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In a series of tweets late Saturday, President Trump wrote about some of the high-profile events around the White House, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ resignation and the decision to withdraw troops from Syria. Mr. Trump criticized the media for its coverage of his decision to withdraw troops from Syria. 

In Mr. Trump’s first in the series of tweets, he criticized Brett McGurk, the U.S.’s top envoy in the fight against ISIS, who resigned on Friday. His departure was first reported by CBS News on Saturday. 

“Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015. Was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander?” Mr. Trump wrote.

McGurk joined the State Department under former President George W. Bush and asked to stay on during the Obama administration. McGurk has led U.S. efforts against ISIS in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and more since 2015. He was one of the few Obama appointees asked by the Trump team to stay on. 

Mr. Trump called McGurk’s resignation a “nothing event” that the “fake news media” was “making such a big deal about.” 

Mr. Trump continued criticizing the media, writing in the next tweet that “if anybody but your favorite President, Donald J. Trump announced that, after decimating ISIS in Syria, we were going to bring our troops back home (happy & healthy), that person would be the most popular hero in America.” But the media, he wrote, “hit hard.”

Mr. Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. would be withdrawing troops from Syria, saying ISIS had been “defeated” there. But many in Washington, including prominent Republicans, have criticized the decision. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called the decision a “disaster” and “a stain on the honor of the United States.”

In the third tweet, Mr. Trump wrote about Mattis, saying Mr. Obama “ingloriously fired” Mattis. Mr. Trump wrote that he decided to give Mattis a “second chance” despite that “some thought I shouldn’t, I thought I should.” Mr. Trump wrote that he gave Mattis “all of the resources that he never really had.”

The late night tweets came after Mr. Trump decided to stay in Washington for Christmas amid the partial government shutdown

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tweets-james-mattis-brett-mcgurk-syria-withdrawal-tonight-2018-12-22/

Parkland shooting survivor and gun control advocate David Hogg will be attending Harvard College next year after he spent most of 2018 rallying for gun control.

On Saturday, 18-year-old Hogg took to Twitter to announce that he had won a place at Harvard, saying he plans to major in political science starting in the fall. “Thank you all for the well wishes, I’ll be attending Harvard in the fall with a planned major in Political Science,” he wrote.

Hogg survived a mass shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, where 17 students and staff members were killed by a former student armed with an AR-15 semi-atuomatic rifle. After the incident, Hogg and nineteen other Marjory survivors formed Never Again MSD, a student-led political action group advocating for stricter gun control laws.

The activist previously suggested he would take a gap year to continue campaigning against gun violence after he became a prominent national voice on the issue. Earlier this month, he told The Guardian that he did not “feel comfortable going to college until we have at least $50m to fund gun violence research annually.”

Hogg’s outspoken activism against gun violence has made him the target of right-wing critics. In March, after he revealed to TMZ that he had been rejected by four colleges in California, Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocked the young activist for whining.

“David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it,” Ingraham tweeted. “(Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA… totally predictable given acceptance rates.)”

In response, Hogg tweeted a list of companies that advertise on Fox New’s The Ingraham Angle and called for them end to their association with the show.

Within days, more than a dozen companies pulled advertisements from Ingraham’s show, including Miracle-Ear, Hulu, Nestle, Ruby Tuesday, Jenny Craig and Johnson & Johnson. Ingraham issued an apology to Hogg and praised his GPA shortly after, but the young activist rejected her apology as insincere and called it “an effort to save your advertisers.”

“The apology… was kind of expected, especially after so many of her advertisers dropped out,” Hogg said on CNN. “I’m glad to see corporate America standing with me and the other students of Parkland and everybody else. Because when we work together, we can accomplish anything.”

Harvard did not immediately respond to Newsweek’s request for comment.

