GOP Rep. Patrick Meehan reached a settlement with an aide using taxpayer funds after he pursued her romantically and "grew hostile when she did not reciprocate," per the NY Times, which spoke with "three people who worked with the office and four others with whom she discussed her tenure there."
Why it matters: Meehan is an Ethics Committee member and has been outspoken about the issue of sexual harassment in Congress, per the Times. His office declined to comment for the report.
Women around the country and the world are taking to the streets in marches, one year after millions marched to protest Donald Trump's inauguration. The president's reaction:
Members of the House and Senate started meeting again on Saturday with hopes of ending the government shutdown that started at midnight on Friday. Per Axios' Mike Allen, "top sources in both parties expect the shutdown will be short."
Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley claimed Democrats are working to undermine Trump's "true success story." Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said negotiating with Trump is like "negotiating with Jell-O."
Today is President Trump's first anniversary in office, but his planned celebration is clouded by the first government shutdown since 2013 — and the first modern shutdown with one party controlling the White House and Congress:
One year since President Trump's inauguration, a majority of Republicans under age 45 would want an alternative in 2020, according to the latest Axios/SurveyMonkey poll. A huge majority of Republicans less than 25 years old want the president to face a primary challenge.
The Senate failed to pass a House bill to keep the government open late Friday night. Five Democrats broke ranks to join Republicans to pass the spending bill, but five Republicans voted no. Democrats want the spending bill to include provisions on immigrants brought illegally to the country as children. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement: “This is the behavior of obstructionist losers, not legislators.”
The latest: Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he will be proposing an amendment to fund the government through February 8, instead of February 16.
What happens next: The government shut down at midnight. Many thousands of federal employees will be furloughed and around 1.3 million military personnel will go without pay until it's over. President Trump cancelled a trip to Florida to stay in D.C.
A new Pew Research survey reveals that 74% of Americans favor granting legal status to those who immigrated to America illegally as children, and 60% of Americans oppose President Trump's "substantial" southern border wall expansion.
Why it matters: These two issues are at the heart of the immigration debate, and Republicans and Democrats' disagreement is what's bringing the government closer and closer to a shutdown Friday night.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat sent a long and pessimistic preview of the Trump peace plan to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and members of the PLO central committee.
Erekat's report, which I obtained a copy of, is based on the information gathered by the PLO negotiations department and shows the Palestinian understanding of the plan. Senior White House officials dispute Erekat's description of the Trump plan and claim his information is false.
My Visa Jobs, which helps foreign workers identify which employers are most likely to sponsor their work visas, just released their list of companies ranked according to the number of submitted applications for H-1B workers in 2017.
Why it matters: The Trump administration is looking to crack down on H-1B visa use, which it sees as taking jobs from American workers.
Russia-linked Twitter bots have mobilized to promote the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo, in reference to the classified House Intelligence Committee memo written by Devin Nunes, reports Business Insider.
Why it matters: The network of Russian social media bots has increased its use of the hashtag 233,000% over the past 48 hours, according to a tracking website called Hamilton 68. The URL most shared by the accounts links to WikiLeaks, which has offered a reward for anyone with access to the memo.
President Trump spoke to the crowds gathered for the pro-life March for Life rally from the Rose Garden, praising his reversal of the Mexico City policy and calling on the Senate to pass a law banning late-term abortions. "Send it to my desk for signing," he said.
Why it matters: Trump is the first sitting president to speak directly to the annual pro-life march in D.C., and his pro-life stance has aided his support among evangelical voters. However, Trump hasn't always held his same stance toward abortion. In 1999, he claimed he was pro-choice.
In a last-ditch effort to avoid a government shutdown tonight, President Trump invited Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to the White House for what the NYT's Michael D. Shear reports is a one-on-one sitdown to discuss a deal.
Why it matters: Trump's dual desires to be seen as a bipartisan dealmaker and have good press have Republicans in Congress spooked.
More Americans would blame President Trump and Republicans than congressional Democrats for a government shutdown, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll. 48% would blame the GOP, 28% would blame Democrats, and 18% would blame both equally.
