[captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york this is , democracy now! >> he asked speaker pelosi, will you agree to my wall? she said no. then he got t up and walked out. again, we saw a temper tantrum because he could not get his way and he just walked out of the meeting. amy: the partial government enters its 20th day day after , one president trump stormed

out of a meeting with democratic leaders. the impact of the shutdown is growing as the fda halts routine food monitoring, the epa scales back its monitoring of toxic sites, and the tsa faces a possible crisis as a wave of unpaid airport screeners quit. volunteers are now helping at national parks as trash continues to pile up. we will get the latest. then to the case of cyntoia brown. the sex trafficking survivor has been granted clemency after serving 15 years in prison for shooting her rapist when she was 16 years old. >> i can't make up for what i did, but they have given me a chance to do so much more. people, be able to help which is amazing. young people, young kids. i am still going t to try toto p people. amy: a group of haitians are challenging the trump

measure shows planned end to for areotected status who living in the u.s. who were given tps after an earthquake devastated the country. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. with the partial government shutdown now in its 20th day, president trump reportedly stormed out of a meeting with house speaker nancy pelosi and senate minority leader chuck schumer wednesday after they refused to back a deal to fund a wall on the southern border. in a tweet, trump called the meeting "a total waste of time," adding -- "i asked what is going to happen in 30 days if i quickly open things up, are you going to approve border security which includes a wall or steel barrier? nancy said, no. i said bye-bye, nothing else works!" senator schumer accused the president of throwing a temper tantrum. >> he asked speaker pelelosi, wl you u agree to my wall? she said no. and he just gott up and said,

then we have nothing to discusu. and he just walked out. again, we saw to pertain from -- a temper tantrum because you could not get his way and he just walked out of the meeting. amy: this comes as unions representing employees of the federal government will rally at noon today in washington, d.c., to demand an end to the partial shutdown, which has left 380,000 workers furloughed and another 420,000 forced to work without pay. at the white house, a reporter asked president trump about the impacts of the shutdown. people have to go without theieir paychecks. some are being forced to work without pay. some havave been furloughed. pres. trump: they''re all goingg to get the money and i think they're going to be happy. amy: the partial shutdown is increasingly threatening safety nets for the poorest americans while allowing corporations to go unregulated. robert weissman, president of the watchdog group p public citizen, wrote -- "corporate lawbreakers are going unpunished, safety inspections are being postponed,

discrimination charges are going uninvestigated, polluters are not being held in check, financial fraudsters are not being policed, consumer complaints are not being received, and accident investigations have ceased." after headlines, we will go to washington, d.c., to speak with robert weissman. president trump visits the rio today tollen, texas, push for his border wall. the president's oldest son, donald trump, jr., shared a post on instagram comparing immigrants to animals. trump jr. wrote -- "do you know why you can enjoy a day at the zoo? because walls work." donald trump jr.'s post echoes president trump's past comment calling immigrant gang members animals and not people. president trump has nominated former coal lobbyist andrew wheeler as environmental protection agency administrator.

wheeler is a former coal lobbyist and has been the acting head of the epa since scott pruitt resigned in july amid an onslaught of financial and ethics scandals. wheeler has regularly engaged with right-wing conspiracy accounts on social media and "liked" a racist post featuring the obamas in 2013. in the democratic republic of congo, opposition leader felix tshisekedi has been declared the provisional winner in december's presidential election. congo's independent national election commission says tshisekedi won a plurality of votes with almost 39% of the total. but election observers, including the influential church's bishops conference, say another opposition leader, martin fayulu, won handily. fayulu has denounced the results as an election coup and promised a challelenge. the result comes in an election that observers say was marred by irregularities, with opposition groups alleging fraud. more than a million congolese voters were unable to cast ballots due to violence from

