On Wednesday afternoon, after a week of passive-aggressive sniping, Nancy Pelosi eliminated all ambiguity as to whether Donald Trump was invited to deliver a State of the Union address before Congress next Tuesday. “I am writing to inform you that the House of Representatives will not consider a concurrent resolution authorizing the president’s State of the Union address in the House Chamber until government has opened,” Pelosi wrote in a terse, five-sentence letter addressed to the president. When she first invited him to deliver his remarks, she explained, she never imagined that the government would still be shut down several weeks later. Asked by a reporter afterward why she had canceled the event, Pelosi shot back: “Because the government is closed.”

Pelosi’s ultimatum put an immediate end to any confusion over whether the president would be barred from the House floor. Earlier on Wednesday, Trump had sent a letter informing Pelosi, “I look forward to seeing you on the evening on January 29th in the Chamber of the House of Representatives,” as if the matter were settled. “It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!” Of course, as Capitol Hill reporters quickly pointed out, there can be no State of the Union address if both houses of Congress do not pass a concurrent resolution formally inviting the president to speak. With her response to Trump, Pelosi affirmed there would be no vote—and thus no invitation. The State of the Union is off, unless the government reopens.

The latest twist in the SOTU standoff ups the stakes for Trump, who was hoping to use the annual media spectacle to reiterate his case for a border wall—the sticking point in his negotiations with Democrats, and the reason why the government remains shut down. About an hour after Pelosi made her letter public, Trump appeared to back down, telling reporters during a Cabinet meeting, “We’ll do something in the alternative. We’ll be talking to you about that at a later date.” (He then began rambling about the “radical Democrats,” and claimed Pelosi had nixed his plans because she “doesn’t want to hear the truth.”)

The prospect of a SOTU speech outside the House, of course, is unprecedented in the modern era—and perhaps, an all-too-appropriate metaphor for the bitterness and dysfunction of the Trump administration. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders previously told Fox News that the White House had always had a “Plan B” in mind, but on Wednesday night Trump announced on Twitter that he would postpone the address until after the government re-opened, effectively handing Pelosi a win.

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