Today’s edition of quick hits:
* After a meeting with Donald Trump at the White House, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), told reporters, “He said he’d keep the government closed for a very long period of time…months or even years.”
* On a related note, the president was asked if Schumer’s account was correct. “I did. I did. Absolutely I said that,” Trump replied.
* It’s quite a system: “While many federal workers go without pay and the government is partially shut down, hundreds of senior Trump political appointees are poised to receive annual raises of about $10,000 a year.”
* Expect more of this: “In what one official dubbed the ‘blue flu,’ hundreds of blue-uniformed TSA officials have been calling out sick in recent days as the shutdown stretches on and their salaries go unpaid.”
* Big news from SCOTUS: “The Supreme Court once again will take up unresolved constitutional questions about partisan gerrymandering, agreeing Friday to consider rulings from two lower courts that found congressional maps in North Carolina and Maryland so extreme that they violated the rights of voters. The North Carolina map was drawn by Republicans, the Maryland districts by the state’s dominant Democrats.”
* Mueller news: “A federal judge has extended by up to six months the authorization for the grand jury that special counsel Robert Mueller is using to conduct his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and other issues, including ones related to people in President Donald Trump’s orbit.”
* Saudi Arabia “announced on Thursday it will seek the death penalty against five suspects in the slaying of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a killing that has seen members of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage implicated in the writer’s assassination.” * Powell speaks: “Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Friday that he would not resign if President Donald Trump were to ask him to. ‘No,’ was Powell’s one-word answer to a question of whether he would step down at the president’s request, during a panel discussion in Atlanta hosted by the American Economic Association.” * Zinke’s troubles aren’t over: “The Justice Department’s public integrity section is examining whether newly departed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lied to his agency’s inspector general investigators, according to three people familiar with the matter, a potential criminal violation that would exacerbate Zinke’s legal woes.” Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
