UPDATED: The US Senate passed a temporary spending bill to keep the federal government funded through to February 8 on Wednesday. But President Donald Trump on Thursday morning indicated that he might not sign the deal despite indications in recent days of a capitulation on funding for his border wall. The House was to have voted on its version of the bill on Thursday just hours ahead of the December 21st deadline, and send it to Trump’s desk for a signature. But White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced in the morning that, “At this moment, the President does not want to go further without border security, which includes steel slats or a wall. The President is continuing to weigh his options.” According to the Washington Post, “senior Republicans in Congress even appeared unsure of what Trump actually wanted before he would sign legislation.” Trump faced anger and derision from his conservative supporters over his apparent capitulation in recent days over the wall.

A federal judge on Wednesday dealt yet another blow to Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant policies. Judge Emmet Sullivan blocked former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ impossibly strict guidelines for asylum applications that were announced and implemented earlier this year. Sullivan ruled that the US must stop deporting immigrants, “without first providing credible fear determinations consistent with the immigration laws.” He added, “It is the will of Congress — not the whims of the Executive — that determines the standard for expedited removal.” But on Thursday morning, the Department of Homeland Security announced a deal it had reached with Mexico for asylum seekers to wait in Mexico instead. It is likely to be challenged in court. A few weeks ago an Appeals Court ruled that the Trump administration cannot deny asylum claims from people crossing the border between the official ports of entry.

In other immigration news, a standoff between six Honduran nationals and Border Patrol ended on Wednesday after 17 hours at the US border near San Diego, California. Two Democratic members of Congress, Nanette Barragan and Jimmy Gomez joined the group of six. The lawmakers spent the hours pressuring border patrol staff to process the asylum applications. It is common practice for authorities to limit the number of asylum claims saying they are at capacity. Most applicants are forced to wait weeks or months in Mexico. This particular group had reached US soil and so were finally processed with the help of the members of Congress.

Outgoing Republican Congressman Paul Ryan gave his last speech as House Speaker on Wednesday. Ryan expressed regret in failing to gut Social Security and Medicare – programs he refers to as “entitlements.” He said, “I acknowledge plainly that my ambitions for entitlement reform have outpaced the political realit...

FEATURING JESSELYN MCCURDY – The US Senate on Tuesday passed a sweeping criminal justice reform bill with bipartisan support. The House had already passed a version of the bill, which extensively revises prison and sentencing guidelines. The President’s support of the bill, called the First Step Act, resulted from an unlikely scenario – pressure from his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as the liberal CNN commentator Van Jones, and the reality TV star Kim Kardashian, who used the case of a 63-year woman named Alice Marie Johnson to change the President’s mind.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reluctantly backed the bill in turn, and got it passed through the senate 87-12, with some conservative Republicans refusing to support it. Trump is expected to sign the bill into law this week.

Jesselyn McCurdy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office.

FEATURING STEFAN M. BRADLEY – There have been many political debates on the campuses of elite universities over the years. Often students have effectively led movements that mirror off-campus struggles. One great example of that is how black student movements historically used their positions within elite Ivy League schools to demand change.

A new book about the black-student led movements for civil rights and black power tells that story.

Stefan M. Bradley is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is author of Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s and co-editor of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Legacy of Greatness, The Demands of Transcendence. His new book is called Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League.

The sentencing hearing for President Donald Trump’s former National Security advisor Michael Flynn has been postponed to next March in an unexpected twist. Flynn went into the hearing hoping that the judge in question would take prosecutors’ request for no prison time seriously. Instead he and the federal prosecutors in the case got an earful from U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan about his dishonest testimony to the FBI in January 2017. Sullivan said, “Not only did you lie to the FBI, you lied to senior officials in the incoming administration.” He added, “All along, you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States. Arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out.” He even asked if Flynn’s behavior, “rises to the level of treasonous activity. . . . Could he have been charged with treason?” The judge later walked back some of his comments but ultimately decided to delay the sentencing.

Reporters later asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to explain why the President, who had wish Flynn ‘good luck,’ thought so highly of his former national security adviser, but had such disdain for his former attorney Michael Cohen, going as far as calling Cohen, “a rat.”  Huckabee Sanders failed to explain why the President has differing opinions of two of his former colleagues caught in the net of the Special Counsel’s investigation.