Parkland shooting survivor and activist David Hogg attends ‘Women’s March Los Angeles hosts March For Our Lives LA: Road to Change & the Parkland survivors & activists’ at St. Elmo’s Village on July 20, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. On Saturday, Hogg took to Twitter to announce that he will be attending Harvard in the fall. Getty/Emma McIntyre

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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/parkland-shooting-survivor-david-hogg-attend-harvard-fall-laura-ingraham-1269679

Congress’ biggest legislative accomplishment was passing the new tax law, but it fell far short of what was promised. There were deep, permanent cuts for corporations, and a more modest cut for individuals that expires at the end of 2025. The tax bill was not as popular as Republicans expected, and they largely abandoned it as a campaign message. 

Source Article from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-one-party-rule-ends_us_5c1bf632e4b08aaf7a86858b

President Trump on Saturday night reacted to the resignation of Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy for the global coalition to defeat the Islamic State group (ISIS), while also offering a new response to the departure of his defense secretary, James Mattis.

Trump took to social media to say he’d neither met nor appointed McGurk, while also suggesting that the official was a “grandstander.”

“Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015. Was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander?” Trump tweeted. “The Fake News is making such a big deal about this nothing event!”

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McGurk tendered his resignation following Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, Fox News confirmed earlier Saturday.

U.S. officials said this week that the Trump administration was making plans to pull all 2,000 troops out of Syria.

In his resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, McGurk said that ISIS was on the run but wasn’t yet defeated and that U.S. military’s work in Syria had not yet been completed, the Associated Press reported.

“If anybody but your favorite President, Donald J. Trump, announced that, after decimating ISIS in Syria, we were going to bring our troops back home (happy & healthy), that person would be the most popular hero in America,” Trump continued on Twitter Saturday. “With me, hit hard instead by the Fake News Media. Crazy!”

BRETT MCGURK, US ENVOY TO ANTI-ISIS COALITION, RESIGNS IN WAKE OF TRUMP DECISION TO PULL TROOPS FROM SYRIA

Fox News confirmed that McGurk submitted his resignation letter on Friday, just one day after Mattis.

Trump revealed Thursday that Mattis would “be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February” as head of the Defense Department. The president went on to praise the “tremendous progress” made during Mattis’ time in the role, adding that he’d been “a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations.”

However, on Saturday, Trump took a somewhat different tack, saying he’d given Mattis “a second chance” when offering him the position of defense secretary.

“When President Obama ingloriously fired Jim Mattis, I gave him a second chance,” Trump tweeted. “Some thought I shouldn’t, I thought I should. Interesting relationship-but I also gave all of the resources that he never really had. Allies are very important-but not when they take advantage of U.S.”

Trump may have been referring to a 2013 report by Foreign Policy that said Mattis wasn’t informed of his ouster by the Obama administration as head of U.S. Central Command until an aide passed him a note saying the Pentagon had named his replacement. Mattis had succeeded David Petreaus in the role.

DEFENSE SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS TO RETIRE AT THE END OF FEBRUARY, TRUMP SAYS

In Mattis’ resignation letter to Trump, the former Marine Corps general acknowledged that a strong nation relies on a “comprehensive” network of alliances, and must be “resolute and unambiguous” in approaching countries with strategic differences, citing China and Russia.

“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” Mattis wrote.

Sources told Fox News this week that Mattis’ resignation was “in protest” against the president’s national security policies.

Fox News’ Adam Shaw, Gregg Re and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-tweets-reaction-to-mcgurk-mattis-resignations

Still, the shutdown will hit nine federal departments, including Agriculture, Commerce and Interior, which includes national parks. Roughly 380,000 workers will be furloughed and some 420,000 employees whose jobs are considered essential will be forced to work without pay, although they are almost certain to be paid retroactively.

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-government-shut-down-20181222-story.html

At least 63 deaths have been reported in Indonesia on Sunday after a tsunami struck the Sunda Strait overnight, with 584 injured and two missing, according to Indonesian government officials who expect casualty figures to continue to mount.

The cause for the tsunami remains unclear. Indonesian officials have denied that the cause for the tsunami was triggered by the nearby Krakatoa volcano, which has been erupting since June. There was speculation that the events were linked.

“Data collection is still ongoing. It’s likely that the number of victims and damages will rise,” said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s national disaster agency, in a statement. 

Over 400 buildings have been destroyed as waves slammed into the Sunda Strait, which separates Indonesia’s two largest islands, Java and Sumatra.

