Trump takes shots at Cooper; Congress leaves Washington as shutdown looms
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Trump blamed Cooper over a prison release claim that fact-checkers dispute.
- Congress sent members home amid DHS funding fight, risking a shutdown.
- DHS standoff means essential staff like TSA, Secret Service work without pay.
Good morning! It’s Danielle Battaglia with the latest edition of Under the Dome focused on the Trump administration.
I’m writing this Friday afternoon from a Trump rally in Fayetteville, where President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump came to thank soldiers for their work in Venezuela helping to capture President Nicolás Maduro.
For a moment, Trump turned the speech into a campaign event, inviting onto stage former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, who is running for U.S. Senate, and took shots at his Democratic opponent, former Gov. Roy Cooper.
“We want to keep this area safe and we can’t do that without the leaders, and your ex-governor is not one of them,” Trump said. “It’d be a disaster if he got in.”
He then turned his attention to the death of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail and blamed Cooper for allowing the man accused in her death to be released from prison. My colleague, Nora O’Neill, reported in an extensive fact-check that Cooper did not release the suspect early from prison.
“These attacks are false,” a Cooper campaign spokesperson said. “Roy Cooper is the only candidate who spent his career prosecuting violent criminals and keeping thousands of them behind bars as attorney general, and signing tough on crime laws and stricter pretrial release bail policy as governor.”
Trump continued that, “We don’t do that” — but the federal government did release 13,000 federal inmates into home confinement while Trump was president during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can read more about Trump’s visit to Bragg here.
While on the subject, multiple members of Congress were present at the event and Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, was holding his own rally in Durham Friday afternoon, which my colleague Kyle Ingram covered.
Which, if you’re following Washington as closely as me, might make you stop and say, “Huh ... weren’t we just hours away from a partial government shutdown Friday afternoon?” And you would be correct.
Congress has been arguing over how to rein in immigration enforcement officials since the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and Democrats held up funding for the Department of Homeland Security in order to negotiate that.
But when Thursday came and went without being close to a compromise, leadership from both parties sent their members home.
Until Feb. 23.
What does this mean?
This is the department that handles immigration, border security, disaster response and the Secret Service.
So very important stuff.
It also oversees the Transportation Security Administration. While the majority of those employees are essential personnel, they’re forced to work without pay. And that tends to make them call in sick.
In past government shutdowns, it was TSA workers who led Congress to find compromises because Americans really don’t like facing problems at the airport. That’s when constituents start getting angry.
What’s also significant about Congress’ return date is that means Trump will give his State of the Union address the very next evening, and the agency may or may not yet be reopened.
That’s never something a president wants to have happen.
What else we worked on:
- A look inside funding for Eastern NC’s contested GOP primary + Our election guide
- Roy Cooper addresses NC prison releases while casting early vote for Senate
- Trump EPA ends regulation of greenhouse gases connected to climate change
- Camp Lejeune Marine vanishes after falling off ship in Caribbean, officials say
- Fact check: Why were people with life sentences included in NC’s 2021 release deal?
- Valerie Foushee faces contentious rematch with Nida Allam in NC’s bluest district
- ‘Toss-up’: No clear front-runner in GOP race for redrawn Eastern NC district
- Republicans fight to keep NC’s Senate seat. Can any of them beat Cooper?
- Why Rep. Tim Moore faces progressive party-switcher in Charlotte’s GOP primaries
- Why Senate candidate Don Brown predicts he can beat better-known NC rivals
- Senate candidate Michele Morrow says NC is done electing ‘party power players
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading and supporting local journalism.
Be kind to each other.
If you have any feedback or tips for this edition of the newsletter, feel free to reach out to me directly at dbattaglia@mcclatchydc.com.
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And learn more about issues facing North Carolina colleges and universities by subscribing to Higher Stakes, a weekly newsletter from higher education reporter Jane Winik Sartwell.
