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
Do you love President Trump and contested land? Consider a move to Trump Heights.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet met in the disputed Golan Heights to dedicate a small settlement, previously known as Bruchim, to Trump. Now called Ramat Trump, or "Trump Heights," the president can't say it's the biggest, most beautiful settlement — only 10 people live there and it's surrounded by land mines — but it does now have a giant sign, trimmed in gold and flanked by U.S. and Israeli flags. The Syrian border is 12 miles away, while the closest Israeli settlement, Kiryat Shmona, is 30 minutes away.
Netanyahu moved fast; it was only in April that he announced he was renaming the outpost in honor of Trump, to thank him for reversing U.S. policy toward the region. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, and annexed the territory in 1981, a move most governments consider illegal under international law. During Netanyahu's visit to Washington in March, Trump signed an executive order acknowledging the area, home to about 50,000 people, as Israeli territory. Israel said it hopes the name change will encourage more people to move to Ramat Trump. Catherine Garcia
Argentine President Mauricio Macri on Sunday vowed to fully investigate the massive electrical failure that plunged Argentina and Uruguay into darkness.
Both countries share an electrical grid, and when the electricity was cut off, tens of millions of people were without power. Parts of Chile and Paraguay were also affected. The lights went out on Sunday morning, and by Sunday evening, officials said more than 80 percent of customers in Argentina and 88 percent in Uruguay had power again.
Gustavo Lopetegui, Argentina's energy minister, said the electrical system is "robust," and while "we're not ruling out any possibility ... we don't think it is down to a cyber attack." Argentine media reports that officials are linking the outage to a failure in the transmission of electricity from a hydroelectric dam, BBC News reports. Catherine Garcia
Gary Woodland won the U.S. Open Sunday in Pebble Beach, California, his first major championship.
He was able to defeat Brooks Koepka, the two-time defending champ. Woodland, 35, was in the lead most of Sunday, and shot 2-under-par 69 to finish at 13 under. He started the week ranked No. 25 in the world, with three PGA Tour titles under his belt. Koepka is ranked No. 1 in the world, and was hoping to become the second person to win the U.S. Open three years in a row. Catherine Garcia
Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, admitted to misusing state funds, and on Sunday was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine.
Netanyahu took a plea deal, with the charges reduced from fraud to intentionally exploiting another person's error. She will have a criminal record. Her lawyer, Yossi Cohen, claims that his client is innocent, and this was an attempt to bring down her husband.
The case was in court for four years, with Netanyahu accused of spending $100,000 on catering between 2010 and 2013, despite having her own personal chef provided by the state, The Guardian reports. Benjamin Netanyahu is also the focus of several corruption investigations, and Israel's attorney general announced earlier this year that he plans on indicting him. Catherine Garcia
In recent weeks, a record number of African migrants have been crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, fleeing from political persecution and economic hardship.
During one week, Border Patrol agents in Texas' Del Rio sector stopped more than 500 African migrants; only 211 African migrants were detained along the entire southern border during the 2018 fiscal year, The Associated Press reports. Most of the migrants are from the Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Cameroon. They fly to South America from Africa, then travel by land to the U.S.-Mexico border, with many seeking asylum at ports of entry.
Migrants from Cameroon have said they fly to Ecuador because there is no visa requirement, and it takes about four months to get from there to Tijuana. While in Panama, they are often robbed, AP reports, and held in camps run by the government.
Over the last several days, 170 asylum seekers were bused to Portland, Maine, where Somali refugees were resettled in the 1990s. Hundreds more are expected to arrive in the near future. Catherine Garcia