armed opposition groups, as well as an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus. a candidate groomed by long-time authoritarian president joseph kabila came in third place. kabila has promised to step down this month after 18 years inin power and more than two years since his presidential mandate expired. secretary of state mike pompeo has arrived in cairo, where he discussed sesecurity and e econc cooperation with egypt's auauthoritarian presidident abdl fattah el-sisi. pompeo is set to deliver a foreign policy speech today at the american university in cairo. his visit comes on the heels of a surprise trip to iraq on wednesday, where he discussed president trump's plans to withdraw u.s. troops from syria. secretary pompeo's trip to egypt comes on the 100th day of saudi dissident jamal khashoggi's debt ther he endured -- entered consulate and never reemerged. pompeo and the trump administration have definite saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman, even though congress

voted unanimously to find him responsible for khashoggi's murder. turkish officials have released footage purporting to show members of a saudi hit squad caring could show be's body parts -- to show be's body parts out of t the conflict anand lare black bags.. in the mediterranean, the government of malta has allowed nearly 50 asylum-seekers who'd been stranded at sea for weeks to come ashore on two rescue vessels. the decision ended a 19-day standoff that saw other european union members deny a port of entry to the migrants, in a move that's been blasted by human rights groups as shameful. aboard the sea-watch 3 vessel, run by a german humanitarian group, there were cheers wednesday asas news of an agreemement to process the asylum-seekers spread. >> two hours. [indiscernible]

amy: an increasing number of asylum-seekers are dying at sea after italy's right-wing government moved last year to deny migrant rescue ships entry at italian ports. in lebanonon, a blanket ofof snw has fallen on makeshift camps for syrianefugees, c compounding the misery of ousands s of people whose tents flooded with rainwater during intense winter storms over the weekend. the u.u.n. says flooding a affed over 10,000 refugees across lebanon, with a further 70,000 syrians at risk. the storms claimed the life of an eight-year-old syrian girl who fell into a river and drownened amid heavy wind and rain. cnn reports police have issued an arrest warrant for james mason, the former manager for pop star r. kelly. mason is accused of killing the father of joycelyn savage who is alleging that r kelly is holding his daughter against her will.

a police report obtained by cnn quotes mason is threatening savage in a text message that reads -- "i'm gonna do harm to you and your family, when i see you i'm gonna get you, i'm going to f--ing kill you." r. kelly is never been criminally convicted. in chicagogo, the state attorney says her office is investigating numerous complaints against r. kelly and has encouraged other victims to step forward. meanwhile, pop star lady gaga apologized wednesday for collaborating with r. kelly on the 2013 single "do what u want." lady gaga is herself a survivor of sexual assault. she says she'll remove the single from streaming services like spotify. in kentucky, state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would effectively outlaw abortions even in cases of fetal , anomalies, rape, or incest. abortions are already highly restricted in kentucky, which has just one abortion provider for the entire state.

bills similar to kentucky's so-called heartbeat bill have been struck down by federal courts. in new york, three climate activists who took direct action to halt construction of the aim fracked gas pipeline have been found guilty of criminal espass. rebea a berl, dadavipublowow anjanenet nzalalezocked themlveses iide e a 5-footot de section of pipeline in 2016, opoppingonststruion fofo 18 hours. on tuesday, a dge rejeed a necessity densnse moted d byhe actiststs, w argrgueheir action was nesessitad byby t clear and prenent daer p pos by clitete chae. but the jue e did t ththe ree walk free ththout y adaddional punishment. in losngeles, e unio represting tenof thousds of plic scho teacherhas delayed plans to begin a strike today, even as teachers remain far from a breakthrough in contract talks. the union now says it's prepared to strike on monday unless its demands are met.

union negotiators want an immediate 6.5% raise, along with smaller class sizes, more librarians, fewer standardized tests, and more teacher input in local school leadership councils. and luis garden acosta, the founder and president for more than 35 years of the nationally known el puente youth/community leadership program in brooklyn, new york long regarded as one of , new york city's foremost human rights and latino community activists, died tuesday night following a long illness. he was 72. the former seminarian who had been active in the catholic anti-war movement in brooklyn, garden acosta joined the young lords party in 1970 and later founded that group's massachusetts chapter while he was still a student at harvard medical school. in 2009, garden acosta told democracy now! about his participation in the young lords' takeover of the first spanish methodist church in east harlem in late 1969, which the group used to house free breakfast and clothing programs,

