Author: Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Annie Karni and Nicholas Fandos / Source: New York Times
Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — A bus emblazoned with the United States Air Force logo was idling outside the Capitol on Thursday, members of Congress on board, ready to depart for Joint Base Andrews and a waiting military aircraft.
Inside, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in her office making final preparations to lead the congressional delegation on a secret visit to American troops in Afghanistan with a stop in Brussels.Then came word from the White House: President Trump was grounding their plane and killing the trip.
Mr. Trump’s decision to upend Ms. Pelosi’s travel plans was a remarkable bit of one-upmanship in an increasingly bitter government shutdown drama in which Mr. Trump and Ms. Pelosi, the newly elected Democratic speaker, are the main antagonists.
The day before, Ms. Pelosi had suggested that the president cancel or delay his State of the Union address this month, citing security concerns amid a prolonged partial shutdown that has forced thousands of federal employees to work without pay. Mr. Trump at first said nothing, but 24 hours later, without mentioning her request, the president released a sarcasm-tinged letter in which he told her the trip was off.
“In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I also feel that, during this period, it would be better if you were in Washington negotiating with me and joining the strong border security movement to end the shutdown.”
“Obviously,” Mr. Trump added, she still had the option of flying commercial.
The letter amounted to the latest reminder, if any was needed, that the stalemate over Mr. Trump’s demand that Democrats support his request for $5.7 billion to build a border wall has reached such a poisonous pitch that even the most tradition-bound rituals of government — the president’s annual address to a joint session of Congress, lawmakers’ periodic trips overseas to gather facts and perform oversight — have been consumed in a storm of ill will and competing agendas.
It came on the 27th day of the shutdown, a day on which there were once again no negotiations between the two sides. But there was some indication that House Democrats, increasingly concerned that they have not sufficiently countered Mr. Trump’s demands for a wall with ideas of their own, were privately weighing offering their own plan for more effectively securing the border.
The move would be something of a shift in strategy for the Democrats, who have steadfastly refused to engage in a debate with Mr. Trump about border security as long as the government remains shuttered.
“There have been concerns by some members saying we need to tell our constituents what we’re for and what it would look like in terms of border security,” said Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee that handles homeland security. “That is probably a way to respond to that, and a way that does not violate what we are saying: open up the government and then we will talk about border security.”
Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon and the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who told a group of committee chairmen at a closed-door meeting on Wednesday that it was time for their party to go public with its own border security ideas, reiterated the idea in an interview.
The president, he said, “is making this about border security, but what he is proposing would not provide real border security — it’s a stupid, static wall which is a symbol, and it’s not a great symbol, and it would be ineffective.”
Among the investments that Mr. DeFazio said should be made instead are more money for Coast Guard equipment and personnel to intercept maritime drug shipments, better technology to scan vehicles legally crossing the border to detect illegal drugs, resources for costly reconfiguration of border crossings to make them more secure, and funds…
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