Thursday is the sixth day of a partial U.S. government shutdown, and it is unlikely to be the day that brings a resolution in the standoff between President Donald Trump and Congress.

Trump has insisted on getting $5 billion in funding for a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, while Democrats have objected and instead said they would agree to $1.3 billion in other border security spending.

When asked Wednesday how long he thinks the shutdown will last, Trump told reporters, “Whatever it takes.”

“I mean, we’re going to have a wall. We’re going to have safety.”

He declined to comment about the prospect of backing away from his demand for $5 billion in wall funding and instead accepting the lower figure for border security.

Democratic leaders in Congress have blamed Trump for “plunging the country into chaos.”

“The president wanted the shutdown, but seems not to know how to get himself out of it,” Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a joint statement.”

Whatever the solution the two sides eventually find to fund about one-quarter of the government it will have to be approved by both houses of Congress and signed by Trump.

​No votes Thursday

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives told members not to expect any votes Thursday, and that they would be given 24 hours’ notice before any votes take place. Many lawmakers went home this week for the Christmas holiday.

In the Senate, the chamber’s calendar says it will reconvene Thursday for discussion of the spending issue, but how many members will be present remains to be seen.

Perhaps further complicating the ongoing discussions is that currently Republicans hold majorities in both the House and Senate, but in one week Democrats will take over in the House while Republicans will add a few seats to their Senate advantage.

​800,000 workers affected

The shutdown is affecting about 800,000 federal workers. About half of them are going to work but will not be paid until the shutdown is over. The rest are at home waiting to find out if Congress will follow what it has done in the past and approve pay for them as well.

Trump said Monday he has the backing of federal workers and that they want him to stick to his demand for the wall funding.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of U.S. federal workers, rejected that statement Wednesday.

“They are eager to get back to work. They unequivocally oppose using shutdowns as a means of resolving policy disputes,” AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said. “This is not about a wall, this is about 800,000 real people with real families and real bills to pay.”

AFGE membership includes some Voice of America employees.

White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett said the shutdown is merely a temporary problem for affected federal employees.

“They might miss a pay period because the government shut down,” Hassett told reporters Wednesday. “But in the end, even if they aren’t working, then Congress has decided to pay people for the whole time. So in the end, it’s really just a sort of short-term problem not a long-term problem for government workers.”
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The current lapse in funding for portions of the U.S. government could be a harbinger of congressional gridlock and dysfunction next year, when Democrats will control the House of Representatives while Republicans continue their control of the Senate.

With a partial federal shutdown nearing the one-week mark, a spending package has yet to emerge that could pass both houses of Congress and receive President Donald Trump’s signature. Funding for wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border remains a sticking point.

The standoff comes during the waning days of unified Republican control of the elective branches of government. Congress will see divided political control beginning Jan. 3, when the new Democratic majority in the House is sworn in.

“The incentive for either party to cooperate across the aisle [bipartisanship] will be a little bit lower because both parties will be looking increasingly to blame the other side for not getting things done,” said political analyst Molly Reynolds of the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Reynolds added that there are “some possible prospects for bipartisanship on things like [improving America’s] infrastructure or [reducing the price of] prescription drugs, but by and large we’ll see relatively little legislative progress in 2019.”

The year 2010 saw the mirror image of the 2018 midterm election results. In 2010, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and used it as a check on then-president Barack Obama, a Democrat, as well as what was then a Democratically led Senate. Legislative gridlock and a series of partial U.S. government shutdowns ensued beginning in 2011.

“Just as in 2011 and 2012, [in 2019] we’re going to see almost no progress on the major issues facing the country, with one possible exception, infrastructure, where the interests of House Democrats and the president may come together,” American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein said.

‘A judge factory’

Beginning in January, Democrats will be able to use their House majority to block any legislation to which they object. But in one critical area, judicial nominees, Republicans will have a stronger hand to confirm Trump’s picks for lifetime appointments to the federal bench and make the judiciary far more ideologically conservative for years, perhaps decades, to come.

Republicans will hold 53 of 100 Senate seats, up from the 51 they currently control.

“While most things the Senate does need to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, nominations only need 51 votes,” Reynolds explained.

“The Senate has become a judge factory,” Ornstein said. “[Republican Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell is bringing up a substantial number of judges. With 53 [Republican senators], you can withstand one, two or even three defections [Republican ‘no’ votes], and still get it done. So for McConnell, this is a substantial amount of breathing room.”

Oversight, investigations

House Democrats, meanwhile, have signaled their intention to scrutinize and investigate the Trump White House and the administration as a whole.

