President Trump's uphill battle to force Democrats to give him $5.7 billion to start his border wall is "the president's personal Alamo," Gabriel Sherman writes at Vanity Fair. "Trump has told aides he's prepared to stake his presidency on making a last stand," and those aides aren't convinced he'll survive. Trump "has convinced himself he can't win re-election in 2020 unless he gets a lot of the wall built," a former West Wing official told Vanity Fair. "The problem is, the Democrats know that."

"The president put himself in a box," the ex-official added. "The problem is there's no endgame. Right now the White House is at a seven on the panic scale. If this thing goes on past the State of the Union they're going to be at an 11." Congressional Republicans are starting to balk at Trump's insistence on keeping the government partially shut until he gets his money, and a prominent Republican close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Sherman that Trump's handling of the shutdown is "total f---ing chaos."

Trump commandeered prime-time TV Tuesday night to try to convince America there's a "crisis" on the southern border — and "the lack of a wall is a crisis for Trump, of course, because it is his most famous policy goal" and "failure to fulfill it may hurt him badly in 2020," Jonathan Chait notes at New York. He's already failed, argues David Frum at The Atlantic. After his "Oval Office address, little doubt remains of how this shutdown will end. Sooner or later — probably sooner — it will end the way Trump's threats of nuclear war upon North Korea ended: With a sudden Trump about-face. ... Trump, trapped without a decent exit in a predicament of his own making, will yield everything and get nothing."

Except, of course, he'll gain a battle cry, just like the fighters killed by Mexico's army in a Texas mission in 1836. Remember the Border Wall? Peter Weber

President Trump arrived in Japan on Thursday evening, local time, for what is shaping up to be a high-stakes and contentious Group of 20 summit in Osaka. Trump is scheduled to meet one-on-one with nine world leaders, starting with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, but observers are most interested in his meeting Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump insisted on the meeting and has said if he and Xi don't restart trade talks, he will levy tariffs on the remaining untaxed $300 billion in Chinese imports. China will ask that Trump drop its ban on telecom firm Huawei Technologies and scale back its demands for China to buy even more U.S. exports, The Wall Street Journal reports. The U.S. believes China scuttled the last round of talks in April and is expecting China to make the first move to restart them. Xi, under pressure from nationalists at home, is not expected to offer Trump any large concessions in Japan.

Trump will also meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is in a new trade dispute with Trump's administration, and the president is expected to face pushback from European leaders over his skepticism of climate change. Trump demanded in a tweet that Modi remove reciprocal tariffs on 30 U.S. products, and in an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, Trump confirmed a report that he is considering withdrawing the U.S. from its foundational treaty with Japan. "If Japan is attacked, we will fight World War III ... with our lives and with our treasure," Trump said. "If we're attacked, Japan doesn't have to help us at all" and "can watch it on the Sony television, okay, the attack." Peter Weber

U.S. asylum officers asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday to block President Trump's "Remain in Mexico" asylum policy, arguing in a friend-of-the-court brief that Trump's policy of making asylum-seekers stay in Mexico while awaiting their immigration hearing puts migrants in mortal danger, is unnecessary, and is "fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our nation and our international and domestic legal obligations." A lower court put the policy on hold in April, saying it is probably illegal, but the appellate court allowed it to continue during litigation. Trump and Mexico expanded the policy earlier this month at Trump's insistence.

Since January, 12,000 asylum seekers have been returned to Mexico, The Washington Post reports. The 37-page brief, filed by American Federation of Government Employees Local 1924, a union representing 2,500 asylum officers and other federal workers, says that "asylum officers are duty-bound to protect vulnerable asylum seekers from persecution," that "Mexico is simply not safe for Central American asylum seekers," and that the U.S. asylum system is "not, as the administration has claimed, fundamentally broken," but instead "has the foundation and agility necessary to deal with the flow of migrants through our Southern Border."

"The legal filing is an unusual public rebuke of a sitting president by his own employees, and it plunges a highly trained officer corps that typically operates under secrecy into a public legal battle over one of Trump's most prized immigration policies," the Post reports. "Under Trump, the asylum division has become a target of internal ire, often assailed for approving most initial asylum screenings and sending migrants to immigration court for a full hearing." Last week, new acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief Ken Cuccinelli implicitly rebuked the asylum officers in an internal email for being overly generous with asylum screenings. Peter Weber

Marshae Jones, 27, was taken into custody in the Birmingham, Alabama, area on Wednesday after a Jefferson Country grand jury indicted her on manslaughter charges over the death of her unborn child after a December 2018 incident where another woman shot her in the stomach. The woman who had the gun and pulled the trigger, 23-year-old Ebony Jemison, also faced manslaughter charges, but the grand jury declined to indict her so the charges were dismissed, AL.com reports.

Police argued that Jones, five months pregnant, started the fight and was ultimately responsible for the death of her fetus. The altercation was over the father, according to Pleasant Grove police Lt. Danny Reid. "The investigation showed that the only true victim in this was the unborn baby," Reid said after the Dec. 4 shooting, outside a Dollar Store. "It was the mother of the child who initiated and continued the fight which resulted in the death of her own unborn baby."

