Tag: BORDER WALL

Senate rejects dueling GOP, Democratic bills to end partial government shutdown

By Gregg Re

The Senate on Thursday rejected both the Democratic and GOP proposals to end the ongoing partial federal government shutdown, with both measures falling far short of the 60-vote threshold needed to pass.

Although each of the dueling measures was expected to fail even before Thursday, it was hoped twin defeats might spur the two sides into a more serious effort to strike a compromise. Almost every proposal needs 60 votes to advance in the Senate, which is under 53-47 Republican control.

The final vote on the GOP bill was 50-47. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin was the lone Democrat to cross over and support the GOP package, which would have provided $5.7 billion for President Trump’s proposed border wall while also offering several immigration-related concessions and tightening asylum rules. GOP Sens. Tom Cotton and Mike Lee voted against the Republican measure.

“If this had been a vote to begin debate on a deal to end the shutdown, I would have happily voted yes,” Lee told Fox News. “But this was a vote to end debate on a bill that I believe is fundamentally flawed. In fact, after specifically asking for assurances that we would be allowed to offer amendments, no assurances were given. This bill as is simply does not do enough to reform our immigration system or address the crisis at our southern border.”

The Democrats’ plan would have reopened agency doors through Feb. 8 while bargainers seek a budget accord, but included no wall funding. The vote was 52-44 on the Democratic bill, with all Democrats voting yes and several Republicans crossing over, including Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander. Not voting on the bill were Sens. Richard Burr, Rand Paul, James Risch, and Jacky Rosen.

Both the GOP and Democratic measures would have reopened federal agencies and pay 800,000 federal workers who are about to miss yet another paycheck amid the shutdown, now in its 34th day.

In the wake of the failed votes, a bipartisan colloquy was underway on the Senate floor between senators trying to forge a bipartisan solution to reopen the government.

Several House Democratic representatives, including Reps. John Lewis, Bobby Scott, Gregory Meeks, and Jamie Raskin, were gathered in the back of the Senate chamber during the vote, apparently to protest the Senate’s failure to consider several bills to end the shutdown that passed the Democratic-controlled House.

Migrants seen climbing over border wall in Arizona

Migrants seen climbing over border wall in Arizona

Border Patrol agents in Yuma, Arizona apprehend a group of over 100 Central Americans who illegally scaled the border wall.

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate, told Fox News before the votes that she would support both of the proposals, and that Congress has an obligation to work on further negotiations through the weekend.

“I personally think both of them are flawed, but having said that, I’m going to vote for both of them,” Murkowski said. “We’re going to have two show votes, and my hope is that after that, it will allow us to really get down to work.”

Murkowski continued: “So to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if you don’t like the provisions that have been laid down, then let’s let’s work them through. Let’s get to yes here. I don’t like the asylum provision, quite honestly, that the president laid out there. So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about this. But if we do these two votes this afternoon and then everybody skedaddles for the weekend –Wow. What kind of a message is that?”

WATCH: TRUMP UNVEILS NEW SLOGAN FOR BORDER WALL

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the Democratic plan was a “down the middle (to) reopen government and has received overwhelming support from both sides before President Trump said he wouldn’t do it.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., countered that the GOP proposal was “a compromise package the president will actually sign,” calling Schumer’s alternative a “dead-end proposal that stands no chance.”

“It’s hard to imagine 60 votes developing for either one,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. GOP moderates such as Murkowski and Susan Collins of Maine are expected to vote for the Democratic plan, as is Cory Gardner of Colorado, one of the few Republicans representing a state carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The White House was eagerly watching Thursday’s votes. Officials think it will be harder for Democrats to keep sticking together amid Trump’s offers, according to a person familiar with White House thinking who was not authorized to speak publicly. They are hopeful for defections by Democrats who may cross party lines to vote with the president.

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At a panel discussion held by House Democrats on the effects of the shutdown, union leaders and former Homeland Security officials said they worried about the long-term effects. “I fear we are rolling the dice,” said Tim Manning, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency official. “We will be lucky to get everybody back on the job without a crisis to respond to.”

DEM CAUCUS MEETING ROILED BY TALK THAT SUPER BOWL SECURITY MAY BE AFFECTED BY SHUTDOWN

The partial shutdown began just before Christmas after Trump indicated that he wouldn’t sign a stopgap spending bill backed by top Republicans like McConnell, who shepherded a bill through the Senate that would have funded the government up to Feb. 8. The House passed a plan with money for the wall as one of the last gasps of the eight-year GOP majority.