“I expect Democrats to spend most of their time on oversight and engaging in a wide range of investigations, some of which will target President Trump personally as well as the conduct of the executive branch over the last two years,” Reynolds said.

The November 2020 presidential election could increasingly set the parameters of what a divided Congress can tackle as 2019 progresses. Some things, like an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws, could be out of reach.

“We’re about to enter the 2020 presidential campaign [cycle], and that will affect how Congress spends its time, what issues it’s active on. I don’t want to dismiss the possibility of immigration reform in the next two years outright, but I do think it will be an uphill battle for Congress,” Reynolds said.

“We have a divided country, we’ll have divided government,” John Fortier of the Bipartisan Policy Center said. “There are a few opportunities [for bipartisanship]. The trick in divided government is not to think that we’re going to do everything together, but to find some discreet larger initiatives that both sides might find some interest in.”

Changes in party control of one or both houses of Congress occurred in 2007, 2011 and 2015, and will occur again in 2019. Throughout it all, Congress has suffered low approval ratings from the American people, a situation that is unlikely to improve anytime soon.

“We’re going to have sharper partisan edges in the body, a lot of partisan and ideological combat, tribal combat, in the coming years,” Ornstein said. “It’s hard for me to imagine that Americans are going to feel better about things.”

Reynolds agreed. “Gridlock is likely to keep most Americans not terribly happy with how Washington works,” she said.
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President Donald Trump made an unannounced trip to Iraq Wednesday to visit U.S. troops stationed there.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump landed at al-Asad air base in western Iraq at 7:16 p.m. local time.

They left Washington late Christmas night, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.

This is Trump’s first visit to a conflict zone as president. The trip was undertaken in near secrecy.

Syria withdrawal

In speaking to the troops, Trump defended his decision to withdraw from Syria, saying that Islamic State (IS) is “very nearly defeated” and the caliphate is gone.

“I made it clear from the beginning that our mission in Syria was to strip ISIS of its military strongholds,” Trump said, using an acronym for the militant group.

“Eight years ago, we went there for three months and we never left,” he said, adding the U.S presence in Syria was never meant to be “open-ended.”

Trump said Turkey has agreed to eliminate any IS “remnants” in the region.

“The nations of the region must step up and take more responsibility for their future,” Trump said, adding there would be an “orderly withdrawal” of the roughly 2,000 U.S. forces in Syria.

​Greeting the troops

The president and first lady greeted troops in a dining hall, taking photos and signing autographs as part of the visit. They left three hours later.

On the return to Washington, Air Force One stopped briefly at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, where Trump met with several U.S. Air Force leaders, and he and the first lady took photos with U.S. service members there.

Trump did not meet with any Iraqi officials during his short visit to the country, but he did speak on the phone with Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

Trump’s visit to Iraq came a day after he held a video conference from the Oval Office with military members around the globe. After the call, he was criticized by some media outlets that reported he is first president since 2002 to not visit U.S. troops at Christmastime.

 

WATCH: Trump Visits US Troops in Iraq on Unannounced Trip

Presidential visits

Visiting U.S. troops in conflict zones is a tradition embraced by U.S. presidents because it is seen as a morale-booster for troops.

President George W. Bush visited U.S. troops stationed overseas eight times during his presidency, including serving a Thanksgiving meal to soldiers in Baghdad in 2003. President Barak Obama visited troops in Baghdad in April 2009, four months after he took office. He also visited troops in Afghanistan and South Korea.

The Pentagon said there are about 5,200 U.S. forces in Iraq.

In Washington, a partial shutdown has closed a quarter of the U.S. government after Congress failed to fund Trump’s proposed wall on the southern border with Mexico.

Last week, Trump made the controversial move of announcing plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. He also is considering withdrawing roughly half of the more than 14,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan, beginning next month.

Trump’s senior advisers and military officials have warned the move will plunge the region further into chaos.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter IS, Brett McGurk, have both resigned, at least in part in disagreement over policy in Syria and Afghanistan.
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The partial shutdown of the U.S. government entered its fifth day Wednesday, with no public indication a resolution is imminent.

President Donald Trump spoke about the shutdown Tuesday, asserting that it will continue until his demand for funds to construct a U.S.-Mexico border wall are met.

“I can’t tell you when the government is going to be open. I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall, a fence, whatever they’d like to call it,” Trump said in the Oval Office after a video conference with U.S. troops, who are stationed overseas.

Trump claimed the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are furloughed due to the shutdown also want the wall, despite a lack of evidence supporting the contention.