Beaches in the strait were reported heavily hit in places such as the Pandeglang regency, where 33 were reportedly killed, or several beaches like Anyer or the Tanjung Lesung.

Oystein Lund Andersen, a Norwegian witness who was on a family trip on the coast of the Anyer beach, wrote on Facebook that he was on a family trip when he saw the incoming wave. “Next wave entered the hotel area where I was staying and downed cars on the road behind it. Managed to evacuate with my family to higher ground through forest paths and villages, where we are taken care of by the locals. Were unharmed, thankfully,” he wrote. 

Government officials are warning tourists against visiting the beaches near the Sunda Strait. “The national disaster agency and the geology agency are still investigating [the tsunami],” Nugroho said. Nugroho also added that heavy equipment and emergency soup kitchens have been prepared.

Indonesia’s volcanology and geology disaster mitigation center said there was an eruption of the Krakatoa on Saturday night. Although there was a “300 to 1500 meter” ash cloud reported above the crater’s peak, the center said, it was unclear whether the tsunami was directly caused by the eruption.

Igan Sutawijaya, a volcano and geological disaster expert, said the Sunda Strait is a disaster-prone area but the waves may not be directly linked to an eruption.

“My suspicion is that there was an landslide under the sea. Perhaps a trench crumbled,” he told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “It doesn’t make sense that it was caused by the eruption of the Krakatoa.”

Indonesia sits on the seismically active “ring of fire” in the Pacific Ocean.

The Child of Krakatoa, an island that emerged in the 1920s after the 1883 volcanic eruptions of the Krakatoa, hosts one of Indonesia’s most active eruption sites.

Saturday’s tsunami followed a string of disasters in Indonesia. Earthquakes and tsunamis have destroyed homes, killed and displaced thousands in areas such as the Lombok island in July and the Central Sulawesi city of Palu in September. It also followed a Lion Air plane crash that killed over 189 people. Experts have noted that Indonesia has experienced a disaster fatigue.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/indonesia-tsunami-kills-at-least-63-as-casualties-continue-to-climb/2018/12/23/b0b8a5f0-0669-11e9-8186-4ec26a485713_story.html

Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the global coalition fighting ISIL, resigned this week over his disagreement with President Donald Trump’s surprise decision to pull US troops out of Syria, US media reported on Saturday, citing unnamed sources. 

Both the Associated Press and CBS news reported the departure, saying McGurk submitted his resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, a day after Defense Secretary James Mattis said he was leaving his post. 

In the letter, which was described to the Associated Press by an official familiar with its contents, McGurk said fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) were on the run, but not yet defeated as Trump had said. 

He added that the premature pull-out of American forces from Syria would create the conditions that gave rise to ISIL.


McGurk, whose resignation is effective on December 31, was planning to leave the job in mid-February after a US-hosted meeting of foreign ministers from the coalition countries, but he felt he could continue no longer after Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria and Mattis’s resignation, according to the official speaking to the Associated Press. 

The White House and State Department could not immediately be reached for comment. 

‘Reckless’

Trump’s surprise announcement of the troop withdrawal came on Wednesday, with the president declaring victory over ISIL. Since then, he has defended the move, but backtracked saying, ISIL has “largely been defeated”. 

The White House said some of the 2,000 US troops in the country were already returning to the United States.

Many politicians have called the plans for the full withdrawal rash and dangerous. 


Mattis, perhaps the most respected foreign policy official in the administration, announced on Thursday that he will leave by the end of February. He told Trump in a letter that he was departing because “you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

The US began air raids in Syria in 2014, and ground troops moved in the following year to battle ISIL and train Syrian rebels in a country torn apart by civil war

The decision will fulfil Trump’s goal of bringing troops home from Syria, but military leaders have pushed back for months, arguing that the ISIL group remains a threat and could regroup in Syria’s long-running civil war. 

McGurk said at a State Department briefing on December 11 that “it would be reckless if we were just to say, ‘Well, the physical caliphate is defeated, so we can just leave now.’ I think anyone who’s looked at a conflict like this would agree with that.”

