As Democrats look to 2020 they need to remember THIS about Trump (and their chances)

Elizabeth Warren

The calendar has flipped to 2019, and that means presidential politics are kicking into high gear. Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., got the fun started, triggering an avalanche of fellow White House wannabes in the coming days.
Last week, an analysis from Bloomberg News likened the forming field of contenders to the start of the March Madness college basketball bracket. It’s an appropriate analogy, not only because of the vast number of names, but also the unpredictability of the outcome. The Democratic nominating process is quite literally a jump ball.
Another worthwhile comparison to the Democrats in 2020 is looking back at the Republican nominating process in 2016. Four years ago, the 17-person GOP field boasted the brightest stars from Congress and statehouses across the country. United in their opposition to President Barack Obama, they all offered a change of direction. They all struggled to understand the undercurrents in their party that, driven by pitchfork populism, had shifted many of its bedrock principles on trade and America’s role in the world. One candidate recognized the changing political winds, and he now sits in the Oval Office.
It is a similar story now on the other side. There could be as many as 40 household names vying for the Democratic prize. A recent CNN headline stated “Democrats head into 2019 split on everything but Trump.” Populism has hijacked the left-of-center policy debate, with polls showing socialism more popular than capitalism. Ideological purity and litmus tests on energy, health care and immigration are driving the discussion. The center-left governing days of the Obama era championing global trade deals are a distant memory.
Speaking of debates, Democratic bigwigs tried to head off headaches by announcing they will hold at least a dozen, beginning in June 2019. Last time, the debate over debates consumed attention in both parties. Supporters of Bernie Sanders accused the Democratic National Committee of rigging the process for Hillary Clinton, while Republicans argued about the qualifying threshold to make the primetime contests.
How the party infrastructure accommodates the immense number of candidates is an open question and promises to be messy process. In this age of cable news sound bites and viral social media videos, one thing is certain: being on the big debate stage matters. It made and broke candidates in 2016 and will again in 2020.
Ultimately, the successful Democratic nominee will be able to do two things: win over at least two of the competing factions of the party – establishment, liberal, diverse and outsider – and articulate an authentic economic vision that goes beyond reflexive opposition to Trump. The actions of the 44th and 45th occupants of the White House offer clues on how that process will play out.

Trump is presiding over an economy that remains healthy. The Democrats have yet to find a compelling alternative economic message.

Not content to fade into retirement, Barack Obama’s post-presidential life has broken from tradition. A vocal critic of his successor, Obama actively campaigned for Democrats in last year’s midterms, endorsing more than 300 candidates. His blessing remains highly coveted, and the public comments from his former staff and advisers are parsed for clues about his thinking.
While the party he once presided over is divided on most everything, they are united in their reverence to Obama. Should he throw his support behind a candidate down the road, he could be the only prayer the party has of a semblance of unity.
That brings us to President Trump. Despite the recent turmoil, the nomination is his for the taking as long as he runs again. It’s difficult to unseat a sitting president, and you can’t beat someone with no one –  a lesson the anti-Nancy Pelosi House Democrat insurgents just learned.
Beyond incumbency, Trump is presiding over an economy that remains healthy. The Democrats have yet to find a compelling alternative economic message.
Speaking of breaking from tradition, Trump is not going to take the route of focusing on being a president and ignoring the noise from his competition. Hours after Warren made her news, Trump was questioning her mental health in a media interview, reminding voters of her Native American scandal and denying her valuable news oxygen.
Trump’s megaphone and ability to disqualify his opponents are unmatched. Unlike last year’s midterms, next year’s presidential race will be a choice between two candidates and not a referendum on one. That’s a fight that favors Trump, regardless of what Democrat ends up facing him.

DNA is irrelevant — Elizabeth Warren is simply not Cherokee

 

 

© Anna Moneymaker

Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly identified herself as Cherokee. From 1986 to 1995 she listed herself as Native American in the Association of American Law Schools directory of law professors. After gaining tenure, she insisted University of Pennsylvania categorize her as Native American, too. She then identified herself as Native American to Harvard — in her application and hiring materials and in other forms beyond. 

