After deciding a week ago to reject the Republican continuing resolution to fund the government through February 15, Senate Democrats quickly caved. They accepted a deal that shortened the time period to February 8 and contained a vague promise from Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that the Senate would vote on immigration proposals.
McConnell, though, had already made and broken the same promise earlier. Even if the Senate came to some agreement on immigration, there is zero guarantee that the bill would make it through the much more conservative House or would be signed by Trump. (Funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years was included, but that had already been part of the continuing resolution that the Dems rejected which led to the shutdown.)
Apparently Senate Democrats concluded that most voters did not want the government shut down over immigration, and feared that maintaining the shutdown would harm Democrats in the 2018 elections. What is astonishing is that the Dems did not realize this in advance. Having gotten immigration supporters excited about the shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrats who ended the shutdown received massive criticism from progressives and immigrant advocates and House Democrats said they were extremely disappointed.
Given the Democrats quick surrender and the resulting Republican confidence, it seems very unlikely that the Democrats will force a shutdown again on February 8. You don’t embark on a shutdown unless you intend to see it through and gain something substantial for it. By folding the Democrats lost the leverage they had.
Interestingly, Republicans received support from Russian bots to push blame for the shutdown on the Democrats. For nifty, continuously updated graphs of the memes the Russian bots currently are pushing, see Hamilton 68. (A tip of the fedora to Sue Houfek for that link.)
And that of course brings us to the Russia investigation and the battle of the memos.
Devin Nunes (R-Trumplackey) began the show by saying he had a memo based on classified documents allegedly proving serious misconduct by the FBI and Justice Department in obtaining warrants relating to the Trump campaign. By the purest of chances, Nunes was the author of the memo.
Nunes and Republicans began a campaign to release the memo to the public using the hash tag #ReleaseTheMemo, although Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-CA), who had seen the memo, said it was “highly distorted spin by Nunes.” It also turned out the Russians were involved in promoting #ReleaseTheMemo and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Schiff demanded an investigation. Schiff and colleagues then created their own memo “exposing the misleading character of the Republicans’ document” in case the Nunes memo was released.
In support of Nunes, Republican Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) said he would release his own Russia probe conspiracy memo. In response, Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Richard Blumenthal asked to provide Special Counsel Robert Mueller with transcripts of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s interviews with key witnesses in its Russia probe, including Donald Trump Jr. Blumenthal said the Trump, Jr. transcript was “explosive”.
Grassley countered by saying he would release transcripts involving Donald Trump Jr., and others who participated in a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer – although with redactions and “legal vetting”. We’ll see what, if anything, actually gets released.
Then on Thursday we learned that last June Trump ordered White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is handling the Russia investigation. McGahn threatened to resign instead -- and Trump backed down. That news should motivate Republicans to finally approve legislation the Democrats have been advocating to protect Mueller, but it looks like Republicans will still take no action.
Of course, if Trump has done nothing wrong then he would have no reason to fire Mueller. In any case, after Trump’s firing of FBI director Comey in May because of his work on the Russia investigation, Trump’s planned firing of Mueller in June looks like a slam dunk by Steph Curry for obstruction of justice. Trump, as he arrived at the Davos Economic Forum, not surprisingly said that the news about his attempt to fire Mueller was “fake news”. He was then booed at the conclusion of the Davos conference when he complained about “fake” media.
Finally, Trump asked the Guggenheim Museum to loan him a painting by Vincent van Gogh for his and Melania’s private quarters at the White House. The Museum offered him a golden toilet by conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan instead. I can’t imagine why.