Shutdown writing is tedious because it tends to follow a pattern: Nothing has happened for weeks and nothing is likely to happen for the next couple weeks. Updates to follow.

The wall isn’t even really the point anymore, as if $5 billion could ever do more than pay for a few hundred steel slats along the southern border anyway. Aside from the overflowing toilets at national parks and the army of inconvenienced furloughed federal employees then, the only question that actually matters is who the public will hold responsible when the government reopens.