health services, a daycare center, a liberation school, and community dinners. the occupation ended in january 1970, when police raided the church, arresting 105 members of the young lords. >> here i am, very much involved in catholic social action. i am a former seminaria, a former monk. wasquestion of the theology very mh part of my life. my wholetrtrugglwas agait this war in etnam. as i said, there were many missing issues that were not connecting, i though anthen i hrd that ung people whoere trying to feed ehungry, clhe the naked, deal wh the imprisoned who were auaually yingng t perfo the christian maatate ofhat t we call the corporal wos of mercy, h b been bloodied in a church by lilice oicers wh

hacome in. that is president of. itends chis up my spine. in church, a a sacred space. the next sunday i went to investigate and be part of it. amy: luis garden acosta went on to pioneer successful non-violent direct action campaigns against segregated public schools and against environmental racism in new york city. in his later years, together with his wife frances lucerna, garden acosta created an alternative public high school geared toward human rights activism, the el puente academy for peace and justice. luis garden acosta, dead at the age of 72. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and peace rereport. i'm amy goodman. the partial government shutdown has entered its 20th day. on saturday it will become the longest shutdown in u.s. history if a deal is not reached. on wednesday, president trump reportedly stormed out of a meeting with house speaker nancy pelosi and senate minority leader chuck schumer after they refused to back a deal to fund a wall on the southern border.

schumer accused trump of throwing a temper tantrum. trump described the meeting as a total waste of time. this comes as impact of the shutdodown is growing acacross e country. the shutdown has left 380,000 workers furloughed, which meanss they will never be paid for that time lost, and another 420,000 forced to work without pay. the food and drug administration has announced it has suspended all routine food inspections. at the environmental protection agency, more than 13,000 employees have been furloughed forcing the agency to halt work on air quality monitoring, enforcement of toxic polluters, and cleanups at superfund sites. states are scrambling to administer snap food stamp benefits for 3.4 million americans after more than $4 billion in federal payments failed to materialize. housing advocates fear the shutdown could lead to the evictions of thousands of low-income renters who live in government-subsidized apartments. over 1100 contracts between the

government and private landlords have already expired. at the tsa, there are reports of a wave of resignations by airport screeners because they are not being paid. the american federation of government employees sued the government last week over the situation. hydrick thomas, president of the union's tsa council, said the shutdown is causing a "a massive security risk for american travelers" as the tsa is unable to hire oror train new workers during the shutdown. we're joined now by rob weissman president of public citizen. , the group just released a report titled "as shutdown drags on, agencies devoted to consumer and worker health and safety unfunded and deprioritized." robert weissman, welcome to democracy now! by talkingrt off about what will happen to these workers you go we are talking about 800,000 workers -- for people to understand, those that have been furloughed, who have

not been working for the last weeks, will never get paid. and those that are working, like tsa agents, if they have not quit, supposedly will be paid when the government shutdown ends. but talk about the significance of this. yesterday, the president said they are all happy. >> of course the president is delusional. for the 800,000 workers, most people in america, including most of these workers, live paycheck to paycheheck so they e missing paychecks and they're just going to have to scramble and are being put in an impossible situation. historically when these shutdownwns have occurred, whent is settled, the workers are paid. both the once were forced to work, the legally y required toe at their jobs even though they are not being paid, and the ones who are not working. there's another category who will not be paid ever, which is a huge number of government contractors. as you have discussed in recent shows, government contracts --

soernment has privatize suc much, those people will not be reimbursed. people are scrambling. the federal government is spread across the country. it is happening in every community across the country. amy: so talk about what is at risk. from agency to agency. >> a couple of ways to think about it. one of the things they're not doing -- the agencies are not doing a lot, as you were describing earlier. so the epa has cut back on routine inspections of planes and toxic facilities. the fda is not doing its regular inspections of food packaging. -- food packaging facilities. the pipepeline agency is scaling back its inspections. the securities and exchange commission is more or less shutdown, which means it is not able to ininvestigate anything.

