Maybe Donald Trump wants to keep the government partially shut down in a clumsy attempt to foil or at least slow down the special investigation into the Russian attack on the U.S. election and the Trump campaign conspiracy with Moscow. The FBI Agents Association is alarmed about the president’s recent moves.
This shutdown has begun to damaged the FBI’s ability to continue their investigations and complete “other national security operations,” the president of the FBI Agents Association, which represents right at 13,000 agents, told Bloomberg News.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has stood in the way for two Democrats from Maryland, Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, to offer up legislation to open the federal agencies that have been hurt by the shutdown.
McConnell said voting was “pointless, absolutely pointless:”
‘The last thing we need to do right now is to trade pointless, absolutely pointless, show votes back and forth across the aisle.’
POTUS’ shutdown will certainly reach and go beyond the longest government shutdown in history. The three-week-long shutdown affected around 800,000 federal workers creating a failure of catastrophic measures.
The president’s administration has suggested that the furloughed workers babysit or walk dogs, because they will miss their paycheck. About 400,000 employees will have to continue working, because they are considered essential, the FBI and air traffic controllers among them.
Trump said White House lawyers have advised him he has the “absolute right” to declare a national emergency to build his proposed wall on the border with Mexico, and that he’ll probably do so if he can’t strike a deal with Congress.
‘If we don’t make a deal, it would be very surprising to me that I would not declare a national emergency and just fund it through the various mechanisms. The lawyers tell me it is 100 percent.’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has demanded that Trump end the shutdown of the government. Then, she will negotiate with him for more border security money. That does not include more border wall.
The conservatives supporting the president have suggested that he declare a state of emergency as a way to end the shutdown. That would end up in the courts, as it has once before, because there are broad but definite regulations about when a president can do this.
Cracks have begun to emerge in the Republican party regarding the president’s shutdown. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has broken with the president on other votes. She said that there is a group of senators who were getting together to determine if they could generate some “constructive ideas” to break the impasse.
The House, which fell to the Democrats by a large margin in the midterm elections, voted 240-188 to reopen several agencies:
- The Securities and Exchange Commission,
- The Department of Treasury Securities and Exchange Commission, and
- Other financial service agencies
Trump took a break and even though he did not want to go down to Texas’ border with Mexico, he did. He called it a “photo op.” However, it did offer him an opportunity to promote the prototype wall sections. So, he went.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