On Thursday, almost five weeks later, House Democrats continued work on a package that would ignore Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a wall with Mexico and would instead pay for other ideas aimed at protecting the border.

Many Democrats who oppose the wall supported a border barrier in the past, what changed?

Many Democrats who oppose the wall supported a border barrier in the past, what changed?

How do past border proposals stack up to President Trump’s? GOP strategist Lauren Claffey explains.

Details of Democrats’ border security plan and its cost remained a work in progress. Party leaders said it would include money for scanning devices and other technological tools for improving security at ports of entry and along the border, plus money for more border agents and immigration judges.

A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was the latest indicator that the shutdown is hurting Trump with the general public. While his approval among Republicans remains strong, just 34 percent of Americans like his performance as president and 6 in 10 assign a great deal of responsibility to him for the shutdown, about double the share blaming Democrats, according to the poll out Wednesday.

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Pelosi: No Dem counteroffer on border security

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By Mike Lillis

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that House Democrats are not working behind the scenes to craft a counteroffer to President Trump’s border wall demands as a strategy for ending the history-making partial shutdown. 

“That’s not true. That’s not true. That’s not true,” Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol.
Instead, the Speaker asserted that Democrats’ strategic blueprint remains unchanged: The House will continue to pass spending bills already authored and endorsed by Republicans, while insisting that Trump reopen the government as the prerequisite for bringing Democrats to the negotiating table on his border wall.
“We are doing what we have been doing all along: working on our congressional responsibility to write bills, appropriations bills, to keep government open,” she said.
The remarks arrive as Democratic leaders are expected to release their own plan to bolster border security, to include enhanced surveillance technologies and reinforcement of existing physical barriers — but no new wall construction.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Wednesday that the Democrats are prepared to match Trump’s figure of $5.7 billion for border security — with two stipulations: it can’t be used for new wall construction, and the negotiations must happen after the shutdown has ended.
“Using the figure that the president has put on the table, if his $5.7 billion is about border security then we see ourselves fulfilling that request, only doing what I like to call using a smart wall,” Clyburn told reporters after a Democratic caucus meeting. “These are the types of things that we are going to be putting forward.”
Pelosi on Thursday framed the Democrats’ emerging border security proposal — expected to be released as early as Thursday afternoon — as a standard part of the appropriations process.
“Many of those bills have come to the floor again and again, just this week. The Homeland Security Bill was not finished. Hopefully it will be finished soon, and out of that you will see our commitment to border security,” she said. “That’s not any negotiation behind the scenes, or anything like that.”
Pelosi declined to put a figure on the border security provisions to be included in the Department of Homeland Security bill, being spearheaded by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who heads the Homeland Security Committee. But she emphasized that it will come in addition to other border-related funding already included in House-passed bills to to fund other agencies with a hand in security, including the Treasury, Justice and State departments.
“Within our $49 billion Homeland Security bill there will be some provisions,” she said.
Pelosi’s remarks highlight the disagreement at the crux of the shutdown standoff: Democrats are insisting the government be reopened as a condition of negotiating on the border wall; Republicans are demanding negotiations on the border wall as a condition of reopening the government.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday that the Democrats “are prepared to spend a very substantial sum of money because we share the view that the borders need to be secure.” 
But Hoyer, speaking for most Democrats, said there’s no “crisis” at the southern border, as Trump has insisted, and he amplified the party’s position that the Democrats will start negotiating new border security spending only after the government has been reopened, even if only temporarily.
“The letter is not a negotiation,” Hoyer said. “The letter is going to articulate what we believe is an effective investment to accomplish border security.”
Amid the standoff, Pelosi on Wednesday postponed Trump’s State of the Union address, initially scheduled for Jan. 29, citing the injustice of requiring federal law enforcement officials to secure the Capitol while they aren’t getting paid.
Trump late Wednesday acquiesced to the postponement.
“This is her prerogative,” he tweeted. “I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over.” 
Pelosi on Thursday thanked Trump for assent, saying the fight over the speech was an unneeded distraction that’s “so unimportant in the lives of the American people.”
“Thank goodness we’ve put that matter to rest and that we can get on to the subject at hand: open up government, so we can negotiate how best to protect our borders,” she said.
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NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Nathan Phillips Spread Fake News About His Vietnam Claims

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By John Nolte

NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Nathan Phillips were both caught misleading Today Show viewers about how he has portrayed his service record Thursday morning.

