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Services typically suspended during government shutdowns have continued to operate under the Trump administration, with insiders pointing to acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought as the reason why. Agencies impacted by government shutdowns are forced to severely cut back on operations, suspend services and often send workers home without pay. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been using creative solutions to blunt the burden, according to a senior administration official and several prominent Republicans. Vought joined the OMB in early 2018 and assumed the role of acting director Jan. 3 after Director Mick Mulvaney became...

Rep. Andy Biggs said Saturday night that President Trump is "seriously considering" declaring a national emergency over the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump told Sean Hannity this week he has "the absolute right" to make such a declaration if an agreement cannot be reached with congressional Democrats on funding for his proposed border wall. "This is a national emergency, if you look what's happening," Trump said Thursday, during a visit to the border in McAllen, Texas. Trump's visit to the Lone Star State came just two days after his address to the nation, during which he described the situation...

(CNN) President Donald Trump lashed out at acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney during a Situation Room meeting with Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, earlier this month, a White House official said Sunday. According to the official, Trump cut Mulvaney off toward the end of an unproductive meeting on re-opening the federal government, as Mulvaney was attempting to negotiate up from the $1.3 billion Democrats offered the White House. "Stop, stop, just stop -- What are you doing? You're f---ing it all up, Mick," Trump said, according to the official who was in...

President Trump should encourage House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to do more joint TV appearances, Newt Gingrich joked Sunday. Gingrich's comments come after Pelosi, D-Calif., and Schumer, D-N.Y., were mocked online last week for their awkward televised response to Trump's prime-time Oval Office address regarding his demand for roughly $5.6 billion in border wall funding which has resulted in a political standoff at the root of a record-breaking partial federal government shutdown. “[Schumer] and Pelosi were so bad the other night that the president ought to sort of pay them to go on TV once...

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl said his sources “interacting with” special counsel Robert Mueller’s team said Mueller’s forthcoming report was “almost certain to be anti-climactic.” Partial transcript as follows: KARL: What I am getting is that this is all building up to the Mueller report and raising expectations of a bombshell report. And there have been expectations that have been building, of course, for over a year on this. But people who are closest to what Mueller has been doing, interacting with the special counsel caution me that this report is almost certain...

If Republicans had a messaging operation, they would be hammering statistics like these at every event and at every encounter with the media. This is what Speaker Pelosi, Senator Schumer and other Democrats have shut down the government for. To protect thousands of illegal alien rapists and pedophiles.

Let’s accentuate the positive and start with the good. According to WaPo, support for the wall is up since last year. It’s still a minority proposition but as you refine the question to focus on registered voters instead of American adults generally, it’s practically a coin flip:Support for a border barrier is building. Not only that, wall supporters are more dug in on the current standoff than wall opponents are. Overall, Democrats appear somewhat more conciliatory than Republicans. The poll finds that 42 percent of Democrats who oppose the wall say congressional Democrats should refuse to budge even if...

<p>10:15 a.m.</p> <p>A Donald Trump ally says the president isn’t giving in on his demands for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — the issue that’s led to a partial government shutdown now in its 23rd day.</p> <p>Sen. Lindsey Graham says he encouraged Trump during a telephone conversation Sunday to reopen government for a short period to try to negotiate a deal with Democrats to end the impasse.</p>

President Trump should reopen the federal government for three weeks before declaring a national emergency, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham. "Before he pulls the plug on the legislative option, and I think we're almost there, I would urge him to open up the government for a short period of time, like three weeks, before he pulls the plug, see if we can get a deal," the South Carolina Republican said during an interview with "Fox News Sunday." "If we can't at the end of three weeks, all bets are off, see if you can do it by himself through the...

A federal worker with diabetes says she has to ration her insulin because she can’t afford the medication amid the government shutdown. When Department of the Interior worker Mallory Lorge — who suffers from Type 1 diabetes — felt her blood sugar rise last week, she said she was forced to try to ignore it. “I can’t afford to go to the ER. I can’t afford anything. I just went to bed and hoped I’d wake up,” Lorge told NBC News. Lorge, 31, said she has two vials of insulin left in her fridge — but she’s conserving them as...

