WASHINGTON: An unprecedented confrontation is brewing between the Legislature (controlled by Democrats) and the Executive (led by a Republican President) in the United States.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday asked President Trump to ditch his scheduled State of the Union address on January 29 because of the government shutdown.Instead, she suggested in a letter, he could work with her “to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29.”Or he could speak to the Union from the White House; Congress is not inclined to give him a platform."This is a housekeeping matter in the Congress of the United States, so we can honor the responsibility of the invitation we extended to the President," said Pelosi said in a TV interview. "He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants."Political stalwarts said this is an unprecedented snub of the President, but the House Speaker is within her rights to rescind the invitation because by convention the legislature is to extend the invitation to the executive.Pelosi has repeatedly insisted from the time the Democratic Party recaptured the House that the Constitution intended the legislature and the executive to be equals."The Constitution established the legislative, executive and judicial branches as co-equal branches of government, to be a check and balance on each other,” she noted in a letter that initially invited Trump to make the State of the Union address on January 29.Pelosi’s letter to Trump rescinding the invitation came hours after he needled her with a tweet asking, "Why is Nancy Pelosi getting paid when people who are working are not?"Pelosi had also warned that “elections have consequences” when she met Trump to discuss the shutdown and the spat over the border wall. Trump used the same line recently to press for border wall.With neither side budging, the stalemate is poised to spiral down further even as the partial government shutdown is now nearing a month, with no resolution in sight.A piqued Trump could eventually end up delivering the SOTU from the Oval Office, widening the chasm between the legislature and the executive, a relationship that is tetchy at the best of times.In fact, the Democrat House Majority leader Steny Hoyer went to far as to announce that the State of the Union is off.Republicans are responding angrily. "While the #Constitution only states that the President must provide a State of the Union, it has been a time honored modern tradition to deliver it to joint session of #Congress - for @SpeakerPelosi to revoke the invitation to @potus is beyond petty #SOTU," tweeted Trump’s former spokesman Sean Spicer.