Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has canceled his delegation's trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week due to the partial U.S. government shutdown, according to a statement released by Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on Thursday. Trump, who attended last year's Davos event, had planned to go again this year but pulled out last week as he grapples with Democrats in Congress over funding for a wall on the border with Mexico that has led to a partial shutdown of the government. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were expected to lead...

President Donald Trump said he will make a “major” announcement on Saturday about the border and ongoing government shutdown. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump I will be making a major announcement concerning the Humanitarian Crisis on our Southern Border, and the Shutdown, tomorrow afternoon at 3 P.M., live from the @WhiteHouse. 28.2K 4:51 PM - Jan 18, 2019 The president did not provide any further details on what he would be discussing on what is set to be the 28th day of the partial government shutdown. The shutdown is the result of Congress’s inability to pass a short-term funding bill...

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has approved a request by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to reinstate 300 furloughed employees, a senior DHS official told the Washington Examiner. The personnel have been out of work 30 days as a result of the partial government shutdown but will head back to the office Tuesday and will be paid for their work, the official said. Employees of the Immigration Records and Identity Services Directorate and other components of USCIS were notified Monday that they will be required to return to work in a day. The group of reinstated personnel are from the...

So, could this shutdown end up hurting Democrats again? Both sides are not budging. The partisan divide on immigration is the equivalent of the width of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans combined. President Trump is trying to make good on his promise to secure the border, a key campaign promise. The Democrats, wanting to take their new House majority for a spin, are not playing ball. They were elected to block and fight this administration. They’re not giving one-cent. President Trump recently offered a deal to break the logjam. A three-year extension to DACA recipients, plus more protections to those with Temporary...

President Trump on Monday challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has called the White House's proposed southern border wall "an immorality," to explain why she is not insisting on the removal of existing physical barriers, or opposing ongoing construction of new wall projects near San Diego, Calif. Trump, in a follow-up tweet, asserted that the country needs a "powerful Wall" to deter the incoming migrant caravan that marched freely through the Guatemala-Mexico border last Friday, after the gates were left wide open by officials seeking to avoid a confrontation. The caravan, which consists of approximately 1,000 Central American migrants, was...

I am President of AFGE Local 2463 representing all the Smithsonian Museums, Research Centers, National Zoo as well as the Kennedy Center. My membership is faced with a government shutdown while the political games continue between the Republicans and the Democrats.The Democratic Party has forgotten its roots and which groups actually built the Democratic Party. They have taken for granted the union members, the working poor and the African American Community who have marched to the polls and pulled the lever for the Democrats.Construction sites used to be filled with high paying Union members building housing for Americans. Now you...

RUSH: I thought one of the greatest things on Friday (laughing), Trump cancels Pelosi’s trip one hour from her slated departure. The buses are there at the Capitol. (laughing) Pelosi’s never taken a trip to visit the troops in her entire career. Did you know that? She has never once done it. Why now? Anyway, Trump canceled because of the government shutdown. “You shouldn’t be leaving here.” So he canceled her trip. He said, “Fly commercial, baby.” Pelosi said, “Well, now that you’ve publicized our trip we can’t fly commercially and fly safely.” So she had to cancel it. That...

The federal government’s partial shutdown is affording the opportunity for Americans to see some of the D.C.’s most self-serving politics, but also the reality that we have large swaths of the federal government that are non-essential. And some of it really, really is non-essential — as in unneeded — and should be simply eliminated to the benefit of taxpayers and all Americans who are not politically connected. But perhaps even more portions of the federal government could be radically altered to make the behemoth far more responsive to Americans, rather than holding them hostage to the deplorable and corruptive condition...

Call me a hard-hearted, mean-spirited conservative if you will, but I am not bleeding from the heart over the plight of most of the furloughed federal workers. While I am certain that some of them have not bothered to accumulate savings, and thus are running out of money with which to pay important bills, the rest of us in the private sector have had to live with the possibility of our incomes being cut off for our entire careers. Moreover, federal employees, especially in the lower ranges of the income scale, make out like bandits compared to the rest...

“The legislation that the majority leader will bring to the floor this week would both reopen the remaining portions of the government, fund disaster relief, fund border security and address immigration issues that both Republicans and Democrats would like to address — all in one bill,” Don Stewart, McConnell’s deputy chief of staff, told the New York Times in an interview. McConnell aims to put pressure on Democrats who have said they will not negotiate with Trump on his wall until the government reopens. Stewart said the legislative package would include seven appropriation bills that would fund agencies that have...

