When President Trump and Congress come back to Washington in January, will infrastructure be first on the to-do list? My new piece for the magazine looks at the White House’s plans for building new roads and bridges. Here’s an excerpt:
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Terrorism— When it comes to fighting violent extremism abroad, President Donald Trump’s first year has seen some success: partnering with Middle-Eastern nations to tamp down terror groups in their countries, continuing to squeeze ISIS out of the land they seized during 2014 and 2015 in Iraq and Syria, and recapturing the key city of Mosul in July. Although annihilating a decentralized terror group may be impossible, a White House official said Thursday that “a physical caliphate will soon be extinguished.”
Meanwhile, the administration’s travel restrictions are still being contested in the courts, although the Supreme Court ruled in December the ban could go into effect while its case was being tried.
Vice President Watch—Mike Pence made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan Thursday. The vice president is the highest ranking U.S. official in the Trump administration to visit the country, where American and coalition forces have been fighting since 2001. Pence rallied with U.S. service members at Bagram Air Base and met with Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, in Kabul.
Photo of the Day
Mike Pence poses for photos with troops in a hangar at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan on December 21, 2017. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Health Care—After congressional Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act this summer, President Trump demanded they try again, even saying they should not consider any other legislation until Obamacare was dead. But with the ACA’s individual mandate repealed as part of tax reform, Trump is apparently ready to declare the mission accomplished and move on to something else. Congressional leaders, not eager to repeat their embarrassing failure, are unlikely to press him on this point.
Must-Read of the Day—From Gabriel Sherman’s profile of Steve Bannon at Vanity Fair: “It was the evening of November 14, and the president’s former chief strategist flew to Japan to deliver a hard-edged anti-China speech at a conference for human-rights activists. ‘I’m not really a human-rights guy,’ he told me as we boarded the plane in New York. ‘But this is a chance to talk to them about populism.’” There’s a lot more in Sherman’s piece, which is worth the full read.
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Immigration—Congress is likely to tackle immigration reform early next year, racing against a timeline set by President Trump’s September decision to end the Obama-era program that granted legal status to people brought illegally to America as children. Unless Congress reinstates it, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals will sunset in March, a fact Republicans hope to use to extract Democratic concessions on increased border security and laws regulating legal immigration.
But any deal would require either the White House or Democratic leaders to back down on one key sticking point: a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, which was Trump’s key immigration promise during the campaign. Democratic leaders have insisted that the wall is a non-starter, while the White House has insisted it is a necessary precondition for a DACA deal. Democrats may have cause to view Trump’s stance as a bluff: In September, he tweeted that his administration would “revisit” DACA if Congress failed to find a compromise. Then again, Democrats have blinked on the issue once already, earlier this week backing down from their pledge to force a government shutdown if Republicans refused to reinstate DACA this year.
Who is Bill Kristol’s 2017 Person of the Year? It’s actually three people: Publius, the pseudonym of the three authors of the Federalist Papers. Here’s a bit from Kristol’s editorial in the new issue:
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Trade—The White House began renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico in August. But with five of seven rounds of talks conclude and the three countries reportedly no closer to a compromise deal, our neighbors are eyeing new trade agreements with Europe to fill the gap should the U.S. pullout of the deal. The administration initially insisted that talks wrap up by the end of the year, although they have reportedly extended the deadline through February 2018. Could two more months of negotiations prove more fruitful than the four that preceded them? If the United States pulls out of NAFTA, experts warn the economic consequences could be dire.
Programming Note—Today’s is the last White House Watch until 2018. We’re taking a break for the holidays, but if any big White House news breaks in the meantime, watch this space for updates. Otherwise, look for White House Watch to return on January 2. Merry Christmas and all the best to you and yours.
Song of the Day—“Here It Goes Again” by OK Go