the efforts at the federal communication or federal trade communication to monitor ongoing consumer fraud, shututdown. all of this is happening and the corporationsns who were normally being inspected or held to account a least a little bit by government enforcement, it is free reign for them right now. there's really no avenue of redress for consumers. maybe one of the most worrisome ones is in addition to tsa, the federal aviation administration, ,here inspection of airplanes routine inspection by the government, has been suspended. ththe companinies still do thein inspection, but i feel a lot safer knowing the government is independently doing inspepectio, and d that is not happening. that is one huge category. the other category, things still going on by these employees were forced to work, even though they're not being paid. that is a huge number of government functions. it is not possible for people who are not being paid to do their job well.

it just has to be the case if you're worried about paying your billlls for what you're going to do during kids, you're upset and not focused on the job and you will not do as good a job. air traffic controllers are still at work, but they're not being paid. you have to worry about how well they're able to do their job. yet reported also about the border. the border agents are not being paid right now. it has to be they are going to be worse at their job, shorter tempered and so on. as this drags on, it will get worn more severe. activities that either have stopped or are going to stop in the future, including as youou talked about, the provisionn -- the dealmaking for contracts for low-income people. we may see a total end to payments for food stamps at the end -- sometime in february. funding for the federal courts, that will l run out later this

month and probablbly most c civl suitits in federal courts are going to be suspended. this stuff will really stack up as we move forward. amy: fda. we alreadydy ever what happened around the holidays with the romaine lettuce recall, which has just beeanannounced d to be over.. what would happen if something like that happened right now at the fda? >> the things that are life-threatening, either with regard to food safety or other things, they say "we've got that covered." the problem m is, you don't know something is life-threatening until it emerges as an outbreak. then they will be finding a way to deal with it, and emergency recall like that. but they will not do therefore looking inspections that might have prevented it in the first place. at thect t same thing national highway traffic safety administration. routine recalls and inspections are e not going on. if there's somethining that is urgent and life-threatening, once they've discovered it to be so, they have the capacity to

act. but we won't know about it until the bumbling problem becomes a crisis. something that would have been prevented if they were properly staffed. amy: i want to ask about the fox news, how fox news is covering the shutdown. in this clip, you hear fox ininference ststeve ducey.y. a f first, charlie hurt. >> you can shut down halththe govevernnt agegeies and literally it would be yea i if it w wernot for the media, it woulbe y yea before the regular personththe noal,, averagagworking american would eveven know the department h had been shutdtdown in terms of how mucht t affes s theilives.s. >> a lot of people acrcross the cocountry don't even knonow parf the federal government as shutdown. amy: sort of suggesting that the government workers are not normal americans. rob weissman, fox using this as an argument to downsize government? >> absolutely. i think there are two strains coming together in this, for

sure on fox, but also in the administration. one strain is the hard-core ideologues who want to shrink government. this is a business-from the argument, but even beyond business. that is one strain, hard-core people in the government, acting chief of staff mick mulvaney. the other strain is people who are just stupid and ignorant, who have heard about how the government does not do anything, actually have no idea what the government actually does, and will just repeat dumb things because they've got no idea and they are informed by this hard-coree ideology. the e comment you played iss probably a m mix of both of thoe things. i think prpresident trump p andt the w white housese followed in both categories. there have been a lot of reports that when they forced to s shut down, they did not realize, gosh, the government does a lot of stuff. there is going to be a lot of impact. i think one thing it picked up

on was, they did not want pictures of the national p parks being g shutdown. they left the parks open, anand safely, without t staffing. they mostly don't know what t te government does. the government they are in charge of running. amy: we will talk about the parks in a minute. let me ask about president trump declaring a national emergency. some are speculating the fact the white house counsel is with him as he goes down to the border to mcallen, texas, suggests he might be talking about declaring this emergency -- which he says he has an absolute right to do. what is the significance of this? and possibly, the pentagon coming up with $2.5 billion extra to build a wall that go and what does it say a about a budget where an agency can find $2.5 billion extra? >> f first, we should not igigne that last one you made. there's so much money being wasted on militaries ending right now. hugege amounts of money ininside