A week before that, General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US had a long way to go in training local Syrian forces to prevent a resurgence of ISIL and stabilise Syria. He said it would take 35,000 to 40,000 local troops in northeastern Syria to maintain security over the long term, but only about 20 percent of that number had been trained. 


McGurk was appointed to the post by former President Barack Obama in 2015 and retained by Trump. 

He previously served as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran, and during the negotiations for the landmark Iran nuclear deal by the Obama administration, led secret side talks with Tehran on the release of Americans imprisoned there.

McGurk was briefly considered for the post of ambassador to Iraq after having served as a senior official covering Iraq and Afghanistan during President George W Bush’s administration.

A former Supreme Court law clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, McGurk worked as a lawyer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion and joined Bush’s National Security Council staff, where, during 2007 and 2008, he was the lead US negotiator on security agreements with Iraq.

Taking over for now for McGurk will be his deputy, retired Terry Wolff, who served three tours of active duty in Iraq.

Jim Jeffrey, a veteran diplomat who was appointed special representative for Syria engagement in August, is expected to stay in his position, officials said.

Source Article from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/envoy-anti-isil-coalition-mcgurk-resigns-reports-181222161950217.html

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has given everything to America: 44 years in the Marine Corps and 2 years of service at the Pentagon. But if he is open to a new challenge and responsibility, he should become the next NATO secretary general.

A longtime supporter of the alliance and of its need for European member states and Canada to spend more on defense and more of their defense budgets on equipment, Mattis would be a natural fit. Indeed, Mattis would be the most natural fit of anyone on Earth. First, he retains specific military experience with NATO from his time as the commanding general of NATO’s Transformation Command. Second, Mattis is keenly astute to NATO’s mission, capabilities, and vulnerabilities from his time as Defense secretary.

Over the past two years, Mattis has prioritized his relationship building with allies just as he simultaneously sought to push them to do more to fill in NATO’s war-fighting weaknesses. President Trump deserves credit for his pressure campaign on the Europeans here, but without Mattis building NATO member confidence in America’s ongoing commitment, he wouldn’t have succeeded. The dividends of Mattis’ leadership alongside current NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, are clear to see. NATO has improved its sea control and logistical trains and its ability to contest enemy air defense strongholds.

Yet Mattis’ appointment to NATO command would be good for one final reason: in that as secretary general Mattis would be freed to support the alliance’s mission without need to defer to other political leaders. Mattis would also be the first U.S. secretary general in history. In short, this is an appointment he is suited for and most certainly deserves.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/nato-should-select-jim-mattis-as-its-next-secretary-general

The unnamed company owned by a foreign country that is challenging a grand jury subpoena issued in federal court in Washington is asking the Supreme Court to step in.

This week, “Corporation A” that is owned by “Country A” lost its challenge against having to comply with a grand jury subpoena that many believe has been issued by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the challenge by the company to quash the subpoena late Tuesday night.

On Saturday, the company formally filed an application with Supreme Court, asking it to intervene and stay the lower court’s decision — and has also asked that the case remain under seal.

The company is also asking the Supreme Court to halt the continuing $5,000 per week fine it is incurring for not complying with the subpoena, an effort Judges David S. Tatel, Thomas B. Griffith, and Stephen F. Williams of the D.C. Circuit also rejected this week.

Legal expert Steve Vladeck said on Twitter that if the Supreme Court takes up the case and keeps it under seal, it will be the first time the highest court in the land has conducted plenary review, including oral arguments, under seal.

On Thursday and Friday, there was sealed action in the case at the D.C. Circuit. The D.C. Circuit denied a motion filed by the company, but no other information regarding the motion was revealed.

The grand jury case was first put on the docket in October, but CNN witnessed several lawyers from Mueller’s office going into the courtroom in early September. The courtroom involved an unknown defense team and a trial-level judge who oversees federal grand-jury-related cases.

In mid-October, Politico broke the story that Mueller’s team was brought into court by a witness battling a subpoena and only discovered the connection to Mueller’s probe after overhearing a man request a document in the case from the special counsel’s office.