Why it matters: These results might give the GOP pause regarding its decision to lay a shutdown at the feet of the Democrats, though the poll was conducted from Monday to Thursday, largely before a shutdown seemed like a true possibility. But as Politico's Jake Sherman tweeted this morning: "Both sides feel emboldened. Both sides think they’re in the right. Both sides think the other side will get blame."
OMB head Mick Mulvaney insisted Friday that the Trump administration doesn’t want a government shutdown, ascribing blame instead to Senate Democrats who “are opposing a [funding] bill that they don’t oppose” and calling the looming situation the "Schumer Shutdown.”
Between the lines: Yes, Senate Democrats don’t oppose a 6-year extension of CHIP, but they specifically requested an immigration solution for Dreamers be packed into this funding bill, prompting this showdown. Mulvaney brushed aside those concerns until pushed by reporters, stating that “there’s no reason to deal with DACA until the middle of February” and that a DACA “bill is simply not ready” to bring to a vote.
South and North Korea currently are enjoying a limited détente. But their seeming embrace, with plans for a unified Olympics team, is a symbolic act unlikely on its own to reshape U.S. policy.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in planned to resume the so-called Sunshine Policy, which uses cash and aid to leaven engagement with the North, until Pyongyang’s aggressive rhetoric and accelerated weapons testing forced him to change course. Now Kim Jong-un’s call for dialogue has resurrected his original plans.
President Trump’s cascade of threats encouraged Kim to engage Moon and help pull the South away from the Trump administration, citing U.S. "hostility." The result has been to reinforce Seoul’s already firm opposition to U.S. military action, which the South fears could trigger a Second Korean War.
At the end of the day: Contact between the U.S. and North Korea is essential to a permanent solution. Unfortunately, the Trump administration remains intransigent, pressing the DPRK to concede the main issue at stake before talks can be held — a nonstarter — and leaving the threat of war looming.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of "Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World."
The White House announced this morning that President Trump — scheduled to depart Washington at 4:30 p.m. for a $100,000-per-couple fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow — will remain in the capital until Congress can pass a continuing resolution to fund the government.
Why it matters: It shows that the Trump administration is acutely aware of what's at stake should a government shutdown start tonight — as well as the optics of Trump at a glitzy 2020 fundraiser in the midst of it all.
Shortly after the infamous “shithole” meeting — where President Trump blew apart a bipartisan DACA deal pushed by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin — administration officials did their own internal analysis of the proposal.
Axios has obtained an internal memo, "Flake-Graham-Durbin Proposal Would Cripple Border Security and Expand Chain Migration," that circulated within the White House, showing this administration’s scathing assessment of the Graham-Durbin proposal.
The House passed a government spending bill tonight with only about a dozen votes to spare, a big victory for House Speaker Paul Ryan after conservatives had threatened to sink the bill. All but six Democrats voted against it, along with 11 Republicans. The bill also funds CHIP for six years.
What happens next: The Senate is set to vote on the bill tomorrow, where it doesn't appear to have the votes to pass. It cleared a procedural vote tonight. If Congress doesn't pass a spending bill by midnight tomorrow, the government will shut down.
This story has been updated with tonight's Senate action.
Russia's political war against the West has been going strong for decades and shows no signs of abating. Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) published a 200-page report that documents, in great detail, how Russia has sought to undermine European democracies through cyberattacks, disinformation, cultivation of political networks, and export of corruption and crime.
European countries, especially the frontline states of Eastern Europe, have started to fight back by establishing units — the so-called StratCom teams — to monitor Russian propaganda. The German government recently enacted a law that compels social media platforms to take down hateful and inciting content or face fines of up to 50 million euros.
The U.S., however, “still does not have a coherent, comprehensive and coordinated approach to the Kremlin's malign influence operations," according to the SFRC report. Meanwhile, Fancy Bear, the same Russian military intelligence hacker group that penetrated the DNC and Clinton campaign servers in 2016, is now lurking in the U.S. Senate’s systems. And the infamous Russian troll-factory that spread disinformation during the U.S. elections is expanding operations and hiring more “staff.”
Why it matters: Russia’s influence operations are only accelerating. As its tools and tactics evolve, the U.S. must catch up or be left vulnerable to more, perhaps worse, interference in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Alina Polyakova is the David M. Rubenstein Fellow for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution.