Harvard has insisted that Warren’s Native American ancestry made no impact on their hiring decisions. Yet, the university immediately held up the recruitment of Warren, a “Native American woman,” to push back against claims that they were insufficiently diverse and diffuse pressure to hire more people of color. Warren was described as Harvard Law’s “first woman of color” in a 1997 Fordham Law Review article. She even published multiple recipes to a cookbook, Pow Wow Chow: A Collection of Recipes from Families of the Five Civilized Tribes — all signed, “Elizabeth Warren, Cherokee.”

Warren has consistently struggled to substantiate her claims to Native American ancestry (beyond her grandfather’s “high cheekbones”). Warren asserts her mother was “part Cherokee and part Delaware,” yet a prominent Cherokee genealogist who traced Warren’s maternal ancestry all the way back to the Revolutionary War era found no evidence of any Native American heritage. Some relatives have publicly disputed Warren’s narrative about their family. And, of course, Warren phenotypically presents as white.

For these reasons, she has faced consistent accusations that her claims to Native American ancestry were either mistaken or cynical. The president of the United States mockingly refers to her as “Pocahontas” —  and told Warren he would pay $1 million dollars to a charity of her choice “if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.” He precited Warren would decline this challenge. It would have been better for her if she had.

What the test shows (and doesn’t)

According to the test, Warren’s DNA is between 1/64 and 1/1032 Columbian, Mexican and/or Peruvian (used as proxies for measuring Cherokee heritage for reasons described in the report); between 0.1 percent and 1.5 percent of her DNA may be Native American in origin; she may have had a Native American ancestor between six to 10 generations back.

Warren depicted this as “slam dunk” proof that she really is of Native American ancestry. This is a base-rate fallacy. In fact, the average white person in America has 0.18 percent Native American DNA — meaning they could be described as about 1/ 556 Native American or as having a Native American ancestor nine to10 generations back. Warren does not seem to have a unique claim to Native American heritage over and above the typical white American.

For comparison: the average U.S. white also has about 0.19 percent African DNA; they can be said to be 1/ 526 black or to have a black ancestor nine to10 generations back. Rachel Dolezal might have about the same genetic claim to being black as Elizabeth Warren does to being Cherokee. Already, memes are circulating comparing the two. Of course, Warren and supporters can make arguments explaining how the two cases are not similar, but this is beside the point. If it has to be explained why or how Warren is substantively different from Dolezal, the war is already lost. 

Non sequitur

Rather than acknowledging she has no meaningful claim to Cherokee / Native American heritage or identity, Warren has doubled down. She claims to have “won” the bet, and has demanded Trump donate $1 million to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. The president has refused, insisting he won the wager. Unfortunately, he is correct: although Warren did take the test it did not prove she is “an Indian.”

Genes, race and ethnicity are non-identical and the relationship between them is complicated. Warren is phenotypically white. She has no identifiable Native American ancestor, no clan affiliation, and no meaningful connection to Cherokee language, customs or culture. As a result, even if the DNA test had suggested she could meet the 1/16 blood quantum required by Cherokee for a federally recognized Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood(she was nowhere near this) — it would still not have established Warren is “an Indian.”

It was actually impossible for Warren to actually win Trump’s bet: Cherokee do not decide who is (or is not) one of them the basis of DNA; what matters are clan ancestry, tracing one’s genealogy to an ancestor on the “Dawes Rolls,” or being adopted into a clan by a Clan Mother.  Elizabeth Warren fails to meet any of these criteria. As a result, she is simply not Cherokee — not even a little. DNA is irrelevant.

This point was powerfully driven home by the Cherokee Nation’s Secretary of State, who described Warren’s attempt as wrong-headed and insulting. He went on to say that Warren is “undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage” (neither Warren nor her team consulted with Cherokee leadership before conducting the test or releasing the results).

And so, rather than neutralizing Trump’s attacks, it is now has made it far easier to portray Warren as a phony: She appropriated Native American heritage for years in both private and professional settings.

Confronted with evidence that her claims were illegitimate (her DNA is comparable to the average white; she has no other empirical proof of heritage) — Warren nonetheless claimed vindication, emulating Trump’s “post-truth politics.”