On Monday, Trump asserted Democrats “must end” the standoff while Democratic leaders in Congress blamed Trump for “plunging the country into chaos.”

“The president wanted the shutdown, but seems not to know how to get himself out of it,” Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a joint statement. ”

While government agencies dealing with national security and public safety remain open, other offices are closed and 800,000 federal workers are on furlough. Those who are considered to be essential employees are reporting for duty, but will not get a paycheck for that work until the shutdown is over.

Trump has demanded $5 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats have offered $1.3 billion for other border security measures.

The president canceled his Christmas vacation to his Florida resort because of the impasse with Congress.

“I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security,” he tweeted Monday. “At some point, the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy.”

 
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The year 2018 proved to be one of change in U.S. politics.  Opposition Democrats won back control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections, and that could have a profound impact on the next two years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

A preview of what the year ahead could look like came in the December 11 Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Democratic congressional leaders Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer.

The verbal jousting over the president’s demand for a border wall with Mexico is likely the first of many partisan showdowns ahead given that Democrats will hold the majority in the House beginning in early January.

“Democrats will certainly use their majority to highlight some differences with Donald Trump and to investigate the Trump administration,” said John Fortier of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a recent guest on VOA’s “Encounter” program. “And then we will be spending this year leading into the presidential election of 2020, so it is a transition year.”

Investigations ahead

 

Democrats fueled their midterm victory with opposition to President Donald Trump spurred by a strong turnout from women and progressive voters on behalf of candidates like Massachusetts Democrat Ayanna Pressley.

“We have affirmed that while this could go down as the darkest time in our history, we will not let it be. And instead, we will be defined by our hopes, not our fears,” Pressley told supporters on election night.

Democrats picked up 40 House seats but Republicans bolstered their majority in the Senate and will hold a 53-to-47-seat edge in January.

Even though Trump now faces the prospect of a stalled legislative agenda and numerous oversight investigations launched by House Democrats, he remains defiant.

“Almost from the time I announced I was going to run, they have been giving us this investigation fatigue. It has been a long time,” the president told a White House news conference shortly after the election. “They have got nothing. Zero. You know why? Because there is nothing. But they can play that game but we can play it better.”

Deal or no deal?

But Democratic control of the House will force the president to adjust to a new political reality, according to University of Virginia expert Larry Sabato.

“Trump has faced relatively few problems in dealing with Congress [in his first two years] at least compared to other presidents who were dealing with one or both branches being controlled by the opposition party,” Sabato told Associated Press Television.

Trump can boast of his tax cut passed by a Republican Congress and his two Supreme Court appointments approved by the Republican-controlled Senate.

But next year, without full Republican control of Congress, and with an eye on an approaching re-election campaign, Trump could be more interested in cutting some deals with Democrats.

Jim Kessler is with the center-left policy group Third Way.

“At this point we have not seen Donald Trump really have the ability to work with Democrats to cut any sort of deal in the first two years,” Kessler told VOA. “So, Mr. ‘Art of the Deal’ has really fallen short and we will see if that is possible this time.”

Russia probe looms

Also looming on the horizon for the Trump White House in 2019, though, is the Russia investigation, which could move toward a conclusion in the coming months.

“This is a watershed year coming up for President Trump,” said Tom DeFrank of the National Journal, who has covered Washington politics for 40 years. “I mean, he [Trump] is going to have to confront whatever it is that Robert Mueller says about him or alleges, and I think it is going to be a difficult year for him.”

Trump will be increasingly focused on the next presidential election, but so will scores of Democrats who hope to defeat him in 2020, said University of Virginia analyst Guian McKee.

“You know, I think the reality is that the 2020 campaign has begun. That is probably unfortunate, but that shapes everything going forward,” said McKee.

Given the political reset between Congress and the White House and the uncertainty of what the Russia investigation will find, what happens in 2019 could go a long way to determining whether Donald Trump is a one-term or two-term president.
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The year 2018 proved to be one of change in U.S. politics. Opposition Democrats won back control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections, and that could have a profound impact on the next two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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The partial shutdown of the U.S. government has moved no closer to a resolution, with President Donald Trump asserting on Tuesday the shutdown will continue until his demand for funds to construct a U.S.-Mexico border wall are met.

“I can’t tell you when the government is going to be open. I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall, a fence, whatever they’d like to call it,” Trump said in the Oval Office after a video conference with U.S. troops, who are stationed overseas.

Trump claimed the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are furloughed due to the shutdown also want the wall, despite a lack of evidence supporting the contention.