Phillips is the left-wing American Indian activist who accosted a group of boys from Covington High School, a bunch of 16 year-olds in MAGA hats minding their own business waiting for a bus in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Using Phillips’s proven lies and selectively edited video, the establishment media have now spent six days smearing the boys as racist aggressors.

These lies continue, even after the full video proves they did nothing wrong. For the better part of an hour, the boys were taunted by a group of black nationalists hurling racist and homophobic slurs. The boys reacted with good humor and even sought a dialogue.

Phillips then made his way into the crowd of boys beating a drum. Again, the boys said and did nothing disrespectful. Still, the lies persist — and did so right up until Thursday morning when Savannah Guthrie said something provably false while interviewing Phillips.

“There has also been some question about the nature of your military service and this is a good chance to clear it up,” Guthrie said. “Some have said you were a Vietnam veteran, I don’t believe you have said that, what exactly is the nature of your service?” [emphasis mine]

“I don’t believe you have ever said that.”

Please.

Sorry, but there is no way on God’s green earth the mighty powers at NBC are not aware of video from January 3, 2018, where Phillips says exactly what Guthrie claims he never said — to wit: “I’m a Vietnam Vet.”

In fact, as you will see below, Phillips has falsely identified himself as a “Vietnam vet” — on video.

Not only does NBC have the resources to dig the videos up from the original Facebook page, but the videos are currently flying all over the Internet.

Let’s go to the videotape…

And last fall, he shared a photo of a medal inscribed with the words “Vietnam War Veteran.”

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In that video, Phillips appears to forget to use his customary phrasing: “Vietnam-times veteran,” a talking point so slippery that CNN and a Native American reporter — apparently hearing what they wanted to hear — errantly transcribed it as “Vietnam veteran.” In one 2015 interview, Phillips actually mixes up the word order, saying “As a Vietnam veteran times…”

Further, as Breitbart’s Kristina Wong reports, Phillips described himself as a “recon ranger” — a position that does not exist but sounds enough like a combat role. However, a service record document presented by retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley (a perennial investigator of stolen valor claims) indicates he was instead a refrigerator mechanic.

To recap:

Guthrie: “Some have said you were a Vietnam veteran, I don’t believe you have said that[.]”

Phillips last year: “I’m a Vietnam vet,” a “recon ranger.”

So what we have here is yet another example of NBC News deliberately misleading its viewers. This is all about protecting Phillips, all about not confronting him with his lies, which would have destroyed his credibility the moment Guthrie brought it up. After all, you can’t lynch the future of white, Christian boys who support Trump unless you protect the narrative.

Needless to say, while answering Guthrie, Phillips spread a falsehood… again.

“What I’ve always said is that I’ve never stepped foot in South Vietnam,” he told Guthrie with a straight face. “How much clearer can that be?” he added, with butter refusing to melt in his mouth.

Then Phillips said, “When I was discharged May 5th, 1976, I was told, ‘Don’t wear your uniform, don’t say you’re a veteran.’” [emphasis mine]

Phillips is also still standing by his false claim the boys chanted “Build the wall,” even though countless hours of videotape show no such thing.

This is NBC’s second round of shameless fake news in only two days. On Wednesday, NBC published a story that deliberately made it look as though Covington High School banned an openly gay student from giving a speech. Other than the fact the student did not, you know, attend Covington High School, the story was right on the money.

And all of these lies are coming off of NBC’s Chuck Todd dousing himself in rocket fuel and lighting up a road flare in tribute to BuzzFeed’s fake news fiasco from last week.

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Trump to Pelosi: Ready or not, State of the Union is happening ‘on time & on location’

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US President Donald Trump has informed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that he will show up on January 29 to deliver the State of the Union. She replied that it cannot happen until the government shutdown ends.

In a letter sent to Pelosi (D-California) on Day 33 of the shutdown, Trump said that he had already accepted her “kind invitation” when he got another letter about security concerns, on January 16. However, both the Secret Service and Homeland Security assured him  “there would be absolutely no problem regarding security” and even said so publicly.

“Therefore, I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress the United States of America regarding the State of our Union,” the president wrote on Wednesday.

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“It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!” he added at the end, in a typical Trumpian flourish.

