More TSA employees skipping work as shutdown stretches on – as it happened

Thanks for following along today! You can read more on what’s happening with the SOTU here:

Here’s a breakdown of what else happened today:

• Just weeks after Trump declared victory over ISIS and announced he would pull troops out of Syria, the terrorist group attacked a military convoy killing 19. Four Americans were among the victims. Senator Chuck Schumer responded with condolences while Senator Rand Paul released a statement of support for the President. Paul’s statement came after a meeting he and other Republicans had with Trump to discuss military policy in Syria.
• The longest shutdown in US history will drag on as lawmakers failed to find solutions today. Trump signed a bill guaranteeing back-pay for furloughed federal workers, but many are struggling to make ends meet in the interim. TSA employees are not showing up for work at increasing rates while the USDA will call on workers to start coming in again tomorrow. Cardi B pushed her fans to do something in a scathing video on Instagram.

Cardi B has officially weighed in on the government shutdown, and she is not happy. In a video posted to Instagram the rapper criticized Trump and told her fans it was time for action, saying she felt bad for the federal workers who aren’t getting paid.

“Hey Ya’ll! I just want to remind you because it has been a little over three weeks” she quipped to her nearly 40 million Instagram followers, “Trump is now ordering, as in summoning, federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid”.

She advised commenters not to try to bring up the shutdown that occurred under Obama, during the dispute over the Affordable Care Act. “Yeah Bitch! For healthcare” she said before adding some colorful examples.

“We really need to take this serious” she added. “I feel like we need to take some action”.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has tweeted a response to the news that American service members were among the 19 killed by a suicide bomb in Syria, an attack that has been claimed by ISIS.

The bombing came just weeks after President Trump declared a victory against The Islamic State and announced that he was pulling troops out of Syria. According to The New York Times, there have been at least six attacks by ISIS this month and the terrorist organization.

The attack targeted an American military convoy in the northern city of Manbij while troops were inside the Palace of the Princes, a restaurant where they often stopped to eat during patrols, residents said. While the Americans were inside, a nearby suicide attacker wearing an explosive vest blew himself up.

The bombing raised new questions about Mr. Trump’s surprise decision last month to end the American ground war in Syria. Critics of the president’s plans, including members of his own party, said Mr. Trump’s claim of victory over the Islamic State may have emboldened its fighters and encouraged Wednesday’s strike”.

The US Department of Agriculture will call furloughed employees back to work on Thursday, reopening 980 agency offices that are responsible for processing farm loans and tax documents, Reuters reports.

In a statement released today, the agency announced that roughly 2,500 FSA employees are being asked to work without pay for the next three workdays.

“Until Congress sends President Trump an appropriations bill in the form that he will sign, we are doing our best to minimize the impact of the partial federal funding lapse on America’s agricultural producers,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. “We are bringing back part of our FSA team to help producers with existing farm loans”.

Representative Andy Harris, who was seen walking through the halls with far-right troll Chuck C. Johnson, has now released a statement saying the congressman was “unaware of [Johnson’s] previous associations”and was meeting to discuss genetic sequencing. “Of course I disavow and condemn white supremacy and anti-semitism”.

The Washington Post reports that a new policy being developed at the Pentagon may restrict recruitment of US citizens with foreign ties.

Anonymous sources told the Post that the memo outlining the plan will be distributed by February 15, and will likely affect thousands of new recruits:

The documents reveal how the Pentagon is grappling with the dual challenge of thoroughly screening prospective recruits for potential security threats and finding enough men and women willing to join the military. The Armed Forces have long sought green-card holders as recruits, marketing such jobs as a chance to attain U.S. citizenship”.

Worried that an official censure against Representative Steve King for racist remarks might set a precedent and open up members to politically-motivated attacks on speech, House Democratic leaders opted out of a vote and instead will pass the measure on to the House Ethics Committee.

The move to censure followed a resolution, which was resoundingly passed Tuesday, to rebuke racism. Per the Washington Post:

But Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) sought to go further by censuring King and pressed for a vote on Wednesday. After the House clerk read the resolution detailing King’s inflammatory comments over the years, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) moved to refer the matter to the Ethics Committee — a move that could bottle up the effort indefinitely”.

“I don’t know that it’s a good thing for us to talk about censure for things that are done outside of the business of the House of Representatives” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn told the Washington Post. “We should be very, very careful about doing anything that constrains, or seems to constrain, speech”.

Senator Rand Paul, who met with the president today to discuss foreign policy, tweeted his resounding support for Trump’s position on troop withdrawal.

The meeting to discuss US military presence, which included several Republican senators, assembled shortly after 19 people, including 4 Americans, were killed by a suicide bomber in northern Syria. The bombing has been claimed by the Islamic State.

In December, Trump announced that he would begin withdrawing troops from Syria, claiming “We have won against ISIS”.

As the shutdown continues into its 26th day, TSA employees are calling in sick at increasing rates. According to a press release from the agency, the rate of unscheduled absences doubled over the previous date in 2018, as “many employees are reporting that they are not able to report to work due to financial limitations”. Still, 1.6 million passengers were screened.

Just one day after the House overwhelmingly voted to reject white nationalism — a mostly symbolic gesture that falls short of an official censure — Huffpost reporter Matt Fuller spotted Chuck C. Johnson, an alt-right activist and Holocaust denier who was removed from Twitter in 2015 after trying to crowdfund violence against Black Lives Matter leaders, being welcomed by representatives.

Gabrielle Canon here, taking over for Ben Jacobs.

For those who are just joining us, here’s what’s happened so far today:

• House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, asked the president to delay his State of the Union address until the shutdown ends, citing concerns over security. She told reporters Trump could deliver the speech from “the Oval Office if he wants”. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee followed up with a statement expressing his support. Meanwhile, Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pushed back, tweeting that her agency is able to handle the risks. An official disinvitation from the speaker has yet to be issued.
• The Senate failed to advance a measure that would stop the Trump Administration from lifting sanctions against Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
• The shutdown stalemate continues. Trump signed a bill guaranteeing pay for furloughed federal workers but they won’t see that money until the shutdown ends. Senator Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, told reporters a bipartisan plan to reopen short-term while negotiations continue is unlikely to be implemented and will only happen when “donkeys fly”.

Trump signed a bill today to guarantee pay for federal employees furloughed during the shutdown. The legislation means that they will paid eventually but have no means of covering bills in the meantime. It also doesn’t effect those on contracts with the government.

President Donald Trump is now meeting with several Republican senators at the White House from across the ideological spectrum about the U.S. military presence in Syria.

A new report from the inspector general of the General Services Adminstration says that the agency, which oversees government owned property, improperly ignored constitutional concerns over Donald Trump’s lease of the Old Post Office building in Washington for a hotel.

As the Washington Post puts it:

Trump’s company won the lease several years before he became president. After Trump was elected, the agency had to decide if his company would be allowed to keep its lease.

At that time, the inspector general found, the agency should have determined if the lease violates the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which bar presidents from taking payments from foreign governments, or individual U.S. states. But it did not, according to the report issued Wednesday.

“We…found that [the agency] improperly ignored these Emoluments Clauses, even though the lease itself requires compliance with the laws of the United States, including the Constitution,” said the report.