Throughout, she failed to challenge (and in fact, reinforced) Trump’s false narratives about race, Affirmative Action and the quality of the minority applicants who benefit from it.

Rather than using her platforms and energies to discuss her own agenda, hold Trump accountable for his record and proposals, or speak to constituents’ priorities — we are instead discussing Warren’s (lack of) Native American ancestry because she herself dragged the issue into the spotlight.  

Elizabeth Warren tried to play Trump’s game. She lost. Democrats, take heed.

Democrats' flip-flop on border security has everything to do with 2020 (and nothing to do with immigration)

The Oscar for the biggest bluff of 2018 goes to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi for almost having us convinced they’re opposed to immigration reform from high atop the fabricated moral high ground they’ve staked out.
In reality, they weren’t always opposed to illegal immigrants being forced to follow the law and come here through legal channels.
How do we know this? They told us.
In 2009, while speaking at Georgetown University, Sen. Schumer, D-NY, said “illegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple.” Indirectly referencing over 600 miles of border fence that had already been built, he literally claimed it was a “significant barrier to illegal immigration.” This is exactly President Trump’s position about completing the border wall, almost word for word.
Schumer is also on record, and on video, as having said, "One of the most effective things we do on the border is turn people back … they get up to the border and we find them and say, 'go home!’" Again, this is President Trump’s position, almost word for word.
House Minority Leader and incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also had a different position on borders. In 2008 she said, “Because we do need to address the issue of immigration and the challenge we have of undocumented people in our country. We certainly do not want any more coming in.”
Even Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for president took a hard line on illegal immigration as late as 2014 saying, “We have to send a clear message that just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean your child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”
Nancy and Hillary sound a lot like President Trump, again almost verbatim.
In 2013 every single Democrat in the Senate — all 54 of them — voted for $46 billion in border security, which included 700 miles in border fencing. Yet today, the Democrats are willing to shut down the government over just $5 billion dollars.
To most people $5 billion is an inconceivable amount of money. To Congress it’s lunch money.
To put it in perspective, in 2009 when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress and the White House, they passed a $787 billion stimulus bill, a $410 billion Omnibus Appropriations bill. Then in 2015 they overwhelmingly voted for President Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal, which gave that nation — the world’s most foremost sponsor of terrorism —$150 billion in the hope that would keep the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon.
President Trump rightly extracted the U.S. from that deal, which Iran had no intention of honoring, but the money is gone and we can’t get it back.
To show just how principled they are in their spending, they’ve also thrown money at swine odor and manure management research to the tune of $1.8 million.
When you look at it in these terms, why would Democrats shut down the government over a measly $5 billion, halt government employee paychecks and, in the case of Pelosi, jet off to Hawaii to figure it all out later when they’ve voted for almost 10 times that amount in border security?
Because a border wall isn’t just a win for America, it’s a win for President Trump. If America gets the wall, the president will have made good on his biggest campaign promise, and it will likely mean he’s headed toward a second term in 2020.
And Democrats can’t let President Trump win. This is what flexible morals look like.
They are so consumed with contempt for the president they’re willing to gamble on our country’s security — gangs, drug cartels and possibly even terrorists crossing the border. In their mind, it’s better than the likely alternative — another four years of Trump in the White House.
It’s Trump Derangement Syndrome at its worst.
While Pelosi packed up and went on a Hawaiian vacation amidst the government shutdown, President Trump canceled his Christmas plans at Mar-a-Lago. Except for his trip to Iraq to visit U.S. troops he stayed at the White House ready work with Democrats and reopen the government.
Of course that wasn’t the headline the media reported. Many mainstream outlets ignored Pelosi’s Christmas vacation at a Hawaiian resort, where rooms go from $489 to $3,499 a night, ignored the fact that the president was sticking around and willing to work, ignored that he went to Iraq to support our soldiers, and ignored that for the first time in a very long time a first lady went to a war zone with the president.
Instead, they went full blown Scrooge on the military for daring to bring MAGA hats for the president to sign during his visit to Iraq, accused the president of turning the visit into a campaign rally, and made fun of the first lady’s shoes.
Has anyone else noticed that the media has a borderline creepy obsession with the first lady’s feet? The president could broker a peace agreement in the Middle East and the headline would mock what Melania wore on her feet.
The $5 billion President Trump is asking for is less than one percent of the federal budget. Considering the billions of dollars the Democrats have been more than willing to spend, they look ridiculous digging their heels in over $5 billion — to secure our border nonetheless.
Walls work. Just ask our ally Israel which has a wall along its border; a wall the Israelis have found to be over 99 percent effective.
Democrats aren’t used to Republicans not caving to them. For the first time in a long time we have a president who’s working hard to deliver everything he promised.
For the President Trump this is a national security fight, but for the Democrats this is just another case of anti-Trump resistance. If he didn’t want any funding for border security, Democrats would probably insist on it. It’s all a game to them.
The president needs to stay the course. It’s the right thing for the country, and it’s why he was elected.

