Eight House Republicans voted on Thursday to reopen parts of the federal government, as two Senate Republicans backed the idea.
As President Donald Trump’s shutdown of much of the federal government is on the cusp of its third week, he claimed on Thursday that he has never had more support. But with every congressional Democrat against his decision to hold the workings of government hostage to his demand for billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars for a border wall that he’d promised would be fully funded by Mexico, and now 10 congressional Republicans standing up to him as well, he may never had had so little.
“I have never had so much support as I have in the last week over my stance for border security, for border control, and for frankly, the wall or the barrier,” Trump announced in an unusual appearance in the White House briefing room on Thursday, before leaving without taking any questions from the press.
Hours earlier, the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives had been sworn in for the 116th Congress — the first time in the nation’s history that Congress had convened with the government shutdown.
View the complete January 4 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress.org website here.