Huckabee Sanders was also asked about Trump’s reversal on a government shut down over his border wall funding. The White House Press Secretary responded to reporters about “other options” to fund Trump’s border wall. Meanwhile Senators agreed on a spending bill on Wednesday that does not include the border wall funding. The vote will take place later in the day and the President has indicated that he might sign it, signalizing yet another political defeat on immigration.

A court in New York has ordered the Trump Foundation to be shut down as part of on-going investigations into the President’s charitable organization. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who has led the probe into the organization, said she found, “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.” She added, “The Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments to not-for-profits from Mr. Trump or the Trump Organization.” The investigation was prompted by a Washington Post report into the foundation that documented how Trump used money from his charity to pay off legal settlements, make illegal political donations,

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced his resignation late last week, saying he will leave the Trump administration at the end of the year. The increasingly cornered Zinke has been at the center of more than a dozen investigations much like his former colleague Scott Pruitt had been at the EPA. In fact the Interior Department’s Inspector General referred one investigation to the Justice Department in October.

Trump tweeted Zinke’s imminent departure after months of reports that the White House was pushing for his resignation. The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of his private resignation letter cited that Zinke blamed his departure on, “vicious and politically motivated attacks.” His resignation does not absolve him of the legal probes he faces.

Zinke is expected to be replaced by David Bernhardt, a man that the New York Times describes as, “a former oil lobbyist who has played a central role in enacting President Trump’s agenda of rolling back conservation measures and opening up public lands to drilling and mining.”

Noah Greenwald, Director of the Endangered Species Program at the Center for Biological Diversity.

FEATURING FRANCIS FUKUYAMA – The rise of Donald Trump has sent shock waves through the American political landscape. But his Presidency is not an isolated phenomenon globally. Across many countries authoritarian leaders have exploited the grievances of resentful populations to grab power and roll back progress on many fronts.

Over the last two years there have been many books attempting to explain the rise of right-wing authoritarianism.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has previously taught at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. He was a researcher at the RAND Corporation and served as the deputy director in the State Department’s policy planning staff. He is the author of The End of History and the Last Man, Trust, and America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. His latest book is called Identity: The Demand for Dignity and Politics of Resentment.

UPDATED: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested on on Fox News on Tuesday morning that there might be other ways to obtain funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall than threatening a partial government shutdown. So far there has been no progress made toward meeting a December 21st deadline for a spending bill to fund the federal government.  Meanwhile, Trump was busy pushing anti-immigrant propaganda on Tuesday to make his case for the wall. He claimed on Twitter without evidence, “Illegal immigration costs the United States more than 200 Billion Dollars a year. How was this allowed to happen?” Huffington Post on Monday speculated that if Trump makes good on his threat to shutdown the government, he could be playing golf over the holidays – as he likes to do – with Secret Servicemen going without pay to protect him. Trump is scheduled to fly to his Florida golf resort on Friday for a 16-day vacation and the Secret Service staffers are among those who paychecks are on the line as pawns in Trump’s border wall funding demand.

President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn heads into his sentencing hearing on Tuesday, but it is likely that the judge will not give him any prison time, as requested by the Special Counsel due to his extraordinary cooperation with the investigation. The President on Tuesday morning wished Flynn “Good luck“ on Twitter, and hoped out loud that Flynn did not testify to prosecutors about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian representatives. On Monday Special Counsel Robert Mueller released a redacted version of the January 2017 testimony that Flynn had made to the FBI during which he lied. Trump had claimed that Flynn did not lie or did not know it was a crime to lie to federal investigators.

More details have emerged from the report prepared for the Senate on Russian-led propaganda efforts ahead of the 2016 election and in the months following. The Washington Post on Monday explained that a targeted campaign to discredit Special Counsel Mueller was a large part of the effort. According to the paper, “The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies.” The campaign, according to the report, was vast and used different social media platforms to specialize in different types of targeting. For example, “Twitter hit political and journalistic elites. Facebook and its advertising targeting tools divided the electorate into demographic and ideological segments ripe for manipulation…YouTube provided a free online library of more than 1,100 disinformation videos. PayPal helped raise money and move politically themed merchandise designed by the Russian teams…Tumblr, Medium, Vine, Reddit and various other websites also played roles.” The report was prepared by an organization called New Knowledge.