Two weeks ago, judges Tatel, Griffith, and Williams took a recess after hearing an immigration-related case, and then the floor of the courthouse where the appeals court is located went into lockdown. Only law clerks were allowed to stay behind.

No one saw anyone from Mueller’s office or any other lawyers from a possible defense coming in and out of the building.

However, CNN reported that after court activity appeared to end for the day, a black Justice Department car returned to Mueller’s office in Washington, carrying lawyers Michael Dreeben and Zainab Ahmad.

Mueller took over the Russia investigation in May 2017 and has so far brought criminal counts against more than 30 people and three Russian entities, producing more than 100 criminal charges.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/foreign-company-in-possibly-mueller-related-secret-case-heads-to-supreme-court

Time after time, House Speaker Paul Ryan has refused to do anything meaningful that would rein in Donald Trump’s worst impulses.Evan Vucci / AP

This year concludes the same way it began: with a partial shutdown of the federal government. There is no doubt that President Donald Trump is primarily responsible for this shutdown – less than two weeks ago, during a nationally televised meeting in the Oval Office, he explicitly said so himself.

“If we don’t get what we want,” said Trump, “I will shut down the government. And I’ll tell you what, I am proud to shut down the government for border security, [Sen. Chuck Schumer]… I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it … I will take the mantle of shutting down.”

Not a whole lot of wiggle room there: this is clearly a Trump Shutdown. But the president was bolstered by support from his allies in the House Republican Conference and their retiring leader, House Speaker Paul Ryan. While the Senate did its job and unanimously passed a continuing resolution that would have kept the government open and prevented the shutdown, Ryan refused to allow a vote on similar legislation, allowing the electorally-disgraced House Republican majority to create one last pointless budget crisis on its way out the door.

It’s a fitting end for a group that has been a budgetary disaster since the moment it first took control in 2011. Less than eight months into their tenure, House Republicans brought the United States to the brink of defaulting on our national debt for the first time in history, resulting in the government’s credit rating being downgraded from AAA to AA+. Two years later, they shut down the government for 16 days after President Obama refused to let them take the American people’s health care hostage. And for six years, instead of addressing the real drivers of our national debt, House Republicans forced reckless cuts to critical public investments that undermined the long-term health of our economy.

But it wasn’t until Republicans gained unified control of the U.S. House, Senate, and presidency in 2017 that the wheels really came off the wagon. The shutdown that began at midnight is the third shutdown this year. At no point in the last four decades has the federal government shut down thrice in one year, nor has it shut down even once during that period when one party had unified control of the federal government. That both happened in 2018 is a testament to the ineptitude of the Trump administration and its allies in the 115th Congress.

This is a particularly sorry end for Speaker Ryan himself. When Ryan’s predecessor, former Speaker John Boehner, announced his resignation in September 2015, he responsibly “cleaned out the barn” for his successor by allowing the House to vote on a bill that prevented another shutdown over the objections of his conference’s most extreme members. Had Speaker Ryan – who, less than two weeks from retirement, similarly has nothing to lose by defying the far right – simply put the Senate bill up for a vote, it almost certainly would have passed and landed on Trump’s desk. But instead, Ryan chose to aid and abet Trump’s latest tantrum by blocking a vote on a commonsense stopgap, creating yet another unnecessary crisis in 2018.

Perhaps nobody should be surprised. Time after time, Speaker Ryan has refused to do anything meaningful that would rein in Trump’s worst impulses. But it’s Ryan’s epic fiscal mismanagement that is particularly astonishing, given that he’s tried to brand himself as one of the most fiscally responsible members of Congress since before he became chairman of the House Budget Committee in 2011.

As soon as Ryan became Speaker and had real power to rein in deficits, he instead made them substantially worse. On this day last year, a massive tax cut spearheaded by Speaker Ryan was signed into law, which the official scorekeepers at the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office now estimate will add over $2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Two months later, Ryan presided over the passage of unpaid-for legislation that spent more money on domestic programs than President Obama proposed in his final budget while also spending more money on Defense than was requested by President Trump.