On Monday, Trump asserted Democrats “must end” the standoff while Democratic leaders in Congress blamed Trump for “plunging the country into chaos.”

The two sides traded their accusations ahead of Christmas, the fourth day in which parts of the government are closed because Congress and Trump have not been able to agree on necessary spending legislation.

While government agencies dealing with national security and public safety remain open, other offices are closed and 800,000 federal workers are on furlough. Those who are considered to be essential employees are reporting for duty, but will not get a paycheck for that work until the shutdown is over.

“The president wanted the shutdown, but seems not to know how to get himself out of it,” Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a joint statement.

“The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war on the Federal Reserve after he just fired the secretary of defense,” they said.

Trump has demanded $5 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats have offered $1.3 billion for other border security measures. 

The president canceled his Christmas vacation to his Florida resort because of the impasse with Congress.

“I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security,” he tweeted Monday. “At some point, the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy.”

Another Trump tweet claimed “virtually every Democrat” strongly supported a “Border Wall or Fence” but turned against the idea after he made it an important part of his campaign for president.

Most Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have rallied around Trump’s demand.

“One would think that securing our homeland, controlling our borders and protecting the American people, would be bipartisan priorities…a core duty of any nation’s government,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.

In the past, Democrats have been open to approving additional border security funding, including money for a wall, as part of a larger deal on immigration reform.

Earlier this year, Democrats were willing to support wall funding in return for protections for so-called “Dreamers” — immigrants brought to America illegally as children – a deal Trump initially hailed but later abandoned. 

Democrats say Trump was willing to sign a deal to keep the government operating without the full $5 billion, but backed out after those Schumer calls and “right-wing radio and TV talk show hosts” complained.

“Different people from the same White House are saying different things about what the president would accept or not accept…making it impossible to know where they stand at any given moment,” Schumer and Pelosi said.

What is certain, though, is the government will remain closed at least through Thursday and, according to acting Chief of Staff Nick Mulvaney, quite possibly into 2019.
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As the first two years of President Donald Trump’s administration close, Republican allies still haven’t figured out how best to influence a leader who takes cues from the forces that swept him to office and seems to fear losing them above all else.

Republicans on Capitol Hill and even the president’s closest advisers have been whipsawed over a series of recent actions that show how intently Trump relies on what is sometimes called his gut — an adherence to campaign promises he made that are being reinforced by a constellation of election gurus, Fox News personalities and others who hold sway like few others.

 

“I know he can be a handful, but he is the president,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told The Associated Press.

 

On the domestic front, no sooner had Trump signaled he might be backing off his demand for $5 billion to build a border wall with Mexico — easing away from a partial government shutdown — than he took a U-turn after being scolded by conservative allies and pundits, who accused him of wavering on a campaign promise. Now, three days into the shutdown, his budget chief says it could drag into the New Year.

 

On issues abroad, Trump acted against the advice of his national security advisers and issued a surprise decision to pull troops from Syria. That prompted Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to step down and Trump’s special envoy to the coalition fighting Islamic State militants, Brett McGurk, to resign. A drawdown of troops in Afghanistan also appeared to be in the works.

 

As the stock market tumbled on Christmas Eve, Trump lashed out at the Federal Reserve sowing more uncertainty over his public criticism of chairman Jerome Powell.

 

Now, as Republicans prepare to relinquish their hold on government, with Democrats taking control of the House in January, the opportunities — and limits — of the GOP alliance with the Trump White House may be running their course.

 

“I am all alone [poor me] in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal,” the president tweeted.

 

Over and again, Trump has shown himself to be more of a tactical, than strategic, thinker, acting to avoid short-term pain rather than seeking long-term gain.

When Congress was about to keep the government running without a fight over border wall money, Trump felt the outcry from his base and intervened.

 

Trump told House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders at the White House he wouldn’t sign a Senate-passed compromise bill, which would have kept border security money at $1.3 billion, not the $5 billion he wanted for the wall with Mexico.

 

The House and Senate gaveled in for a brief Christmas Eve session Monday only to close up quickly for the holidays.

 

“Trump is plunging the country into chaos,” the Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement. “Instead of bringing certainty into people’s lives, he’s continuing the Trump Shutdown just to please right-wing radio and TV hosts.”

 

Trump’s sudden moves on Syria left top Republicans on Capitol Hill criticizing his decision to pull out all of the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signed on to a letter with other GOP senators urging Trump to reconsider.