<p>KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii (AP) — An annual humpback whale count in Hawaii will take place despite the federal government shutdown.</p> <p>West Hawaii Today reported Friday that volunteers from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation will coordinate this season’s Ocean Count, a community citizen science project that occurs during the peak of whale season.</p>

In some ways, at least according to Democrats, their party is in a strong position. President Trump is in a lose-lose with the border wall dispute. Either he caves in, providing a total victory for Democrats and destroying the President’s credibility with his base; or he doubles down in which case we’re in for a long siege with the government shutdown, because Democrats will never bend. Democrats have everything to gain by not bending because their base–their entire party–cares about nothing but destroying President Trump. Theirs is a movement of pure hatred. What they fail to see: Hatred is not...

"No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way" We know that David Lynch isn't one for convention and received wisdom, but declaring that Donald Trump “could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history” is up there with recasting David Bowie’s part from Fire Walk With Me to a kettle in the ‘oh, mate’ stakes. Speaking to the Guardian, Lynch said: "[Trump] could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way." Lynch...

Move over, George Washington. Nice try, FDR. You did your best, Abraham Lincoln, but there’s a new candidate making his way to the top of the Greatest Presidents of All Time heap. In a recent interview with The Guardian, David Lynch suggests Donald Trump might “go down as one of the greatest presidents in history.” Not because of any legislative, humanitarian or geopolitical action on his part, of course, but because Trump successfully “disrupted” the system in a revelatory way. “He could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much....

Politically, meanwhile, Lynch is all over the map. He voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary and thinks – he’s not sure – he voted Libertarian in the presidential election. “I am not really a political person, but I really like the freedom to do what you want to do,” says the persecuted Californian smoker. He is undecided about Donald Trump. “He could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.” While Trump may not...

President Trump is the solitary wall that is protecting this country in so many ways from a full-blown communist takeover On a print from 1886 of the Statue of Liberty someone wrote, “There is room in America and brotherhood for all who will support our institutions and aid in our development. But those who come to disturb our peace and dethrone our laws are aliens and enemies forever.” Times have changed fundamentally since 1886. Liberal Americans and the socialist Democrats of today are fighting the rest of the country to remove our borders, to disarm law enforcement, to pay for...

WASHINGTON—As the partial government shutdown stretches on, some House Democrats have grown concerned by what they see as the absence of a clear strategy from party leaders over how to end it. Some newly elected Democrats are increasingly frustrated that they are taking complaints from angry constituents without having a mapped-out plan to end the partial shutdown—which became the longest in modern history over the weekend. Many believe they were elected to Congress to try to end its dysfunction and had hoped to be reaching a bipartisan compromise over border security to reopen the government. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.,...

The United Teachers Los Angeles union is planning to call on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 30,000 teachers to walk out on students over demands for higher pay and increased staff. ... LAUSD has offered a 6 percent raise over the first two years of a three-year contract, but officials contend totality of the union’s demands would bankrupt the district, ... LAUSD faces a projected half-billion dollar deficit this year that’s largely tied to obligations outlined in the current union contract, including generous pension payments and health coverage for retired teachers,.. . LA teachers currently collect a salary of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Saturday he will force a vote soon on a resolution to disapprove the Trump administration's decision to relax sanctions on three Russian companies connected to oligarch Oleg Deripaska…{snip} ...The U.S. Treasury announced on Dec. 20 that it would lift sanctions imposed in April on the core businesses of Deripaska, including aluminum giant Rusal its parent En+ and power firm EuroSibEnergo, watering down the toughest penalties imposed since Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea. After lobbying by European governments that followed the imposition of sanctions, Washington postponed enforcement of the sanctions...

Brian Kolfage, a triple amputee Air Force veteran who started a crowdsourcing campaign to raise money to pay for a border wall, told Breitbart News Saturday media reports the effort has failed are fake news. Following Kolfage’s announcement about the 501(c)3, We Build The Wall, Inc., the leftist media said all of the money donated to the GoFundMe campaign would be refunded. In fact, the spokesperson for the fundraising website said that the donations would be automatically refunded if the campaign doesn’t reach its $1 billion goal, unless donors specifically direct their contribution to the new organization. “The money is...