would be no bilateral agreement and that Mexico was responding to a unilateral move by the United States. He said in an interview that discussions covering “a very broad range of topics” were aimed at preparing Mexico for the change.

Broad outlines of the plan were announced Dec. 20, but details were not revealed until Thursday. Mexico said last month that people seeking asylum in the U.S. would get temporary humanitarian visas while their cases were settled in the U.S., which can take years, and could seek permission to work in Mexico.

Mexico has started issuing humanitarian visas to Central Americans as another major caravan makes its way through the southern part of the country.  

While illegal crossings from Mexico are at historically low levels, the U.S. has witnessed a surge in asylum claims, especially from Central American families. Because of a lack of family detention space and a court-imposed 20-day limit on detaining children, they are typically released with a notice to appear in immigration court. With a backlog of more than 800,000 cases, it can take years to settle cases.

Tijuana’s effects

It’s not clear if Central Americans will be deterred from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they have to wait in Tijuana, a booming city with plenty of jobs. Tijuana doesn’t come close to matching the U.S. on wages, and asylum seekers generally have far fewer family ties there than they do in the U.S.

Incoming Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard has said Mexico will coordinate with the U.S. on the policy’s mechanics, which would ensure migrants access to information and legal services. Ebrard said Dec. 24 that he wanted more information to ensure “orderly and secure” protocols.

Rafael Fernandez de Castro, director of the University of California-San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies, said last week that Mexico had not fully considered the impact on Mexican border towns. 

“This could have lasting repercussions for Mexican border cities,” Fernandez de Castro said. “We have to assess the potential numbers and how to help them stay healthy. We don’t have that assessment.” 

VOA contributed to this report.
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A Republican U.S. representative on Thursday introduced White House-drafted legislation that would give President Donald Trump more power to levy tariffs on imported goods in an effort to pressure other countries to lower their duties and other trade barriers.

The measure offered by Representative Sean Duffy, which has been touted by Trump administration officials, has already been declared unacceptable by some Republican senators, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.

Democrats, who control the House of Representatives and its legislative agenda, are unlikely to grant Trump more executive authority, especially as a standoff over the partial government shutdown drags on. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Reciprocal Trade Act, which Trump was expected to highlight in his now-delayed State of the Union address, would give him authority to levy tariffs equal to those of a foreign country on a particular product if that country’s tariffs are determined to be significantly lower than those charged by the United States.

It would also allow Trump to take into account non-tariff barriers when determining such tariffs.

Trump has invoked trade laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s to levy tariffs on steel and aluminum on national security grounds and has applied tariffs on imports from China based on U.S. findings that Beijing is misappropriating U.S. intellectual property through forced technology transfers and other means.

The United States has lower tariffs than many other countries, such as its 2.5 percent levy on imported passenger vehicles compared with the European Union’s 10 percent tariff.

But increasing them and applying them in a country-specific manner would effectively be a violation of the World Trade Organization’s most fundamental rule, that tariffs must be applied globally and cannot be raised unilaterally except in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases.

“The goal of the U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act is not to raise America’s tariffs but rather to encourage the rest of the world to lower theirs,” Duffy said in a statement, adding that the authority would be a negotiating tool to pressure other countries to lower their tariffs.
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Republicans on the U.S. nuclear power regulator approved a stripped-down safety rule Thursday that removes the need for nuclear plants to take extra measures based on recent science to protect against hazards such as floods and earthquakes.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a board with three Republican seats and two Democratic seats, approved the rule on a 3-2 vote along party lines. Dissents are rare on the NRC and the two members who hold Democratic seats strongly disagreed with the approval.

They said the Republican decision could allow plants to avoid protections against risks of natural disasters that have become apparent with science methods that have evolved since most plants were built about 40 years ago.

A draft rule that included the measures was formed following the 2011 nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant that was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami, forcing more than 160,000 people from their homes. The draft was presented to the commission in 2016.

Arguments against

Commissioner Jeff Baran, a Democrat, said NRC staff had included the extra safety measures in the draft after years of work, but Republicans had jettisoned them.

“Instead of requiring nuclear power plants to be prepared for the actual flooding and earthquake hazards that could occur at their sites, the NRC will allow them to be prepared only for the old out-of-date hazards typically calculated decades ago when the science of seismology and hydrology was far less advanced than it is today,” Baran said after the vote.