Jason Chaffetz: If Democrats won't spend $5 billion on a wall they should spend $25 billion on border security

Jason Chaffetz Fox News

If congressional Democrats won’t provide the $5 billion President Trump has asked for to fund a wall or other physical barrier along the U.S. border with Mexico and end the partial government shutdown, then Republicans should offer an alternative proposal: $25 billion – five times as much – for border security.
To properly protect the integrity of our borders without a wall, the government will need at least an additional $25 billion. That should be the message to the Democrats.
Here’s how the $25 billion should be spent:
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JASON CHAFFETZ: TRUMP'S BORDER WALL MAY GET FUNDING AFTER ALL (THANKS TO THIS DIRTY LITTLE WASHINGTON SECRET)
Repairs to existing barriers
Congress should agree with the Customs and Border Patrol that certain sections of the nearly 2,000 miles of border with Mexico need a physical impediment to curb the flow of human trafficking, drugs, weapons and other illegal activity.
Use $5 billion to simply fix and improve current border walls and fencing. Democrats should be able to live with this because it would enables them to keep their commitment to oppose a new wall.
More officers at higher pay
Days after he took office, President Trump signed an executive order to hire 5,000 additional Customs and Border Patrol officers, and 10,000 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
Two years later there are fewer people at the Customs and Border Patrol and only a negligible increase in ICE officers. There are currently roughly 4,800 ICE officers and 60,000 Transportation Security Administration personnel.
Let’s give Customs and Border Patrol and ICE officers a 20 percent pay increase to attract the highest quality employees and to diminish longstanding retention issues. Money will also be needed to dramatically staff up as promised. Democrats should have no difficulty justifying support for federal workers to their base.

Let’s give Customs and Border Patrol and ICE officers a 20 percent pay increase to attract the highest quality employees and to diminish longstanding retention issues. Money will also be needed to dramatically staff up as promised. Democrats should have no difficulty justifying support for federal workers to their base.

Tracking entry and exit
For decades, the law has required an entry and exit system to track movement across the border. But that system is still not operational. It remains in development.
President Trump has done more to move this effort forward than any other president, but let’s take this opportunity to get it across the finish line.
Properly funding the entry and exit tracking system will provide the tools to address the fundamental problem of visa overstays. If you don’t know who is coming in and leaving the country, you can’t consistently enforce the law.
Further, we should track the millions of people who use a border crossing card to enter the U.S. The card is intended to be used for short trips – a maximum of 72 hours.
We have no reliable method to track the abuse of this system. Border crossing cards are valuable to criminals, drug mules, or human traffickers who might use them to travel undetected to our country’s interior. The cards are a convenience for those who live near the border, but we must have the ability to track when those cards are being abused.
Holding illegal immigrants
With large numbers of people crossing our border illegally, we must allocate more money to detain, house, transport and deport illegal immigrants. This is especially true with criminals and those who have previously been deported but illegally returned to the United States.
The Homeland Security Department needs to be able to increase the contracting with county facilities and live with their standards of incarceration. The county facilities should be compensated to hold people while the feds process them for potential deportation.
Cargo inspections
Current law requires 100 percent of all inbound cargo to the U.S. to be inspected. However, we inspect less than 2 percent.
Previously, I worked with incoming House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., on this topic. Improving inspections requires more funding. The Chinese are the worst offenders.
Our customs officials have great working relationships with South Korean and Pakistan, for instance, where we can inspect cargo as it goes into the containers.
Not true with China. The Chinese are the most secretive and difficult, from my experience. Let’s do as the law requires and inspect 100 percent of the cargo. Democrats such as Nadler have supported this previously and should do so now.
Sanctuary cities
In just the last few weeks we have seen the devastation of the sanctuary policies play out in the San Joaquin Valley of California as the criminal element of the illegal immigrant population was able to evade ICE officers.
It’s time to force the issue and allow local law enforcement officers to appropriately cooperate with their federal law enforcement partners. This may be a tough pill to swallow for Democrats, but remember, in return there will be no new wall, which is just as tough for Republicans.

