The White House will soon start bipartisan talks on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, with the hopes of avoiding a government shutdown, but this time Chief of Staff John Kelly will lead the meeting instead of President Trump, sources told Politico.
Why it matters: Democrats have repeatedly said they won't sign on to a government funding bill without striking a deal to protect Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — from deportation. And on Friday, Trump tweeted that the funding package must include funding for the border wall. Congress only has two months left to figure out what to do with DACA before the repeal goes into effect in March 2018.
Editor's note: The story was updated to clarify when DACA repeal goes into effect.
President Trump has yet to visit California, the nation's largest state, during his time in office, the L.A. Times points out in its lead story, by Brian Bennett.
Why it matters: "For Trump, [California is] ground zero for 'the resistance.'"
The infamous Trump Hotel located in D.C.'s old post office surpassed its business goals this year, raking in $1.97 million in profit in the first four months, according to the Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff. The hotel was projected to lose $2 million, as most luxury hotels don't turn a profit in their first few years.
Big picture: Trump hotels across the country became sites for anti-Trump protests, which isn't exactly great for business, and several hotels have attempted to distance themselves from the name. One Trump hotel in the SOHO neighborhood in New York and one in Toronto changed their names, and a third hotel in Panama City is looking to rebrand. But despite frequent protests, the D.C. location, conveniently situated between the White House and the Capitol, has hosted and entertained Republican officials, campaigners, foreign leaders, conservative outside groups, pro-Trump tourists and even, on occasion, the president himself.
In a morning tweet, President Trump laid out his demands for Democrats to save DACA: a southern border wall, an end to chain migration, and stopping the diversity visa lottery.
If you ask some close to President Trump what worries them most about 2018, it's not Robert Mueller's probe. It's that establishment guardrails of 2017 come down — and Trump's actual instincts take over.
Next year will bring "full Trump," said one person who recently talked to the president.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is set to address a party summit for Germany's Christian Social Union next month, per Politico. The CSU is the Bavarian (and far more conservative) counterpart to Angela Merkel's nationally-oriented center-right Christian Democratic Union.
Why it matters: Merkel and the CDU are struggling to assemble a governing coalition after losing ground in September's elections — and they're set to sit down with the center-left Social Democrats in a last-ditch effort to cobble an alliance together. The CSU is a needed ally for the CDU in their talks, but its embrace of Orbán, a hardliner with extremely controversial views on immigration, could be a troubling sign for Merkel as she tries to reach across the aisle.
President Trump chimed in regarding Vanity Fair's apology for its controversial video featuring jokey New Year's resolutions for Hillary Clinton, saying that the magazine "looks like it is on its last legs."
Yes, but: While Anna Wintour is the artistic director for Vanity Fair's parent company Condé Nast, she is the editor-in-chief of Vogue. Radhika Jones is the editor of Vanity Fair.
The Google News Lab looked at the search trends for some of the biggest news events of Trump's presidency from Jan. 20 through Dec. 20. You can see how we've all jumped from one four-alarm news fire to another:
Data: Google News Lab. Get the data; Chart: Lazaro Gamio / Axios
