House Democrats, with support from seven Republicans, voted to end the partial government shutdown Thursday night by funding the shuttered agencies without any money for President Trump's border wall. Trump said he wouldn't sign the bills without $5 billion for the wall, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reiterated that he won't force Trump to use his veto. "The Senate will not take up any proposal that does not have a real chance of passing this chamber and getting a presidential signature," he said on the Senate floor. He called the House bills "political statements rather than serious solutions."
New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reminded McConnell that Congress doesn't work for the president. "What we're asking the Republicans in the Senate to do is to take 'yes' for an answer," she said. "We are sending them back exactly, word for word, what they have passed. ... Did they not hear about the coequal branch of government, and that we the Congress send the president legislation and he can choose to sign or not?" Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) piled on. "The power to end the shutdown is in two people's hands: Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell," he told reporters. "They both should try"
At least two Senate Republicans agreed, and several others expressed discomfort with the shutdown. "I think we should pass a continuing resolution to get the government back open," said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), up for re-election in 2020. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) added that "it would be great" to have most of the House-passed appropriations bills "signed into law because there is not great controversy over them, and at least we'd be getting those workers back to work."
But McConnell isn't budging. He's also up for re-election in 2020, and he's much less popular in Kentucky than Trump, The New York Times notes. So after two years of trying to advance Trump's agenda, "McConnell now sees his primary job as standing in the way of Speaker Nancy Pelosi." Peter Weber
President Trump made some promises during the 2016 campaign: He would release his tax returns, "build the wall," "drain the swamp," protect Medicare and Social Security, and champion law and order, to name a few.
Like all presidents, he has been pretty selective about which campaign promises merit follow-through. The "wall", for example, was worth shutting down the government and sparking a constitutional crisis; his tax returns were deemed worthy of going to court and threatening a constitutional showdown to keep hidden. One of the "promises" he has tried to keep, according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, is "lock her up," his enduring campaign chant about 2016 rival Hillary Clinton.
Mueller's report "brimmed with examples of Mr. Trump seeking to protect himself from the investigation," The New York Times reports, but it also shows at least three instances of him "trying to wield the power of law enforcement to target a political rival, a step that no president since Richard M. Nixon is known to have taken." As with many potential crimes Mueller records, Trump's orders or suggestions to prosecute Clinton were apparently ignored or redirected by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former White House Counsel Don McGahn.
Still, Trump's attempt to target Clinton "reeks of a typical practice in authoritarian regimes where whoever attains power, they don't just take over power peacefully, but they punish and jail their opponents," political historian and professor Matthew Dallek tells the Times. It appears from Mueller's report that Trump, encouraged by his Fox News allies, didn't appreciate the difference between political self-preservation and weaponizing the law enforcement tools he seems to think work for him, adds Duke University law professor Samuel W. Buell. "All of his demands fit into a picture that he believes the apparatus is mine"
You can read the details of Trump's attempts to "lock her up" in Mueller's report and at The New York Times. Peter Weber
Soon after Katie Pollak adopted her dog Chipper seven years ago, she discovered that he wasn't obsessed with traditional toys, but rather with discarded plastic water bottles they would find while out on walks and hikes.
"He started picking them up immediately, so I encouraged it and rewarded it," Pollak told Today. "And he motivated me to do the same. I really started getting out and picking up more than I was before, so we created kind of a team."
Pollak and Chipper, now 8, live in Mesa, Arizona, and enjoy spending time outdoors. Pollak carries garbage bags with her every time they go hiking or paddleboarding, and together, they pick up recyclables, including cans and bottles, and trash, like old clothes and wrappers. They have filled countless bags, and often meet with friends to clean up spaces across Mesa. Chipper, Pollak said, "reminds me all the time to be my best self and do everything I can, and he's so much fun to do it with." Catherine Garcia
Mohammad Yusuf Ibrahim, a politically connected millionaire spice trader, has been detained in connection with the coordinated suicide bombings that killed more than 350 people on Easter Sunday, Indian officials told The New York Times.
Indian media reports that two of Ibrahim's sons were among the eight suicide bombers, and during a raid at his villa near the Sri Lankan capital Colombo on Sunday, a female suspect detonated a suicide vest, killing herself, two of her children, and several police officers. Ibrahim is now being interrogated by police, investigators said.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Sunday's attacks, but Sri Lankan officials said they do not know how the bombers are linked to the terrorist group. During a press conference on Wednesday, Sri Lanka's minister of defense, Ruwan Wijewardene, said most of the bombers were well-educated and from families that "are stable financially." Catherine Garcia
Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report has been released, some people are demanding President Trump's impeachment while others say there's no need to act, but there is a middle ground, Hillary Clinton writes in an op-ed published Wednesday night by The Washington Post.
The Mueller report's "definitive conclusion" is simple, Clinton said: The 2016 presidential election "was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated." History has shown a way forward from here, she said, and that involves Congress holding "substantive hearings" and forming an independent and bipartisan commission to "help protect our elections."
Clinton admits that the matter is "personal for me, and some might say I'm not the right messenger," but while serving as a senator and secretary of state, she said, she saw the ascent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and "knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country." Congress must take the Mueller report and use it "as a road map," she writes. "It's up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads — to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not."
Along with hearings that "build on the Mueller report and fill in its gaps, not jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment," Clinton argues, a commission like the one created after the 9/11 attacks is necessary because "the president of the United States has proved himself unwilling to defend our nation from a clear and present danger."
She also has a message for House Democrats, reminding them that during Watergate, Congress was able to pass the Endangered Species Act, Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973, and War Powers Act. "Stay focused on the sensible agenda that voters demanded in the midterms, from protecting health care to investing in infrastructure," Clinton advised, as it's "not only possible to move forward on multiple fronts at the same time, it's essential." Read the entire op-ed at The Washington Post. Catherine Garcia