Pelosi responded within a couple hours, telling Trump that the House will “not consider a concurrent resolution” authorizing the president’s speech in the House chamber until the government has reopened, in effect rescinding her invitation.

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The letter exchange is just the latest twist in the war of words between Trump, a Republican, and the congressional Democrats. At the end of last year, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) blocked the approval of a bill passed by the Republican-majority House giving $5.6 billion to Trump’s proposed border wall, triggering a government shutdown. Pelosi, who became Speaker on January 3, after a new Democrat-majority House was sworn in, has flat-out refused any funding for the wall, ever, calling it “immoral.”

About a quarter of the government has been shuttered as a result, with some 800,000 federal workers either sent home or made to work without pay until the impasse is resolved.

Attempting to leverage Trump into surrendering, Pelosi sent the January 16 letter about security concerns, bringing up the fact that Trump’s Secret Service security detail and indeed the entire Department of Homeland Security are among the furloughed feds.

Both DHS and the Secret Service immediately chimed in to say that this mission was critical and would not be affected. Trump also fired back the following day, denying Pelosi the use of US military assets for congressional travel – including a trip she and a delegation of House Democrats have already embarked on, to Belgium and and Afghanistan. Pelosi fumed, but did not take the final step of dis-inviting the president at the time.

Under Article II, Section 3 of the US Constitution, the president “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” It was traditionally delivered in writing until President Woodrow Wilson appeared in person before the joint session of Congress in 1913.

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REPORT: Pelosi Signals State of Union Shutdown, Tells Democratic Caucus Members Not to Invite Family to D.C.

By Peter D’Abrosca

A Wednesday morning report from a CNN correspondent said that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Democratic caucus members not to invite their families to Washington D.C. next week, signaling that the State of the Union speech will not happen as planned.

“Speaker Pelosi advised members not to bring family to Washington next week, an implication that the State of the Union is not going to happen, per source in a morning caucus meeting. Members often invite spouses and other family to attend the SOTU,” explained Manu Raju on Twitter.

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If true (this is a CNN report, remember) Pelosi’s actions would represent an escalation in the border wall funding feud between Democrats and President Donald J. Trump.

Saturday, Trump offered the Democrats an extension of President Barack H. Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in exchange for wall funding. Pelosi and company swiftly declined the deal, shifting the burden of the shutdown onto the Democrats.

Before that, Pelosi surprised the Trump administration by saying that she would disinvite him from the State of the Union speech – not that he needs her permission to convene Congress.

Trump responded by cancelling Pelosi’s taxpayer-funded trip abroad, just one hour before she and a Congressional delegation were set to go wheels up from Andrews Air Force Base, an epic power move.

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Walls, Armed Guards Protect Davos Elite

The global elite meeting in Davos, Switzerland, are relying on walls and armed guards to protect them, hinting at their effectiveness; meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers refuse to fund President Trump’s proposed border wall.

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World leaders are soon to meet behind walls and tight security at the World Economic Forum held annually in the Swiss Alps.

This, of course, begs the question: if walls don’t provide security, then why else are Democratic lawmakers refusing to fund President Trump’s proposed border wall as the government shutdown enters its 32nd day?

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelsoi (D-Calif.) tried to soften Democratic oppositionby pushing for a virtual, technological wall in lieu of a physical barrier requested by President Trump.

 

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Trump Proposes DACA, TPS Protections for $5.7B in Wall Funding

By Ian Hanchett

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During a statement on Saturday, President Trump proposed funding for humanitarian assistance and drug detection technology, increases in Border Patrol agents and immigration judges, changes to the asylum application process for minors, promotion of family reunification, $5.7 billion in border wall funding, and protections for DACA recipients and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders.

Trump said, “Our plan includes the following: $800 million in urgent humanitarian assistance, $805 million for drug detection technology to help secure our ports of entry, an additional 2,750 border agents and law enforcement professionals, 75 new immigration judge teams…a new system to allow Central American minors to apply for asylum in their home countries and reform to promote family reunification for unaccompanied children, thousands of whom wind up on our border doorstep. To physically secure our border, the plan includes $5.7 billion for a strategic deployment of physical barriers, or a wall. This is not a 2,000-mile concrete structure from sea to sea. These are steel barriers in high priority locations.”

He added that the plan includes “3 years of legislative relief” for DACA recipients, which will “give them access to work permits, Social Security numbers, and protection from deportation,” and 3 years of TPS extension.

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