Stephen Burns, a registered independent whom former President Barack Obama appointed to a Democratic seat on the commission, also voted against the measure.

Argument in favor

NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki, a Republican, said after the vote that the commission’s work since 2011 has resulted in “tangible safety improvements at every U.S. nuclear power plant.”

Svinicki said that although the Democrats were concerned that the rule ignores flooding and earthquake hazards, “in the view of the commission majority this is not the case.”

Regulations already in place already address the issues, she added.

A nuclear power safety advocate said new information showed that plants may experience bigger floods and earthquakes than they are now required to withstand, and that it is possible the commission will not require nuclear plants that face greater hazards to make upgrades.

“Nuclear plants must be protected against the most severe natural disasters they could face today — not those estimated 40 years ago,” said Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would accept a deal to at least temporarily reopen the federal government if it contained a “pro-rated down payment” on the U.S.-Mexico border wall he has sought for two years.

Trump told reporters at the White House the country had no choice but to build a wall to keep out what he said was a “virtual invasion” by criminals, human traffickers and drugs.

Trump said he blamed himself for the large number of immigrants who want to enter the United States, crediting himself for a strong economy and what he said was a record number of people employed.

But he said anyone who wanted to come to the U.S. had to do so legally.

Senate bills rejected

Earlier Thursday, the Senate failed to end the shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — when it voted down two competing proposals that would have ended the 34-day impasse over funding for the wall.

A Republican measure incorporating Trump’s $5.7 billion request for wall construction, in addition to limited immigration reforms and government funding through the current fiscal year, failed to advance by a 50-47 vote.  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had called the Republican bill, “a pragmatic compromise that could end this impasse right away. The choice is absolutely clear and the nation is watching.” 

McConnell emphasized that the Republican plan was the only one that would have received the president’s signature. But Senate Democrats pushed back against the White House offer.

“If it were a compromise, the president would have talked to us about it,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. He went on to say that policy disagreements over immigration could be worked out, but “the difference that’s hard to resolve is a party and a president who believe in government shutdowns.”

A Democratic proposal went down by a vote of 52-44, despite getting six Republican votes. The measure contained no border security or immigration provisions and was designed to reopen shuttered federal agencies and provide a two-week window for congressional leaders and the White House to negotiate a deal on immigration. 

Both proposals required 60 votes to advance in the 100-member chamber. Republicans have a 53-47 Senate majority.

Congressional action has not been limited to the Senate. The Democrat-led House of Representatives has passed multiple bills restoring federal spending authority but omitting wall funding from all of them.

A growing number of lawmakers of both parties have said compromise is the only way to end the political stalemate and reopen the government.

“It is long overdue for all sides to come together, to engage in constructive debate and compromise to end this standoff,” Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said. “Shutdowns represent the ultimate failure to govern and should never be used as a weapon to achieve an outcome.”

Some missing 2nd paycheck 

The shutdown has furloughed 800,000 government employees, with at least 420,000 forced to continue working without pay and the remainder sent home. Some of them have been forced to look for temporary work elsewhere to help pay their household bills. All are set to miss their second biweekly paycheck on Friday.

Some government services have been curtailed. About 10 percent of airport security agents ordered to work have instead called in sick, some food inspections have been cut back, and museums and parks are closed. Federal courts could run out of money by the end of the month. 

Trump said he understood that people need to keep their pantries full. He said he “loves and respects” federal workers and appreciated the work they do. 

But he did not try to explain a comment Thursday by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Ross, who is a multimillionaire, told CNBC television he could not understand why a furloughed federal worker would have to turn to a food bank for help when he could simply take out a loan from a bank or credit union. 

“So there really is not a good excuse why there should be a liquidity crisis,” Ross said. “Now, true, the people might have to pay a little bit of interest, but the idea that it’s paycheck or zero is not a really valid idea.”​

His remarks followed those by Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara, who said Wednesday that missed paychecks and empty wallets caused “a little bit of pain.”

“But it’s going to be for the future of our country, and their children and their grandchildren and generations after them will thank them for their sacrifice right now,” she said. “But the president is trying every single day to come up with a good solution here, and the reality is it’s been something that’s gone on for too long and been unaddressed — our immigration problem.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said the comments reflected a “let-them-eat-cake attitude.” 
…