Latest update April 5th, 2025 12:08 AM
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TRUMP CAVED IN
On Friday, President Trump caved under mounting pressure to end a 35-day-old U.S. government shutdown without getting the $5.7 billion from the U.S Congress to build a wall along the U.S-Mexico border.
According to Trump the wall is intended to keep illegal immigrants and drugs out of the U.S. It matters not that the people across the border have discovered ingenious means to counter any wall. They are tunneling.
The collapse of the position adopted by President Trump was an astonishing retreat. It came three days after he had vowed that “he will not cave.”
The shutdown which began on December 22 was triggered by President Trump who was criticized by conservative commentators for signing legislation to fund policies without securing money to build the wall.
With several polls showing that more than 60 percent of Americans blamed President Trump for the painful shutdown, the longest of its kind in U.S. history, Trump was forced to find a way out of the crisis.
The surprise announcement was a remarkable surrender for a president whose tough talk during the shutdown has made the wall his nonnegotiable condition for ending the shutdown.
The president’s concession paved the way for both the House and the Senate to pass a stopgap spending bill to restore normal operations at a series of federal agencies until February 15 and to pay the 800,000 federal workers who have worked without pay during the shutdown.
The shutdown, which pitted Speaker Nancy Pelosi against President Donald Trump, was the Speaker’s first test since assuming the Speakership position in early January for the second time.
Minority leader Chuck Schumer, the top democrat in the Senate, has said he hoped the experience would be a “lesson learned” for Trump and his party that it is self-defeating to shut the government over policy disputes.
True to their belief, democrats remained united and unyielding in their opposition to provide money for what they dubbed “Trump’s wall”, one of his signature campaign promises.
However, Trump has stated that his about-face is in no way a retreat, but simply to stop the pain and suffering of the 800,000 furloughed Government employees and their families who were being hurt by the shutdown.
The three-week agreement reached with congressional leaders was quickly passed by the Senate and the House without opposition and signed by Trump. It paved the way for the government to remain open in order for U.S lawmakers to address security along the U.S.-Mexican border.
But Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated plainly that any compromise would not include money for a new border wall, which democrats view as ineffective and overly costly. It has also made it possible for Mr.Trump to deliver his State of the Union address to Congress, which Ms. Pelosi had prevented him from doing during the shutdown.
While President Trump offered no explanation for his surrender, it has affected the security forces in the country, including the FBI and the CIA. It took its toll on federal workers. But it reached a critical point on Friday after thousands of flights were grounded at several airports, including JFK, Philadelphia and Chicago as air traffic controllers reported sick.
And despite his threat that the shutdown could resume on February 15 if he does not get funding for the wall, he has already adopted some of the language that democrats have used during the shutdown. He has conceded that he does not need 2,000 miles of concrete wall along the entire border. Instead, he could invoke the utility of drones and sensors, effectively could substituting for some physical barriers.
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