Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday announced a plan to fund the government through Feb. 5, a move that would allow Congress to go home for Christmas, avoid a partial shutdown, and defer a resolution to the standoff over the border wall funding until next year. But it will also mean that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will have more power over the final product.

Right now, Republicans still control the House of Representatives. But once Congress returns in January, the new Democratic House will be sworn in, and Pelosi, D-Calif., will be its leader. That means that she’ll be in a much stronger position to influence any final deal.

In announcing the plan, McConnell, R-Ky., lashed out at Democrats for being overly partisan and uncompromising.

“I’m sorry that my Democratic colleagues couldn’t put partisanship aside and show the same good-faith flexibility that the president has shown in order to provide the resources our nation needs to secure the integrity of our borders and the safety of American families,” he said. “But this seems to be the reality of our political moment. It seems like political spite for the president may be winning out over sensible policy — even sensible policies that are more modest than border security allocations which many Democrats supported themselves, in the recent past.”

He went on to blast Democratic “intransigence” and said, “There’s just been a shift in the political winds on the far left. This is knee-jerk, partisan opposition to the administration’s reasonable and flexible requests. This is making political obstruction a higher goal than the integrity of our nation’s borders. It’s political spite. And the American people know it when they see it.”

So it’s interesting that in the face of this, the solution would be to kick the can down the road to a place where liberals will be able to more forcefully hold their position.

That said, it’s not clear that McConnell had much of a choice. Pelosi knows that she’ll be in a stronger position come next month, so there’s no particular reason for her to settle knowing that her situation only improves if she holds out. President Trump, in boasting at the White House that he was prepared to shut down the government over border security, ensured that Republicans would get blamed for any shutdown, leaving them without any leverage.

It’s also worth noting that the swearing-in of the new Congress will also mean that McConnell will be in a stronger position, with 53 votes in the Senate instead of 51.

The Islamic State has not been defeated in Syria. But even if it had been, the durable defeat of that terrorist organization requires a continuing American military presence in Syria. Let’s be clear, President Trump’s pledge on Wednesday to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria is a great gift to Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran, Russia, and ISIS 2.0.

First off, let’s consider what the U.S. military presence in Syria is and is not actually about. Because it’s not about facilitating Assad’s overthrow in Damascus. That effort ended years ago. Instead, the U.S. presence is about four other things: constraining ISIS cells (which are still operational, albeit in a covert fashion) and obstructing Russia, Iran, and (to a lesser degree) Turkey from their malfeasant purposes in Syria. There is no doubt that leaders in each of those capitals will be celebrating.

Moscow, in particular, has been desperate to see U.S. forces out of Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin is furious about the U.S. military’s ability to prevent Russia and Assad from dominating eastern and northern Syria for their own interests. Trump’s excellent Syrian special representative Jim Jeffrey should resign. His leverage pulled out from under his feet, Jeffrey is destined to become Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s new toy. Russia will double down on its absurdly false political reconciliation track in Syria.

That said, this isn’t just about strategy; it’s about human lives. Now that the U.S. deployment is ending, you can bet that Russia’s Idlib slaughter will begin in short order. That Syrian blood will be Trump’s companion to the Syrian lung matter that stains former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy.

Trump’s gift to Iran is more obvious. Syria matters to the Iranian theocratic hard-liners because it offers them a land route from Tehran to the Lebanese Hezbollah bases in southern Lebanon (maybe the United Nations can lead in America’s place?). And affording Iran control over both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border, this withdrawal also boosts the hard-liners’ pernicious political influence in Iraq. The tragedy here is that U.S. diplomacy in Iraq has recently strengthened the hands of moderates in Baghdad. Trump says the Iran nuclear deal is bad, but he’s given Tehran a gem of a political deal here.

That leads us to the ISIS 2.0 issue. Without the deterring constraint of U.S. forces, Assad’s forces and Iran’s militias will rampage their way through the very Sunni heartlands that ISIS once dominated. And the lesson of ISIS’s post-2011 metastasis in Iraq is that where moderate Sunnis are forced to choose between Sunni death squads and Shia death squads, the majority will choose the latter. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi will be clapping for Trump today.

Then there’s Turkey. While an erstwhile U.S. ally, Turkey shares few U.S. interests in Syria. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has much to thank Trump for. His forces will now have free reign to crush the Kurdish YPG militia in northern Syria and Kurdish civilian communities along with them. Don’t take my word for it, just consider what the Turks are doing right now.

To be sure, Trump has long wanted U.S. forces out of Syria. But his reasons for premature withdrawal were always just as vacuous as Obama’s in Iraq. In neither case was the U.S. regularly taking casualties. But in both cases the U.S. military footprint provided outsize security and political benefits. It’s a sad but telling irony that Syrian special representative Jeffrey was the ambassador to Baghdad back in 2011. History will render poor verdict on this particularly shallow tweet and the strategic incontinence it represents.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday announced a plan to fund the government through Feb. 5, a move that would allow Congress to go home for Christmas, avoid a partial shutdown, and defer a resolution to the standoff over the border wall funding until next year. But it will also mean that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will have more power over the final product.

Right now, Republicans still control the House of Representatives. But once Congress returns in January, the new Democratic House will be sworn in, and Pelosi, D-Calif., will be its leader. That means that she’ll be in a much stronger position to influence any final deal.