The result: next year’s budget deficit will now be roughly $1 trillion – nearly 70% larger than the $596 billion deficit projected by CBO when Ryan ascended to the Speakership in 2015. Moreover, Speaker Ryan’s failure to tackle the nation’s long-term fiscal challenges means that the federal government will never again run an annual budget deficit of less than $1 trillion if current policies remain in place.

Thankfully, the American people decided they finally had enough of the GOP’s dismal leadership and ousted them from power in last month’s election. When the 116th Congress convenes, many of its members will be replaced by several dozen freshmen in the Democratic Caucus who campaigned on being far more responsible stewards of the federal budget – surely the new majority will vote to reopen the government immediately if the outgoing Congress does not. But one thing is crystal clear: it just wouldn’t have been a proper end for the House GOP without throwing one last tantrum before the adults get put back in charge.  

Source Article from https://www.forbes.com/sites/benritz/2018/12/22/a-fitting-end-for-disgraceful-house-republicans/

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on President Trump to “abandon the wall” Saturday if he wants to reopen the government, saying Trump does not have the votes in the Senate to get it funded — hours after the government shut down over an impasse over funding for Trump’s signature 2016 campaign promise.

“It will never pass the Senate, not today, not next week, not next year. So President Trump, if you want to open the government, you must abandon the wall, plain and simple,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

The partial shutdown began at midnight Saturday, a few hours after the House and Senate adjourned without getting a funding agreement to the president’s desk. The shutdown was expected to last at least a few days, with sources on both sides of the aisle telling Fox News that Washington could be in for a prolonged shutdown.

The Senate adjourned Saturday afternoon and was not due to meet for a scheduled session until Thursday. Early Saturday evening, the House also concluded for the day.

Vice President Mike Pence and Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney arrived at the Capitol Saturday afternoon to meet with Schumer to continue negotiations for an end to the stalemate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that “productive discussions are continuing.”

“When those negotiations produce a solution that is acceptable to all parties — which means 60 votes in the Senate, a majority in the House, and a presidential signature — at that point, we will take it up here on the Senate floor,” he said.

Late Saturday afternoon, a Schumer spokesman said that “the vice president came in for a discussion and made an offer. Unfortunately, we’re still very far apart.”

In a letter addressed to fellow Democratic colleagues on Saturday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote that “Last night, Republicans shut down the government.” She added that barring any developments, making “progress to end the Trump Shutdown in the next several days” was not anticipated.

“Until President Trump can publicly commit to a bipartisan resolution, there will be no agreement before January when the new House Democratic Majority will swiftly pass legislation to re-open government,” Pelosi wrote, before expressing her wishes for a happy holiday.

With the standoff grinding on, the White House revealed on Saturday that the president planned to stay in the nation’s capital over the holiday.

“Due to the shutdown, President Trump will remain in Washington, D.C. and the First Lady will return from Florida so they can spend Christmas together,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

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The main sticking point for negotiations was funding for Trump’s signature 2016 campaign promise of a wall on the southern border. Trump had demanded $5.7 billion for wall funding, and a bill with that funding attached passed the House on Friday. But efforts have derailed in the Senate, where 60 votes were required for passage, and therefore Democrat votes are needed in conjunction with support by the GOP.

Democrats have poured cold water on the idea that they would support anything close to that. Schumer, in his remarks Saturday, said that the wall was a “bone to the hard right” and that they had proposed $1.3 billion for “border security.”

“I’ve heard the president and his allies in the media say that Democrats don’t support border security. Nothing could be further from the truth. Democrats have always been for smart and effective ways to secure our border,” he said. “We are pushing for technology, like drones and sensors, and inspection equipment.”

McConnell accused Democrats of backing away from past support for border security, and said they were rejecting a “reasonable request” for the $5 billion in funding.

“They’ve refused to meet President Trump halfway and provide even one-fifth of the resources for the border they were willing to provide just a few months ago,” he said on the Senate floor.

Trump has been keen to blame Democrats for the impasse and on Friday urged McConnell to invoke the so-called “nuclear option” which would change Senate procedure to require only a simple majority to approve the bill — therefore allowing Republicans to override Democratic objections.

