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The Memo: Trump concedes defeat on shutdown | TheHill

posted onJanuary 27, 2019
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Article snippet: MORE raised the white flag of surrender on Friday, bringing an end to a partial government shutdown in its 35th day despite not getting funding for his border wall. Weakened by negative opinion polls, growing restiveness in his own party and mounting beyond-the-Beltway problems including snarl-ups with air travel, Trump consented to reopening the government for three weeks. The Senate and the House in short order passed a stopgap spending bill by voice vote, and the president signed it into law without any public ceremony. Speaking in the White House Rose Garden earlier in the day, he suggested he would consider either a further shutdown or a declaration of national emergency if Democrats still refused to fund the wall by Feb. 15. But that bravado persuaded almost no one in the political world, Trump friend or foe alike. “This was an unmitigated disaster for the president, who bled significant political capital in exchange for absolutely nothing,” one former Trump White House official told The Hill. The shutdown began on Dec. 22, directly affecting 800,000 federal workers and shuttering roughly a quarter of the government. Friday morning brought news of delays at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, as well as in Newark and Philadelphia. The plight of federal workers in general continued to worsen, as thousands went without a second consecutive scheduled paycheck on Friday. A Washington Post/ABC News survey released Friday gave Trump an approval rating of just 37 percen... Link to the full article to read more

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