In announcing the plan, McConnell, R-Ky., lashed out at Democrats for being overly partisan and uncompromising.

“I’m sorry that my Democratic colleagues couldn’t put partisanship aside and show the same good-faith flexibility that the president has shown in order to provide the resources our nation needs to secure the integrity of our borders and the safety of American families,” he said. “But this seems to be the reality of our political moment. It seems like political spite for the president may be winning out over sensible policy — even sensible policies that are more modest than border security allocations which many Democrats supported themselves, in the recent past.”

He went on to blast Democratic “intransigence” and said, “There’s just been a shift in the political winds on the far left. This is knee-jerk, partisan opposition to the administration’s reasonable and flexible requests. This is making political obstruction a higher goal than the integrity of our nation’s borders. It’s political spite. And the American people know it when they see it.”

So it’s interesting that in the face of this, the solution would be to kick the can down the road to a place where liberals will be able to more forcefully hold their position.

That said, it’s not clear that McConnell had much of a choice. Pelosi knows that she’ll be in a stronger position come next month, so there’s no particular reason for her to settle knowing that her situation only improves if she holds out. President Trump, in boasting at the White House that he was prepared to shut down the government over border security, ensured that Republicans would get blamed for any shutdown, leaving them without any leverage.

It’s also worth noting that the swearing-in of the new Congress will also mean that McConnell will be in a stronger position, with 53 votes in the Senate instead of 51.

President Trump needs to go through Congress if he wants to change immigration law. And a judge just gave him another reminder of this, ruling that the July guidance from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, essentially ruling out asylum protections for victims of domestic or gang violence, violated federal immigration law on Wednesday.

Judge Emmet Sullivan, the same judge that presided over the now-delayed sentencing of Michael Flynn, laid out just where the administration went wrong: overriding Congress. As Sullivan explains, “It is the will of Congress — not the whims of the Executive — that determines the standard for expedited removal.”

The judge’s order was not just a rebuke of the Trump administration’s tactics but also invalidated most of the policies that limited asylum claims as, according to Sullivan, “there is no legal basis for an effective categorical ban on domestic violence and gang-related claims.” Additionally, the judge ordered that two plaintiffs, who had already been deported, be returned to the United States for new credible fear assessments.

Hopefully this latest ruling will make clear what the administration has so far failed to learn when it comes to enacting policy: doing so without Congress, especially when it contradicts current laws, is a losing strategy.

If the Trump administration was interested in creating lasting change, rather than firing off vindictive orders, it would have taken advantage of Republican control of the House, Senate and the White House to solidify immigration reform into law.

Of course, Trump has likely not pursued a congressional immigration fix as he knows that he doesn’t have the votes in the Senate, and perhaps not even among Republicans in the House. And if that’s the case, he has to win a bigger congressional delegation to get what he wants. Like the judge said, the president does not dictate the law.

Someone in the news media finally asked the White House an uncomfortable question — no, not Jim Acosta, whose only question is, “Are we fake news, Mr. President,” said with a daring stare — and it came from “Fox & Friends” of all places.

On President Trump’s favorite program Wednesday, co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt, Brian Kilmeade ,and Steve Doocy confronted White House adviser Kellyanne Conway with the depressing truth that Trump, employing his legendary cut-throat negotiating skills, had just embarrassed himself in trying to get what amounted to pennies in border wall funding.

“[P]eople who voted for him and want the wall, went to the polls to vote for that wall, they want to know how he’s going to do this and they want to know why he seems to be softening his stance this morning,” asked Earhardt.

Conway replied with a preposterous claim that Trump “is not softening his stance” and then she did what Democrats have been doing: Insist that a wall isn’t as important as some vague assurance about “border security.”

She might as well have come out in favor of “a woman’s right to choose,” “common sense gun reform” and other Democratic positions, the true intentions of which are forever masked by doublespeak.

“[T]he border is so porous,” said Conway. “All it’s done is gotten worse since those Democrats voted for border security 12 years ago. It’s only gotten worse. So this president’s not going to back down from that. And he will continue to fight for that funding. It’s not just a wall. He said in a tweet over night.”

Well, the president did address the wall in a set of tweets, and it was essentially yet more backing down on his signature campaign promise. “[W]e are not building a Concrete Wall, we are building artistically designed steel slats, so that you can easily see through it,” he said.

Don’t you feel better now?

The “wall” is now “steel slats.” The White House last month proudly sent out photos of said steel slats, calling it a wall. I guess those awe-inspiring wall prototypes we saw photographed in San Diego back in March were simply placed in some dump, right next to Trump’s regard for his supporters.

Those walls were nearly indestructible. We know now that they were scrapped in favor of steel slats that look like something you might let your children play safely behind. But the southern border isn’t in a Minnesota suburb. It’s up against Mexico, where drugs and immigrants are aggressively pushed into the country, overwhelming what little security we currently have.

Trump said on camera last week that he would be “proud” to partially shut down the federal government if he can’t secure $5 billion from Congress for his border wall. He set himself up for failure and with the Dec. 21 deadline to pass a new spending bill approaching, he’s accepting defeat.

Trump blew it, and now he’s not even pretending that he wants to do what he told his supporters he would. If it’s any consolation, at least they all have a new chant for his rallies: “BUILD THE STEEL SLATS!”