Not everyone agreed with Reid. "The state of Alabama has proven yet again that the moment a person becomes pregnant their sole responsibility is to produce a live, healthy baby and that it considers any action a pregnant person takes that might impede in that live birth to be a criminal act,'' said Amanda Reyes, executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund. "Today, Marshae Jones is being charged with manslaughter for being pregnant and getting shot while engaging in an altercation with a person who had a gun. Tomorrow, it will be another black woman, maybe for having a drink while pregnant. And after that, another, for not obtaining adequate prenatal care." Read more at AL.com. Peter Weber

Ten Democratic presidential hopefuls took the stage in Miami on Wednesday night, and The Late Show thinks you can catch 'em all.

"We are live after the first of two Democratic presidential debates," and "I'm going to tell you all about it — if Bill de Blasio doesn't interrupt me," Stephen Colbert said in his monologue. This debate pitted "Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Beto O'Rourke against seven people angling for MSNBC shows." NBC had some technical difficulties, he added, "but it was an excellent dress rehearsal for tomorrow actual debate."

"The biggest early moment was a linguistic surprise from Beto O'Rourke," Colbert said. "He's either trying to lock up the Hispanic vote, or he's running for embarrassing dad at a Mexican restaurant." He suggested John Delaney was just doing this as a dare from his brother-in-law, Jay Inslee had never set foot in a McDonalds, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) made up her "all foam and no beer" zinger: "If that's a metaphor you frequently use, senator, then, as we say back in South Carolina, 'I'm a shrimp sandwich in a thunder storm.'" Colbert mocked Booker's Spanish, and Beto's, again, and stepped into the fight between Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and Tim Ryan (Ohio): "Tulsi! Tim! Please don't fight — you're both not going to be president."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was kinder about all the Spanish spoken onstage. "I loved it because I represent the Bronx, there was a lot of Spanglish in the building," she told Colbert. "I thought it was humorous sometimes," but also "a good gesture to the fact that we are a diverse country." As for the candidates, Ocasio-Cortez said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) "knocked it out of the park," Julián Castro "did a phenomenal job tonight," and "Cory Booker did a great job in talking about criminal justice," and "there were some surprises, too," though she didn't name them. She also explained her skepticism of Joe Biden's electability. Watch below. Peter Weber

This past week has shone a spotlight on the deplorable conditions at facilities where the U.S. is holding children seeking asylum in the U.S. "Most of the kids in those overcrowded facilities come from Central America's Northern Triangle countries: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador," Samatha Bee said on Wednesday's Full Frontal. President "Trump and his supporters claim it's fine warehouse them like pallets of generic peanut butter because it's their fault for coming to America. But the truth is, the U.S. is a huge reason they were forced to flee here in the first place."

Bee's history lesson began in Ronald Reagan's 1980s and America's Cold War in Central America, and she focused on El Salvador. "When we stomped out communism, we also stomped out pretty much every thing else. For many civilians, getting the hell out of El Salvador became a matter of life or death," she said. "Many of the migrants ended up in Los Angeles, where some younger Salvadorans would wind up in street gangs," which over time became MS-13. "That's right, President Trump's favorite foreign threat was made in the U.S.A. — unlike his ties and two-thirds of his wives," she said.

And MS-13 didn't didn't turn into today's machete-wielding killers until "the American prison system helped transform them from the juvenile delinquents of the '80s to the violent gang we know today," Bee said. Then, starting in the '90s, the U.S. deported tens of thousands of gang members, "brutalized by American prisons," back to Central America, where they took root and made the Northern Triangle one of the most violent regions in the world, sending civilians feeling north for safety, she said. "It's the circle of life, except death."

"All refugees deserve basic compassion, but we owe a special debt to Central American refugees," Bee said. "At the very least, we own their kids some f---ing toothpaste." There is some NSFW language. Peter Weber

Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show was live following the first Democratic debate on Wednesday night, and he didn't spare his network, NBC, over its technical difficulties. But mostly he focused on the debate itself. He laughed at Cory Booker's face when Beto O'Rourke broke into Spanish, and imagined President Trump's reaction: "Cr-p, did I hit the SAP button?" Still, "Booker saw Beto speaking Spanish and decided to join in, too," Fallon added, though he sounded "like Arnold Schwarzenegger learning Rosetta Stone."

"As expected, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker did well tonight, but actually I though Bill de Blasio did a pretty good job too," Fallon said, expressing surprise on behalf of all New Yorkers. "Trump tweeted and called the debate 'boring,' but he still watched, even though he also said it was a 'very unexciting group of people' — as opposed to the rock stars he usually hangs out with, like Mike Pence and Steve Mnuchin. But I think I know why Trump's upset: He's probably jealous of the Democrats. If you think about it, they got to be on TV, they got to talk about themselves, and they got to be in Florida," his three favorite things.

Fallon had a short video to help everyone get to know the 20 Democrats running.

Fallon also had a song advising the Democratic candidates to avoid becoming memes, because "some things can't be unseen." He had examples, and harmonies.

Colin Quinn also had some less-helpful advice for the Democrats, or at least the ones you might not otherwise remember. Watch below. Peter Weber