“Mitch, use the Nuclear Option and get it done! Our Country is counting on you!” he tweeted on Friday.

IF TRUMP DOESN’T GET WALL FUNDING, IT COULD SPELL TROUBLE FOR HIS ‘ELECTORAL FUTURE’: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY

Late Friday he emphasized the need for a wall in a video he posted to Twitter, and he blamed the shutdown on the Democrats.

“We’re going to have a shutdown, there’s nothing we can do about that because we need the Democrats to give us their votes,” he said. “Call it a Democrat shutdown, call it whatever you want, but we need their help to get this approved.”

That contrasted with remarks he made last week during an explosive Oval Office face-off with Schumer and Pelosi, in which he said he was “proud” to shut down the government for border security.

“I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it,” he said.

On Saturday, Trump held a lunch at the White House to discuss border security with staff and top conservatives including Reps. Mark Meadows, R-S.C., Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. The inclusion of some of the more hardline voices on immigration could likely serve to harden Trump’s resolve against backing down on the wall.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN? 7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW

The Senate appropriations bill passed on Wednesday is the base bill for funding, and that allocated $1.6 billion for border security. But it did not spend all money available under sequestration caps. There is an extra $900 million available, that could theoretically go toward funding the wall. If that was allocated, it could offer Trump a total wall/border package of about $2.5 billion.

While there appeared to be little movement on Saturday, Sunday was expected to be a key day for negotiations to end the shutdown. Lawmakers were aiming for a tentative agreement on all seven outstanding appropriation bills, to be funded until the end of September 2019. A senior source close to the negotiations told Fox News that they will aim to “see by Sunday morning if there is a center of gravity” for nailing down a deal.

Fox News is told Trump would accept the increase in wall funding, and that the administration believes it can find additional wall money across various federal programs that could be “reprogrammed” for the wall. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on “America’s Newsroom” this week that there were “other ways that we can get to that $5 billion.”

Congress has a little bit of wiggle room for movement as it has a weekend, followed by Christmas Eve — for which Trump has given federal workers a day off — and then Christmas Day. So that means that the partial shutdown will not fully bite until Wednesday.

About one-quarter of the government will be affected in a shutdown. Nine of the 15 Cabinet-level departments are to shutter, along with dozens of agencies. Those departments are: Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, State, Transportation and Treasury.

Essential personnel would still be required to work but without pay. Nearly 90 percent of the Homeland Security staff is deemed essential.

Roughly 420,000 workers will be deemed essential and will work unpaid, while more than 380,000 people will be furloughed in the shutdown – meaning they will experience a temporary leave from their work

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN 2018: WHAT WILL CLOSE AND WHO STILL NEEDS TO WORK

This will include most of NASA, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and National Park Service workers. Additionally, about 52,000 IRS workers would be furloughed.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will remain open as usual during a partial government shutdown because it is “an independent entity that is funded through the sale of our products and services, and not by tax dollars,” a spokesman told Fox News.

TSA agents, air traffic controllers and border security agents also will be required to work through a shutdown – albeit they might not get a paycheck right away.

Amtrak, a government-owned corporation, also will continue with normal operations during a short-term shutdown, a spokeswoman confirmed to Fox News.

Members of Congress will continue to be paid, as legislative branch appropriations had already been approved back in September, and the 27th Amendment bars ““varying the compensation” for lawmakers until after each election.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram, Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Mike Emanuel, Matt Leach, Elizabeth Zwirz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schumer-demands-trump-abandon-the-wall-as-dc-faces-shutdown-stalemate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, has resigned in protest over President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, a U.S. official said, joining Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in an administration exodus of experienced national security figures.

Only 11 days ago, McGurk had said it would be “reckless” to consider IS defeated and therefore would be unwise to bring American forces home. McGurk decided to speed up his original plan to leave his post in mid-February.

Appointed to the post by President Barack Obama in 2015 and retained by Trump, McGurk said in his resignation letter that the militants were on the run, but not yet defeated, and that the premature pullout of American forces from Syria would create the conditions that gave rise to IS. He also cited gains in accelerating the campaign against IS, but that the work was not yet done.