Saturday was National Popcorn Day, but I’ve been nibbling on popcorn all week as Nancy Pelosi learned a lesson about presidential power and the media was gut checked by the special prosecutor. I haven’t had this much fun since election night 2016. While she might have thought otherwise, the power of the commander-in-chief is far greater than that of the speaker of the House, and the humiliating way this was brought home to the congressional equivalent of Maerose Prizzi (h/t Michael Walsh) was something. She anticipated that she and her posse of cronies and their families (reports of a ninety-some...

President Donald Trump sent out a Tweet on Sunday morning saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has “behaved so irrationally” that she has “become a Radical Democrat.” “Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far left that she has become a Radical Democrat,” Trump said in a Tweet. “She is so petrified by the ‘lefties’ in her party that she has lost control,” Trump said. “And by the way,” Trump said, “clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting.” In two earlier Tweets on Sunday morning, Trump criticized Pelosi for rejecting his offer on immigration...

... Kennedy added that he wished Republicans in Congress had used a criminal justice reform bill that was passed late Tuesday as leverage to get border wall funding. The bill, which was approved in the Senate by a vote of 87-12, will now head to Trump's desk. Kennedy, who did not support the criminal justice reform legislation, said he thinks the GOP "missed an opportunity here." "My Democratic friends are entitled to have their own positions. They were salivating over this bill and I wish we had tried to get something in return like the border wall. Border walls work,"...

What can you say about a week that began with stacks of fast-food cheeseburgers in the White House and ended with Trump putting Nancy Pelosi on the no-fly list? I’d say it means Season 3 of The Trump Show is going to be lit. It’s only January. By summer, as the Democratic 2020 presidential field fills out, it is likely that liberals will be on the verge of clinical insanity. Trump is clearly Inspector Clouseau to the Democrats’ Chief Inspector Dreyfus. Just wait until Trump hears about Gillette razors. He’ll probably give his away to Jim Acosta.

On Thursday afternoon, President Trump informed Speaker Pelosi her “public relations” trip to Afghanistan, Egypt, and Brussels has been postponed so that she can stay in DC and negotiate with him. The President canceled Pelosi’s flight just one hour before she was scheduled to depart — Pelosi and other lawmakers were on the bus en route to the airport. Trump told her to fly commercial on her own dime. According to Fox News reporter, Chad Pergram, furious phone calls are flying back and forth from The Hill to the State to the Pentagon and White House.

Welcome to day twenty eight day of the U.S. Federal government shutdown. Normally “Federal Government shut downs” are a game of “chicken” where Congressional (usually GOP) and Executive Branch (usually Democrat) politicians are playing a game of virtue signaling to their political base until the accumulated toxic waste of bad media and public protest let the Congress “compromise” on spending more money with limited blow back in their next partisan primary. This time is very different, and it’s far more than just a matter of political parties changing sides in government. President Trump is working to a “Xanatos Gambit” political-media...

So is it two offers and a declaration of emergency or three offers THEN a declaration of emergency? Or something else?

Democrats immediately rejected President Donald Trump’s offer of a work-permit amnesty for one million registered migrants in exchange for 230 miles of new border wall. The rejection came even though Trump’s offer angered his base by trading a DACA temporary amnesty for a wall. Also, Trump did not ask for the reform of the many catch-and-release rules which allow the cartels to profitably smuggle hundreds of thousands of poor migrants into the U.S. labor market, welfare rolls, and U.S. K-12 schools.The speech came after Trump had offered a series of smaller concessions in closed-door negotiations since Christmas. Democrats quickly dismissed...

However, Democrats in Congress had issued statements rejecting the deal as details of it leaked before Trump’s speech. “Unfortunately, initial reports make clear that his proposal is a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total, do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

UPDATE:President Donald J. Trump finished his address moments ago, offering the Democratic Party a compromised illegal immigration solution that would bring an end to the government shut down, institute extended protection for DACA recipients and other illegal aliens, as well as provide initial funding for 230 miles of steel barriers along the southern border. "If we are successful in this effort, we will have the best chance in a long time at bipartisan immigration reform, and it won’t stop here, it will keep going until we do it all,” the president told the nation."Our immigration system should be a source...