In just the last few weeks we have seen the devastation of the sanctuary policies play out in the San Joaquin Valley of California as the criminal element of the illegal immigrant population was able to evade ICE officers.  It’s time to force the issue and allow local law enforcement officers to appropriately cooperate with their federal law enforcement partners.

DACA
DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Action should take place now to help the illegal immigrants brought here by their parents as children who are protected by this program.
Citizenship should not be automatic, but this population should receive legal documentation to be in the U.S. and an ability to get in line, like those who came here legally, for citizenship if they choose.
Should a DACA designee be convicted of a serious crime, then that person should be subject to deportation just like any other non-citizen immigrant.
Tunnel Task Force
When many members of our military were being killed by Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon stood up the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). We spent more than $20 billion.
Let’s do the same to detect and destroy the tunnels used by drug cartels and human traffickers to enter our country. We can call it Tunnel Recognition Underground Military Program (TRUMP).
The Democrats say they support “border security,” but they can’t back up the claim. Many of them have advocated for abolishing ICE, supporting sanctuary cities, and opposing an “immoral” wall on our southern border.
Perhaps the steps outlined here strike the right balance for both parties to solve the impasse and improve the integrity of our borders.
But then again, it is Washington, where delay, blame, and inaction usually prevail. #SAD.

Former NY Times editor rips Trump coverage as biased

Jill Abramson

A former executive editor of the New York Times says the paper’s news pages, the home of its straight-news coverage, have become “unmistakably anti-Trump.”
Jill Abramson, the veteran journalist who led the newspaper from 2011 to 2014, says the Times has a financial incentive to bash the president and that the imbalance is helping to erode its credibility.
In a soon-to-be published book, “Merchants of Truth,” that casts a skeptical eye on the news business, Abramson defends the Times in some ways but offers some harsh words for her successor, Dean Baquet. And Abramson, who was the paper’s only female executive editor until her firing, invoked Steve Bannon’s slam that in the Trump era the mainstream media have become the “opposition party.”
“Though Baquet said publicly he didn’t want the Times to be the opposition party, his news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump,” Abramson writes, adding that she believes the same is true of the Washington Post. “Some headlines contained raw opinion, as did some of the stories that were labeled as news analysis.”
What’s more, she says, citing legendary 20th century publisher Adolph Ochs, “the more anti-Trump the Times was perceived to be, the more it was mistrusted for being biased. Ochs’s vow to cover the news without fear or favor sounded like an impossible promise in such a polarized environment.”
Abramson describes a generational split at the Times, with younger staffers, many of them in digital jobs, favoring an unrestrained assault on the presidency. “The more ‘woke’ staff thought that urgent times called for urgent measures; the dangers of Trump’s presidency obviated the old standards,” she writes.
Trump claims he is keeping the “failing” Times in business—an obvious exaggeration—but the former editor acknowledges a “Trump bump” that saw digital subscriptions during his first six months in office jump by 600,000, to more than 2 million.

Former executive editor of the New York Times Jill Abramson.