His letter, submitted Friday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was described to The Associated Press on Saturday by an official familiar with its contents. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter before the letter was released and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In a tweet shortly after news of McGurk’s resignation broke, Trump again defended his decision to pull all of the roughly 2,000 U.S. forces from Syria in the coming weeks.

“We were originally going to be there for three months, and that was seven years ago – we never left,” Trump tweeted. “When I became President, ISIS was going wild. Now ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. We’re coming home!”

Related: United Nations Security Council meets after U.S.-led strike in Syria




Although the civil war in Syria has gone on since 2011, the U.S. did not begin launching airstrikes against IS until September 2014, and American troops did not go into Syria until 2015.

McGurk, whose resignation is effective Dec. 31, was planning to leave the job in mid-February after a U.S.-hosted meeting of foreign ministers from the coalition countries, but he felt he could continue no longer after Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria and Mattis’ resignation, according to the official.

Trump declaration of a victory over IS has been roundly contradicted by his own experts’ assessments, and his decision to pull troops out was widely denounced by members of Congress, who called his action rash and dangerous.

Mattis, perhaps the most respected foreign policy official in the administration, announced on Thursday that he will leave by the end of February. He told Trump in a letter that he was departing because “you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

The withdrawal decision will fulfill Trump’s goal of bringing troops home from Syria, but military leaders have pushed back for months, arguing that the IS group remains a threat and could regroup in Syria’s long-running civil war. U.S. policy has been to keep troops in place until the extremists are eradicated.

Among officials’ key concerns is that a U.S. pullout will leave U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces vulnerable to attacks by Turkey, the Syrian government and remaining IS fighters. The SDF, a Kurdish-led force, is America’s only military partner in Syria

A second official said McGurk on Friday was pushing for the U.S. to allow the SDF to reach out to troops allied with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government for protection. McGurk argued that America had a moral obligation to help prevent the allied fighters from being slaughtered by Turkey, which considers the SDF an enemy.

McGurk said at a State Department briefing on Dec. 11 that “it would be reckless if we were just to say, ‘Well, the physical caliphate is defeated, so we can just leave now.’ I think anyone who’s looked at a conflict like this would agree with that.”

A week before that, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. had a long way to go in training local Syrian forces to prevent a resurgence of IS and stabilize Syria. He said it would take 35,000 to 40,000 local troops in northeastern Syria to maintain security over the long term, but only about 20 percent of that number had been trained.

McGurk, 45, previously served as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran, and during the negotiations for the landmark Iran nuclear deal by the Obama administration, led secret side talks with Tehran on the release of Americans imprisoned there.

McGurk, was briefly considered for the post of ambassador to Iraq after having served as a senior official covering Iraq and Afghanistan during President George W. Bush’s administration.

A former Supreme Court law clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, McGurk worked as a lawyer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and joined Bush’s National Security Council staff, where in 2007 and 2008, he was the lead U.S. negotiator on security agreements with Iraq.

Taking over for now for McGurk will be his deputy, retired Lt. Gen. Terry Wolff, who served three tours of active duty in Iraq.

Jim Jeffrey, a veteran diplomat who was appointed special representative for Syria engagement in August, is expected to stay in his position, officials said.

IS militants still hold a string of villages and towns along the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, where they have resisted weeks of attacks by the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces to drive them out. The pocket is home to about 15,000 people, among them 2,000 IS fighters, according to U.S. military estimates.

But that figure could be as high as 8,000 militants, if fighters hiding out in the deserts south of the Euphrates River are also counted, according to according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict through networks of local informants. Military officials have also made it clear that IS fighters fleeing Euphrates River region have found refuge in other areas of the country, fueling concerns that they could regroup and rise again.

The SDF said Thursday: “The war against Islamic State has not ended and the group has not been defeated.”

___

Associated Press writer Susannah George contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/12/22/us-envoy-brett-mcgurk-quits-trumps-syria-move/23625429/

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/house/422601-top-republican-predicts-any-deal-will-move-without-calling-members-back-to-dc

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