Reign of Pain Update: Government Workers Paid Vacation to End

Fox: Trump announces temporary end to partial government shutdown; vows to build wall despite no funding deal

President Trump said Friday that he will support a short-term spending bill to re-open the government, temporarily ending the partial government shutdown that has dragged on for more than a month -- despite a day earlier saying Republicans would not “cave” on his demands for funding for a wall on the southern border.

“I am very proud to announce we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government,” he said to applause from gathered Cabinet members.

He said the deal would keep the government open for three weeks until Feb. 15 and that a bill would go before the Senate immediately. He made reference to his previous threats to declare a national emergency, calling it a “very powerful weapon,” but saying he didn’t want to use it. The deal appeared to include no money for a wall or steel barrier, but he said he hoped negotiations would continue to come to an agreement on wall funding.

"Walls should not be controversial," he said, before talking at length about the dangers of criminals and drugs coming across the border.

He later said that if no deal was reached and the government shut down again on Feb. 15, he would then use his presidential powers to address what he described as "a national emergency."

I guess I'll have to vote for Kamala.  Ace:  Trump: LOL I'm Authorizing $7+ Billion for the Wall GFY

BREAKING: CNN reports that the Trump administration is preparing a draft proclamation to declare a national emergency on the southern border that identifies $7+ billion for the border wall.

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 24, 2019

I don't think this is happening, but it should. Insty: ARE EL CHAPO AND THE DRUG LORDS THE MEXICANS TRUMP MEANT WOULD PAY FOR THE WALL?

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and 14 other House GOPers are pushing a bill entitled the “Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order Act,” EL CHAPO Act for short.

“It takes the money, the billions that El Chapo made crossing the border illegally, and it takes that $14 billion and uses it to pay for the wall,” according to Cruz. Brooks says “it kills two birds with one stone” by paying for the wall without tax dollars and ends the partial government shutdown.

The idea of some portion of the drug lords’ ill-gotten gains going to fund a wall that helps put their enterprises out of business has its appeal, but there are problems. Go here for more.

And then there’s this from The Daily Caller’s fine investigative reporter, Luke Rosiak. He obtained a copy of an internal report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) that says “President Donald Trump may have the authority to use Department of Defense resources to build a wall without obtaining congressional approval or declaring a state of emergency.” Does Pelosi know about this?

Older material: AllahPundit: Did Trump’s SOTU Cave Make It More Likely That He’ll Lose On The Shutdown?

I say no, but only because there are so many weightier reasons why he’s likely to lose on the shutdown. Philip Klein says yes:

Sure, in the larger scheme of things, this childish skirmish doesn’t matter much. No lives are going to be affected by whether the date of a speech is on Jan. 29 on some other time. But in an ongoing negotiation with no real movement, any standoff is going to become a proxy battle…
As Mark Levin noted, Pelosi is going to now see this as weakness. Trump lashed out, he tut-tutted, but ultimately he gave Pelosi exactly what she wanted without getting anything in return.

Levin didn’t go as far as Klein did in predicting how the SOTU squabble might affect the larger standoff, but he’s disappointed too: “I hate to see the president do this. He’s being badly mistreated by Pelosi & she will view this as weakness. It’s also a very bad precedent. This is a battle for the nation’s soul. A rally was not the only alternative. There were solid alternatives, including the Senate & Independence Hall.”

Da Atlantic, The Pain of the Second Missed Paycheck. Da Hill, GOP senators read Pence riot act before shutdown votes, Wa Free Be: Growing Number of Dems Buck Pelosi on Federal Worker Pay.. Powerline, Dems Block Move to Pay Federal Workers, Of course, because they were more useful as hostages.

Why did House Dems kill a GOP effort to pay federal workers during the partial shutdown? An aide called it a 'stunt' & 'distraction.'

Translation: We love talking about those folks, but getting them paid would hurt our leverage, so the pain must go on.https://t.co/6rySipgiLX

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 24, 2019

City Journal, Do Illegal Aliens Have High Crime Rates? High enough, from what we know, to take measures to secure our borders.

The crime of homicide provides the most accurate measure, though, because a much higher proportion of murders are solved by police—around 70 percent—than for any other crime; by contrast, fewer than 15 percent of property offenses lead to an arrest. As a result, we have much more accurate demographics for murderers than for, say, burglars. The indication that illegal aliens commit disproportionate numbers of murders is corroborated by crime rates, shaky though they may be, for 2014 and 2015—the two years for which we have population estimates from Pew and DHS. In 2014, Texas illegal-alien murder-arrest rates were 4.99 per 100,000—56 percent higher than the rates for all other apprehended murderers (3.2 per 100,000). In 2015, the rates were 35 percent higher for illegal aliens (4.2 per 100,000, versus 3.1 per 100,000).