Dean Baquet 2019 New York Times Editor

“Given its mostly liberal audience, there was an implicit financial reward for the Times in running lots of Trump stories, almost all of them negative: they drove big traffic numbers and, despite the blip of cancellations after the election, inflated subscription orders to levels no one anticipated.”
The Times has long faced accusations of liberal bias, even before Trump got into politics and became its harshest critic. But Abramson’s words carry special weight because she is also a former Times Washington bureau chief and Wall Street Journal correspondent specializing in investigative reporting.
Baquet has said that Trump’s attacks on the press are “out of control” and that it is important to use the word “lie” when the president tells a clear untruth.
In “Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts,” Abramson praised as “brave and right” Baquet’s decision to run this headline when Trump abandoned his birtherism attacks on Barack Obama: “Trump Gives Up a Lie But Refuses to Repent.”
Abramson, who had her share of clashes with Baquet when he was her managing editor, sheds light on a 2016 episode when Baquet held off on publishing a story that would have linked the Trump campaign with Russian attempts to influence the election.
Liz Spayd, then the Times public editor, wrote that the paper, which concluded that more evidence was needed, appeared “too timid” in not running the piece, produced by a team that included reporter Eric Lichtblau.
Baquet “seethed” at this scolding, Abramson says, and emailed Lichtblau: “I hope your colleagues rip you a new a*****e.”
Baquet wrote that “the most disturbing thing” about Spayd’s column “was that there was information in it that came from very confidential, really difficult conversations we had about whether or not to publish the back channel information. I guess I’m disappointed that this ended up in print.
“It is hard for a journalist to complain when confidential information goes public. That’s what we do for a living, after all. But I’ll admit that you may find me less than open, less willing to invite debate, the next time we have a hard decision to make.”
Lichtblau soon left the Times for CNN, where he was one of three journalists fired when the network retracted and apologized for a story making uncorroborated accusations against Trump confidante Anthony Scaramucci. And the Times soon abolished the public editor’s column.
Abramson is critical of Trump as well. She calls his “fake news” attacks a “cheap way of trying to undermine the credibility of the Times’s reporting as something to be accepted as truth only by liberals in urban, cosmopolitan areas.”
The Times, which broke the story of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, also “made some bad judgment calls and blew its Clinton coverage out of proportion,” Abramson writes. She says Clinton “was wary of me,” mishandled the scandal and “was secretive to the point of being paranoid.”
Abramson is candid in acknowledging her faults. When then-publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was considering promoting her to the top job, he told her over lunch at Le Bernadin: “Everyone knows there’s a good Jill and a bad Jill. The big question for me is which one we’ll see if you become executive editor.”
She admitted to him that “I could be self-righteous when I felt unheard, I interrupted, I didn’t listen enough.”
It was a heated battle with Baquet that led to her ouster in 2014. He was furious upon learning that she was trying to trying to recruit another top journalist—Abramson says an executive ordered her to keep it secret—who would share the managing editor’s title.
Sulzberger called her in, fired her, and handed her a press release announcing her resignation.
Abramson says she replied: “Arthur, I’ve devoted my entire career to telling the truth, and I won’t agree to this press release. I’m going to say I’ve been fired.”
Her final judgment: “I was a less than stellar manager, but I also had been judged by an unfair double standard applied to many women leaders.”

Best Dumb Democrat Cartoons

And You Did Vote Them Back In Dumb Asses.

Lawmaker who suggested Trump use ‘own funds’ to help pay for border wall has history of missing votes: report

Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., ranks 48th out of 435 congress members for missed votes.  (ivn.us)

A congressman who last week suggested that President Trump ought to fork over his "own funds" to help fund the border wall, reportedly has a history of missing votes on Capitol Hill.
U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican who represents North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District, missed a total of 7.7 percent of House votes in 2017 – ranking him 48th among 435 members in missed votes, according to statistics cited by the News & Observer of Raleigh.
More recently, an illness has prevented Jones from voting since late September. He has missed at least 27 roll call votes since then, through the House's reconvening in November, the report said. He is expected to Capitol Hill when Congress reconvenes in January, the News & Observer reported.
Jones, 75, won an easy victory in the November midterms. During the primary, he said it would be his final term in office if he was elected.
The lawmaker's statement that Trump should contribute his own money was said amid a partial government shutdown, stemming in part from Congress' inability to reach a deal on Trump's request for $5 billion for a border wall.
Jones also suggested slashing federal aid or funding the war in Afghanistan as ways to come up with the extra money.
Since the federal government partially shut down Dec. 22, Republicans and Democrats have been at a seeming impasse over Trump’s demands for $5 billion for a border wall. Trump continued to press Democrats to "give us the votes necessary for border security" in a series of tweets on New Year's Eve.
House Democrats said they plan to introduce a legislative package later Monday to re-open the government, including a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security at current levels through Feb. 8 with $1.3 billion for border security, but it's unclear what kind of support it will get from Republicans. It did not include money for the wall.

Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential run ‘will be the end of her’: A.B. Stoddard

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has her eyes set on the 2020 presidential race, but the controversy surrounding her claims of Native American ancestry may have cost her political future, RealClearPolitics associate editor A.B. Stoddard argued Monday night on the "Special Report" All-Star panel.
On Monday morning, Warren announced she was forming an exploratory committee in preparation of what will likely be a presidential run in 2020. The Massachusetts Democrat is the third member of her party to declare such ambitions -- following former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and U.S. Rep. John Delaney of Maryland.
In October, Warren released the findings of a DNA test that show that she may be 1/1,024th Native American, in a bid to quiet her critics. She had been accused of claiming she had Native American heritage to advance her career, something President Trump has repeatedly suggested.
Stoddard, who appeared with the Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway and Washington Examiner editorial director Hugo Gurdon, expressed that Warren’s deflection from the ancestry controversy isn’t good enough since it was “truly a debacle.”
“It showed what her political judgment is really like. And it’s one thing to just be on the Senate floor or the campaign trail in 2016, have a national network of support, have a good message. It’s another to make a huge blunder, sort of taking Trump’s bait ... but yeah, she has a bad story on this issue,” Stoddard told the panel. “She brings the video out in late October, two weeks before the midterms, steps on the Democrats’ message. It’s completely selfish and sort of self-absorbed and tone-deaf, and then she gets dissed by the Cherokee Nation. It was a disaster and Democrats were furious. And they believe that it was a fatal blow.”

“She brings the video out in late October, two weeks before the midterms, steps on the Democrats’ message. ... It was a disaster and Democrats were furious. And they believe that it was a fatal blow.”
— A.B. Stoddard, RealClearPolitics associate editor

“Instead of sort of just stepping aside and using what she has, which is some national support and kind of being a kingmaker, she’s gonna step into this race and it’s gonna be the end of her,” Stoddard continued. “It’s a wide-open race and I expect that this primary run to really go into late spring of 2020, so a year-and-a-half of a Democratic Party freak-out. They are very divided, but Elizabeth Warren, even after 2016 I’m going to deposit is not going to be the nominee. Look at the polling, no one is excited about her.”
Hemingway agreed with Stoddard, calling Warren’s rollout of her DNA results was “horrifically done.” She also drew attention to Warren’s “vibe,” which she described as a “hectoring middle school principal” and suggested that her policies would be “more challenging” for the senator since a general election candidate tends to be more moderate.
Meanwhile, Gurdon asserted that President Trump wasn’t going to “get his wish” in running against Warren in 2020 since many already see her as “yesterday’s woman.”
“The fact is that the party has already moved to adopt most of her positions. She doesn’t stand out and there are younger guns in the field,” Gurdon said. “Her announcement today was pretty drab, it was very formulaic. She, you know, emphasized her roots in Oklahoma and her links to the military and the middle class. And it was just ho-hum kind of -- I just think that she’s already yesterday’s woman. There will be somebody else who gets the nomination.”