 

Graham used a weekend luncheon with conservative lawmakers at the White House to impress on the president the rightness of his instinct on both the border wall and the troop withdrawal in Syria, while also sharing with Trump some ideas for smoothing the policy around both issues.

 

“I told the president, I’m not arguing with your general philosophy,” Graham said. “He’s a good listener.”

 

Graham reminded Trump that while shoring up the border wall is important, “a Southern wall isn’t going to protect you against ISIS.”

 

It’s unclear if Trump was listening. The Pentagon said Monday that Mattis has already signed the order to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria.

 

And Mattis, who was also unhappy with Trump’s order to develop plans to pull out half of the 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, was being pushed out two months early. Irritated by a surge of criticism over his decision, Trump said Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will take over as acting secretary on Jan. 1.

 

Trump’s allies chock up the president’s year-end moves to a wager that the intense support from his base of voters will continue to propel his electoral chances in 2020 — even if polling suggests otherwise.

 

An analysis of VoteCast, a nationwide poll of more than 115,000 midterm voters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, highlights the fractures.

 

A small, but significant slice of voters — the 18 percent who described themselves as only “somewhat” approving of the president — expressed concerns.

 

Compared with the 27 percent of voters who describe themselves as strong Trump supporters, the “somewhat” Trump voters are much more likely to disapprove of Trump on key issues and have reservations about his personality.

 

In a warning signs for Republicans, who just lost their House majority in the November election, those voters are more likely to have voted for Democrats in 2018. They are more educated, somewhat more likely to be women, and more likely to live in suburbs.

 

The president has been busy on the phone to allies on Capitol Hill, talking late into the night with some.

 

Trump seemed “exuberant” at the luncheon, said one Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who was the only member of the GOP leadership to attend.

 

Ryan, who is retiring, and McConnell have become almost side actors to the year-end shutdown they both tried to avoid, but now will partly own. Both offices said it was up to Trump and Democrats to cut a deal.

 

Shelby said that at lunch Trump did seem like he wanted to reach a deal. At the same time, it’s not always clear whether any of the hours of conversation result in decisions that drift too far from Trump’s own instinct to stay close to his base.

 

“I don’t think it’s imminent we’re going to reach a deal,” Shelby said. “I wish we could.”

 
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2018 has been dubbed “The Year of the Woman,” after a record number of women were electetd to national, state and local legislatures across the United States. The diverse group includes several first-timers who took the leap into politics in response to the Trump administration’s policies. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni reports.
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The two Congressional Democratic leaders are blaming President Donald Trump for “plunging the country into chaos” on Christmas Eve – when, according to the carol, all is supposed to be “calm and bright.”

“The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war on the Federal Reserve after he just fired the secretary of defense,” Senator Chuck Schumer and incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday.

“The president wanted the shutdown, but seems not to know how to get himself out of it,” they wrote in a joint statement.

Schumer and Pelosi were referring to the partial federal government shutdown which enters its fourth day on Christmas, with no clear end in sight.

Trump is demanding $5 billion for a wall along the U.S. – Mexican border. Democrats say no way and have offered $1.3 billion for what they call border security.

The president canceled his Christmas vacation to his Florida resort because of the impasse with Congress.

“I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security,” he tweeted Monday. “At some point, the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy.”

Another Trump tweet claimed “virtually every Democrat” strongly supported a “Border Wall or Fence” but turned against the idea after he made it an important part of his campaign for president.

Most Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have rallied around Trump’s demand.

“One would think that securing our homeland, controlling our borders and protecting the American people, would be bipartisan priorities…a core duty of any nation’s government,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said  of Kentucky has said.

In the past, Democrats have been flexible on additional border security funding, including money for a wall, as part of a larger deal on thorny immigration issues.

Earlier this year, Democrats were willing to support wall funding in return for protections for so-called “Dreamers” – illegal immigrants brought to America as children  a deal Trump initially hailed but later abandoned.

Democrats say saying Trump was willing to sign a deal to keep the government operating without the full $5 billion, but backed out after those Schumer calls “right-wing radio and TV talk show hosts” complained.

“Different people from the same White House are saying different things about what the president would accept or not accept…making it impossible to know where they stand at any given moment,” Schumer and Pelosi said.

What is certain, though, is the government will remain closed at least through Thursday and, according to acting Chief of Staff Nick Mulvaney, into 2019.

While government agencies dealing with national security and public safety remain open, other offices are closed and 800,000 federal workers are on furlough. Those who are considered to be essential employees are reporting for duty, but are working for no pay.

Congress has always approved back pay for all federal workers after past shutdowns.
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