The President and his Vice President Mike Pence are expected to launch a new military “Space Command,” this week as a step toward a new branch called Space Force. Space Force,

FEATURING JOSE BRAVO – The UN climate negotiations in Katowice, Poland wrapped up on Saturday after 2 weeks. The resulting deal is focused on the implementation of the 2015 Paris Accord. The final agreement was signed on to by 196 nations and consists of a set of rules governing how individual countries can implement the 2015 Paris Accord by cutting carbon emissions, finance developing nations’ transitions to clean energy, and hold each other accountable.

But there were also political battles over the very science that forms the basis of the climate meetings, in particular the latest IPCC report on climate. China took a leading role while the US shrank it’s posturing. Brazil nearly upended the agreement over how to govern carbon markets. And Turkey insisted on being treated as a developing nation in order to be eligible for climate financing.

Time has run out for the climate however.

Jose Bravo is the Executive Director of the Just Transition Alliance (JTA) based in San Diego, CA.

FEATURING JUAN ESCALANTE – A number of Democratic lawmakers visited the tent encampment in Tornillo, Texas this weekend where US authorities are holding thousands of undocumented children in detention. Among those who visited were Texas Representative and former Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, California Representative Judy Chu, and Senators Tina Smith of Minnesota, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

Meanwhile, as a deadline fast approaches to pass a spending bill keeping the federal government funded, President Trump has found himself increasingly isolated on his threat to shutdown the government over his border wall. There are reports that very few Republicans support his demand for $5 billion of funding for a wall between the US and Mexico. Republican Senator John Cornyn said, “Everybody is looking to him for a signal about what he wants to do, and so far it’s not clear.” An unnamed Republican lawmaker told The Hill, “Trump will get the blame, but he won’t care. And the base will love him for it.” The deadline to pass a bill is December 21.

Juan Escalante, digital organizer, immigration advocate, and a DACA recipient. He is also the immigration correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.

President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an interview on ABC admitted that meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives continued from very early in the campaign all the way through to the election in November 2016. He also claimed that, “collusion is not a crime.” Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen – who has been sentenced to three years in prison – told prosecutors about the Trump tower meetings. 

Representative Elijah Cummings said, also on Sunday, that he would like for Michael Cohen to testify before Congress when Democrats take control of the House in January. Mr. Cummings is likely to head the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. His colleague, Representative Adam Schiff, who is expected to head the House Intelligence Committee, said last week that he had already been in touch with Cohen’s lawyers about delivering testimony before he begins his prison term.

The New York Times on Monday published details of a report on the Senate Intelligence Committee about Russian hackers’ use of social media to influence the 2016 election. The effort was apparently quite strongly aimed at African Americans, in order to suppress turnout for the Democratic Party. The report named the St. Petersburg-based company called Internet Research Agency (IRA). According to the report, “The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets.” They drew on existing grievances in order to exploit them. The Pew Research Center had reported last year that black voter turnout rates sharply dropped in 2016, falling below that of whites. According to the Times, there are efforts on-going to this day from Russian sources to influence American public opinion. “One continuing Russian campaign, for instance, seeks to influence opinion on Syria by promoting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and a Russian ally in the brutal conflict there.”

A federal judge in Texas has struck down the entire Affordable Care Act dealing a blow to Americans who rely on insurance companies to, among other things, not discriminate against them for pre-existing conditions. The US Supreme Court has already upheld the legality of the ACA, also known as Obamacare, which means the judge’s ruling will likely be overturned. Still, it throws into question the ability of millions of Americans to enroll for health plans in the new year. Democratic Senator Christopher Murphy, called the judge’s ruling, “a five-alarm fire,” and said, “Republicans just blew up our health care system.” The ruling was in response to a suit brought by Republicans. Former President Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday reminding people that it was, “the deadline to make sure you and the people you love have health insurance in 2019. So head over the HealthCare.gov to get covered!” Obama added that the ruling, “changes nothing for now.”  Huffington Post cited a