GOVERNMENT/MITCH MCCONNELL/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “It may look like a typical Washington farce, but a pair of Senate show votes this week might just be the first, tentative step on a long road out of the longest government shutdown in history. The White House, the Democratic House and the Republican Senate are about to stage a theatrical effort to make it look like they are doing everything possible to restore the paychecks of 800,000 federal workers. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan enshrines President Donald Trump’s offer to swap temporary protection for some undocumented immigrants for $5.7 billion in funding for his totemic border wall…A rival Democratic bill that would reopen the government but not fund the wall is based on a measure that already made it through the House and was unveiled by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as he branded McConnell a ‘co-conspirator in the shutdown.’ But for all the noise and insults, everyone on both sides knows that the pair of Senate votes will almost certainly fail on partisan lines — and are more a chance to vent political steam than to break the gridlock. So, barring some kind of miraculous capitulation by the President or his newly empowered Democratic opponents, nothing that happens over the next few days is likely to result in the impasse being solved.”
–Stephen Collinson, “With votes scheduled, Washington gropes for way out of shutdown,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, January 22, 2019 3:40 am