Dems aim to bring big-government programs to floor vote with 2019 House takeover

Expect to hear the words “free,” “guaranteed” and “for all” a whole lot more in the new year as Democrats prepare an arsenal of big-government bills that could actually see a floor vote once they take control of the House.
Come January, proposals like “Medicare for all” and a host of other generous-but-costly welfare programs that were little more than talking points in recent years could have a shot at passing a chamber of Congress.
“There are dozens of measures like this that have been languishing with Republicans at the helm for years, and I expect to see many of them finally come to the floor under Democratic leadership,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., told Fox News.
With the GOP’s expanded majority in the Senate, it’s unlikely these measures would make it to President Trump’s desk. But their consideration on the House side would mark a first step in formally considering major government expansions – concerning everything from education to health care – that Democrats increasingly favor. And with “Medicare for all” and similar proposals amounting to litmus tests for modern progressives, roll-call votes on any of these issues would reveal just how broad their support is.
At the same time, floor votes putting Democrats on record for multi-trillion-dollar policies could embolden Republicans working to recover from their midterm losses.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, shortly before the November elections, told Breitbart News Daily that Democrats are moving “toward clear socialism,” and suggested Republicans need to make the case for “unleashing the great powers of liberty and freedom.”
Some of the Democratic Party’s agenda, likely to be spearheaded by Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, was spelled out in their “A Better Deal” campaign platform. The set of proposals claims nearly every item could be paid for by rolling back the Trump tax cuts. The most liberal bills have emerged from the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
This, however, does not include “Medicare for all,” which according to one estimate could cost nearly $33 trillion over 10 years.
And “Medicare for all” is just one component of the much broader “Green New Deal” platform being pushed by progressives like Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – which also calls for a tuition-free and federally funded education system, guaranteed jobs with an emphasis on “green” jobs, and more.
The Daily Caller reported that more than 40 Democratic lawmakers back the plan – though it’s unclear whether the plan would ever be translated into a bill, let alone come to a vote.
Still, Democratic members, while in the minority, sponsored individual bills calling for “college for all,” “debt-free college,” “child care for all,” and a “jobs guarantee” during the last two years, which could now be voted on along with climate legislation, pro-labor union bills and attempts to roll back the tax reform bill that passed in late 2017.
“The American people picked Democrats in November because they were tired of watching Republicans ignore working families and pass laws lining the pockets of big corporations, millionaires and billionaires,” Watson Coleman said.
Watson Coleman introduced the Federal Jobs Guarantee Development Act in 2018, and said she expects the bill to reach a vote in 2019. Under the bill, the Labor Department would establish job-guarantee test sites in 15 high-unemployment areas across the country. The federal government would match those seeking employment with jobs in understaffed fields.
Watson Coleman argued that the measure would build “economic security for working families and grows our country’s middle class while placing workers in industries with real need.”
There is one area of “A Better Deal” that could see bipartisan cooperation and support from President Trump -- a $1 trillion infrastructure package.
“A Better Deal” also calls for spending $50 billion to increase public school teacher pay, and another $50 billion for school infrastructure.
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., likely the incoming chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee, also introduced a “Worker’s Freedom to Negotiate Act” that bans state laws that allow employees to opt not to join a union and pay union dues. Currently, 28 states have some form of a “right-to-work” law.
The Democratic campaign plan also calls for spending $40 billion on “universal high speed Internet.” A similar bill was promoted by Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., who pushed to expand Internet into rural areas.
Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., has been a leading advocate of the Child Care for Working Families Act, a concept promoted in the party’s campaign plan. The legislation would ensure that no family under 150 percent of a state’s median income pays more than 7 percent of their income for child care. The legislation also would establish a federal-state partnership to provide child care from birth through age 13.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he anticipates his Job Opportunities for All Act—with 22 Democratic co-sponsors—will make it to the floor in the new Congress.
The legislation, which Khanna, elected the first vice chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has said fulfills part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s proposed “economic bill of rights,” would provide federal funding to put people to work immediately in both the public and the private sector.
“The Job Opportunities for All Act, H.R. 6485, will help create good paying private sector and public sector job opportunities for people in places left behind,” Khanna told Fox News. “I expect my bill, along with innovative thinking from my colleagues, to be considered as Democrats work to build a jobs agenda.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal D-Wash., could play a prominent role in such legislative proposals. She is a co-chairwoman of the Medicare For All Caucus, which has nearly 80 members committed to a complete government-run health care system. She was also elected co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus set to have more than 90 members after the election.
Jayapal was also the sponsor of the College for All Act in 2017, which would eliminate tuition and fees at public colleges and universities for families earning up to $125,000, and make community college free for everyone. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced the Senate version. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., the other progressive caucus co-chairman, introduced a similar bill, the Debt-Free College Act, which would provide more federal funding to states to alleviate student loan debt.