Trump vows to seek alternatives after Pelosi blocks speech
In a high-stakes case of dare and double-dare, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi served notice Wednesday that President Donald Trump won’t be allowed to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress next week.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would look for another venue for his State of the Union address after an afternoon of brinkmanship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who told the president that he was not welcome to deliver the speech in the House chamber while the government is partly closed.
The president’s seeming capitulation came even as House Democratic leaders said they were prepared to give him a substantial sum of money for border security — perhaps even
the $5.7 billion he has requested —but not for a wall and not until he agreed to reopen the government. That figure is roughly double what Democrats had previously approved.
On the other end of the Capitol, in the Republicancontrolled Senate, lawmakers prepared for crucial votes Thursday on two competing proposals — one backed by Trump and Senate Republicans, the other by Democrats — that would bring an end to the partial shutdown, though neither might garner the 60 votes necessary for passage.
On Day 33 of the longest government shutdown in history, Washington took on the air of a split-screen television. On one side was a spat between Trump and Pelosi — a powerful man and an equally powerful woman — over the president’s constitutional duty to periodically report to Congress on the state of the union. On the other, the House and Senate trudged along with their daily business, with lawmakers in both parties grasping for a way out of the shutdown stalemate.
It now seems all but certain that 800,000 federal employees who have been either furloughed or working without pay for more than a month will miss another paycheck Friday. The best hope, people in both parties say, is that the expected failure of both bills in the Senate on Thursday will prompt bipartisan negotiations that could lead to a compromise.
Those bills take very different approaches. Trump’s bill would include $5.7 billion for the wall and extend protections to some immigrants in the country illegally — protections that he himself revoked — while sharply curtailing access to asylum. The Democrats’ measure would simply fund shuttered government agencies through Feb. 8, with no wall money.
But with the House set to leave town Thursday, it is highly unlikely that the impasse will end by Tuesday, when Trump is scheduled to deliver his address, an annual Washington ritual that usually plays out with pomp in front of both chambers of Congress, the Supreme Court, Cabinet secretaries and honored guests.
For Trump, it would be a moment to command the stage — with television cameras rolling and Pelosi stuck behind him, trying to figure out whether to grimace or nod. Now, the president is trying to paint Pelosi as a left-wing radical who canceled the address for political reasons, despite her assertion that she simply wanted to postpone, not cancel, it because of the burden it would impose on Secret Service agents working without pay.
“It’s really a shame what’s happening with the Democrats,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They’ve become radicalized.”
Though Trump pledged to “do something in the alternative,” it was not immediately clear whether he had completely given up on holding the speech in the Capitol. Some lawmakers raised the possibility that he could deliver it in the Senate chamber. But others, as well as some Trump advisers, suggested it would be better for him to issue the speech at the border or during a rally.
While the president is permitted on the floor of the House, he needs an invitation to speak. Pelosi had invited Trump to deliver the speech in a letter Jan. 3, when she was sworn in as speaker. But in a second letter Jan. 16, she warned that there were security concerns, and asked that they “work together to determine another suitable date after government has reopened,” or that Trump consider delivering it in writing.
On Wednesday, Trump called Pelosi’s bluff, with a letter saying that he had checked, and that the Secret Service had no such concerns. So he said he was accepting her initial invitation. Republican lawmakers piled on. The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, released a video on Twitter of him signing the resolution formally inviting the president to the House.
“Retweet if you agree that the State of the Union should proceed as planned,” McCarthy wrote.
But hours later, Pelosi fired back with a letter of her own, telling the president she would not pass a resolution authorizing him to come until the government had reopened.
As the two traded barbs, House Democrats passed yet another in a string of spending bills that would reopen the government; this latest one included $1.5 billion in border security and was based on measures that gained approval from both parties in the last Congress.
During a closed-door meeting with House Democrats on Wednesday morning, Pelosi urged her caucus to stay unified and not to peel off and begin negotiating with the president on his terms, which could muddle the stark differences between Trump and them on a critical issue.
House Democrats are also drafting their own plan for border security, which is expected to be made public in the coming days. “We are going to be talking about substantial sums of money to secure our border,” Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, told reporters.
Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No 3. Democrat, said separately that Democrats could back a $5.7 billion funding measure that included drones and refitted ports of entry – but no wall. That is the amount Trump has demanded for the wall he wants to build on the southwestern border.
“Using the figure the president put on the table, if his $5.7 billion is about border security, then we see ourselves fulfilling that request, only doing it with what I like to call using a smart wall,” he said.
Both Hoyer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, seemed to leave the door open for eventual negotiations to include talk of some kind of border barrier — so long as the government was open first.
When asked point-blank if Democrats would agree to talk about a wall, Jeffries did not say no but reiterated Democratic talking points about what the party favors: new scanning technology to detect drugs and weapons, improvements in infrastructure at ports of entry and more personnel, including more immigration judges.
Hoyer was asked whether Democrats might consider permanent protections for the young immigrants in the country illegally known as Dreamers, in exchange for “some new physical barriers.” He said it was clear that Trump would put money for a wall on the negotiating table.
“It’s clear what the president wants; it’s clear what we want,” he said. “If you have a negotiation, both parties are going to put on the table what they want.”