Trump owns shutdown Presented by DoorDash

With help from Ted Hesson, Ian Kullgren and Timothy Noah

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TRUMP OWNS SHUTDOWN: "If we don't get what we want ... I will shut down the government. And I am proud to shut down the government for border security.... I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it." With those words to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi — spoken in the presence of live TV cameras and reporters — President Donald Trump absolved the Democrats of any blame should budget negotiations, now stymied over Trump's $5 billion demand to fund a border wall, fail to produce an agreement before the Dec. 21 deadline.

It was a baffling maneuver for a president who once wrote a best-seller titled "The Art of the Deal." Congressional Democrats were jubilant. “The President showed what he really thinks, he wants to shut down the government,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters at the Capitol. “It’ll be a Trump shutdown and then Jan. 3, if it happens, the House will open it up again.”

Congressional Republicans were bewildered. One House member told POLITICO’s Burgess Everett and John Bresnahan that it was "unbelievable. I literally couldn't believe a president of the United States was acting that crazy." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately distanced himself from Trump's comments, reported the Hill's Alexander Bolton. "I hope that’s not where we end up," McConnell told reporters. "One thing I think is pretty clear no matter who precipitates the government shutdown is, the American people don’t like it." More from POLITICO here and from the Hill here.

Related read: “Pelosi privately disses Trump’s manhood after White House meeting,” from POLITICO

GOOD MORNING! It’s Dec. 12, and this is Morning Shift, your daily tipsheet on labor and immigration news. Send tips, exclusives, and suggestions to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter at @RebeccaARainey, @tedhesson, @IanKullgren and @TimothyNoah1.

BORDERING ON RECESSION: If Trump were to succeed in his stated goal of halting all illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border, "it definitely would trigger a recession," according to Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, Davis, quoted by Miriam Jordan in the New York Times. Undocumented immigrants account for about 5 percent of all workers in the U.S., Jordan reports, drawing on data from the Pew Research Center. “There would be companies closing and relocating," Peri told Jordan. "There would be jobs lost. There will be towns and cities that would see half their population disappear." More from the Times here.

SLATE AUTHORIZES STRIKE: Unionized editorial employees at the online media company Slate announced Tuesday that 98 percent of its collective bargaining unit voted to authorize a strike amid an impasse with management over a new contract. A major sticking point, the union says, is management's demand that the union operate under right-to-work rules, even though Slate's workplaces (in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C.) are not situated in right-to-work states. Lowell Peterson, Executive Director of the Writers Guild of America, East, which represents Slate, told Morning Shift that it's "a very anti union position to take, so I’m puzzled by it. It is sort of an ideological marker that employers put down if they want to break a union.” Graham Holdings, which owns Slate, declined comment.

Morning Shift had never before heard of management demanding, in contract negotiations, that a union voluntarily eliminate agency fees charged to union nonmembers to cover their share of costs associated with collective bargaining. So we checked in with Michael Schorsch, an associate at the Chicago labor law firm Despres, Schwartz, and Geoghegan and a former field attorney for the NLRB. The maneuver is “not common," Schorsch explained in an email, "but it’s legal.... Really aggressive management lawyers —ones who are set on never reaching a contract and eventually staging a decertification — sometimes refuse to agree to an agency fee ... knowing full well that no self-respecting union will agree to a contract lacking [one].” Read more from Bloomberg, which first reported on the authorization here.

NO PAY FOR CHRISTMAS: If President Trump does indeed shut down the government on Dec. 21, the Department of Homeland Security will continue to perform its law enforcement and maritime protection duties. Some staff will be furloughed, but nearly 90 percent of employees will still report to work. Even so, POLITICO’s Sarah Ferris noted on Twitter, DHS's contingency plan states that employees won't receive a paycheck until a new funding bill is signed into law — a less-than-cheering thought four days before Christmas. Read the contingency plan here.

COLLINS WON’T RULE OUT KING: Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the incoming ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, won’t rule out the possibility that Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who last month referred publicly to Central American migrants as "dirt," could become ranking member of the immigration subcommittee. “At this point I’m not going to speculate on anybody,” Collins told POLITICO’s Ted Hesson Tuesday, adding that he hasn’t made any offers. Several House Democrats said last month that King should be censured for this and other viciously derogatory comments about immigrants.

Collins also warned incoming Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) — formally nominated Tuesday — that the minority will fight back if oversight becomes too aggressive. “Oversight is proper but overreach is not,” Collins said.

MINIMUM WAGE HEARING CANCELED OVER WITNESS: The House Education and the Workforce Committee postponed a hearing scheduled for today on the economic consequences of a $15 hourly minimum wage after homophobic and sexist blog posts surfaced that were penned by one of the Republican witnesses, San Diego State University economist Joseph Sabia. In a 2002 post published on his personal column "No Shades of Gray" (which has since been taken down but can be accessed through the Wayback Machine, an internet archive) Sabia suggested the idea to “tax and regulate homosexual acts.”

“But first we have to mount the assault on Big Gay (no, I am not talking about Rosie O'Donnell),” Sabia wrote. “We can tax gay nightclubs, websites, personal ads, sexual paraphernalia, and so forth. . . We can cripple gay-related industries and get them right where we want them. All gay clubs will have to feature huge, flashing warning signs like ‘CAUTION: Entering this nightclub may increase your chance of contracting STDs and dying.’"

In another 2002 blog post titled “College Girls: Unpaid Whores,” Sabia argued that feminism “taught young women that equality is achieved by acting like promiscuous sluts.” Kelley McNabb, communications director for the committee’s majority confirmed to POLITICO that “members were uncomfortable moving forward on the hearing” upon discovering the posts.

FARM BILL FINALE: Senate lawmakers on Tuesday passed a new compromise version of the farm bill that dropped controversial Republican provisions that would have imposed stricter work requirements on millions of able-bodied adults who receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps). POLITICO’s Catherine Boudreau, Liz Crampton and Helena Bottemiller Evich report that the Tuesday vote puts the legislation on track to land on President Donald Trump’s desk before the end of the week. (More on that here.)

OSHA EXEMPTION SCRAPPED: The final version of the farm bill dropped legislative language that would have codified a regulatory exemption for certain retail facilities from requirements under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Process Safety Management rule. Under the rule, certain types of industries handling hazardous chemicals are required to review and analyze potential risks and implement safety and operating procedures to prevent releases of such chemicals.

Following a 2013 explosion at a fertilizer storage and distribution facility in West, Texas, that killed 15 people and injured 200 others, OSHA issued a policy limiting the exemption at the direction of an executive order. But the policy was struck down by federal appeals court after it was challenged by the Agricultural Retailers Association and the Fertilizer Institute. The language initially included in the farm bill, but now struck from it, would have codified the exemption and barred any future administration from issuing a similar policy. In the meantime, OSHA clarified earlier this year that the agency will not issue citations under the PSM standard for certain merchant wholesalers.

REPORT ROUNDUP:

The Partnership for Public Service and management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group released the 2018 “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” report. Find it here.

The Center for American Progress released its research on “regional discrepancies in both participation and pay” behind the apprenticeship wage gap. Read it here.

— “Sarah Sanders refuses to condemn Trump’s attacks on female journalists,” from POLITICO

— “ICE arrested undocumented adults who sought to take in immigrant children,” from The San Francisco Chronicle

— Report: “Aluminum tariffs have led to a strong recovery in employment, production, and investment in primary aluminum and downstream industries,” from The Economic Policy Institute

— “No more mandatory heels for the Alberta workplace,” from The Whitecourt Star

THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT.

Follow us on Twitter Rebecca Rainey @rebeccaarainey