The US government shutdown that began about a week ago is continuing with no end in sight. Funding for several key wings of the government lapsed on December 21, 2018, thanks to a political impasse over a spending bill. Congressional Democrats are refusing to pass a spending bill that includes the $5.7 billion Trump seeks to build a wall at the border between the US and Mexico. Congressional Republicans, who will have bicameral control of US legislature until the New Year, lack the votes needed to bypass the Democrats. Democrats will assume House majority in January 2019, but even then, Trump has vowed to veto any bill that does not include the border wall funds he seeks. Although the Trump White House once appeared to waver on its commitment to the border wall fight, Trump is now doubling down on his anti-immigrant rhetoric. He has threatened to close the "entire border" and to withdraw aid to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala until he gets his way. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are thus unable to work or be paid until a spending bill is passed. Adding insult to injury, on Saturday Trump signed an executive order freezing pay for federal workers in 2019.
Meanwhile, the Mueller investigation drama carries on. On Thursday, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani flip-flopped on the question of whether Trump might concede to an in-person interview with Mueller; at first he said it was possible, but later he said there was no possibility of such a meeting. Evidence emerged that Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, flew to Prague in 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials and discuss Trump's collusion with Russia. Cohen continues to deny that he ever participated in such a meeting. A court filing in the case against the Internet Research Agency, the Russian group indicted for election interference, revealed that there is a salacious "nude selfie" amongst the evidence against them. Lastly, White House lawyers have argued that the emoluments case against Trump should be postponed until post-government shutdown.
Trump took a victory lap through American military members stationed abroad this week to celebrate his controversial decision to pull troops from Syria. While there, he managed to mislead US soldiers, claiming that he had authorized a 10% pay increase for them in 2019, when in fact he had only authorized a 2.6% pay increase. This pay bump isn't even especially noteworthy; the military has received pay increases between 1% and 3.9% every year for the past decade. Trump's Twitter also landed him in hot water yet again, as he managed to violate protocol by inadvertently revealing the identities and location of a covert Navy Seals Op in a video posted to his feed.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration furthered its mission of environmental deregulation and propping up the ailing coal industry. Earlier this week, the EPA proposed that it may relax regulations on emissions of mercury and other pollutants from coal-burning plants, despite the known impacts of these substances on human health.