pentagon, going to places where they can't identify who is being paid and what it is for. that is its own legitimate crisis that needs to be addressed. to the bigger point about the emergency, as a matter of law, it is going to be a complicated thing. the congress has given the president quite a bit of authority to declare e emergencs with terms that areelmost unboundeded and what powers that have few bounds. expected ofas always society has always expected the president would not abuse that authority recklessly, declaring emergencieies just becauause thy want to. we obviously have a president now who has no such coconstrain. if he does proceed, which h i think is rereasonably likikely,t will be a complicated matter of law. but be on with the law is, if you just t think about the underlrlying principles, the rel constitutional principles, the democracy principles, it is a serious matter beyond just the outrage of funding a stupid,

needless, in moral wall or even part of 1 -- which is what he proposed to do. he wants funding for a border wall. congress is saying, no. the move to call a national emergency is for the president to say, i will not be constrained by what congress says. even though there is not really a national emergency, i will live of these powers. i can do something that would otherwise be illegal simply by declaring a national emergency. , if you follow the logic, that leads to almost unbounded presidential power. when you have an authoritarian like d donald trump in office, that is a frightening prospect. just atnot t have to end the reallocation of billions of dollars from the pentagon for whatever he was going to be spent on toward building a useless and a a moral wall. that authority can be invoked for all kinds of quite terrifyingng purposes, and it is something that goes way beyond

the significance of the wall itself and something t that we should be vevery, very concerned about if it happens. and of course, this would all go to court. butt before we go there, i want to go to what is happening at the national parks. since the shutdown began, around the country overflowing toilets, trash calling up, park experts warning that the damage may take years to undo. on tuesday afternoon, democratic representatives jackie speier and jared huffman of california delivered a blue bin full of garbage collected from national parks to the white house. they labeled the bin "trump trash." this is congressmember r human. >> tododay i am bringing boxes f trash from san francisco too provide a reality check to the president so he understanands tt his political stunt inin shuttig down the governmenent over the border wall has real-world consequences. trash like this -- diapers,

brito rappers, coffee cups and more -- is building up. we represent national parks all over the country. amy: we are e joined by jonathan asher, government relations manager of conservation funding, the wilderness society. what is happening at the nation's parks? having me.u for i appreciate it. the national parks are kind of one of the main ways the public interacts with their government. it is from the parks to the national forest and local communities and right now i think we are seeing a lot of resource damage, a lot of unsafe conditions. we are really hoping that the president will move to reopen the government quickly and get our parks back in safe condition and really protecting our resources. amy: there have been, what, seven deaths and the national parks since the shutdown began? is this unusual? >> the parks are always a

natural place. there can be risks. but i think some of the deaths are likely preventable. but it is hard to know without having the staff there to do the research, without having the staff there to file reports. we will probably learn exactly more about what happened in those instances later. deaths, i of actual think we are seeing reports out of, say joshua tree national park, where folks were making their own rose, cutting down the landmark joshua trees that are kind of the staple of that part. in your city, trash along the sides of the road. people, when you have no one to take entrance fees or guide people as they are coming in, you know, folks, well-meaning or not or just kind of unknowing of how to interact in the parks,

tend to go kind of run amok. i think we are hoping that the and that the soon resources can be protected. asher, what would he u.s. border wall, a border wall between u.s. and mexico, mean for the fragile ecosystem there? >> a lot of people don't understand that along our southern border are really wild places, really important ecosystems that have hundreds of endangered species, thousands of very special types of animals and wildlife. a border wall would mean a lack of the ability for these animals to move amongst the ecosystem and be able to have genetic diversity within their gene

pool. s to the mean impact ability of a lot of these animals to find water in a very dry environment. it would have really negative impacts on a lot of very important species from -- and to in a low jaguar that are making their way ink after some challenges their systems. theould be very damaging to environment as well as it just being kind of a waste of money. amy: finally, the five point $7 billion spectrum of is demanding for the border wall, what would it look like if that were to conservation efforts and to wilderness, to parks in this country, or even a fraction of it? >> absolutely. one of the great ironies i think with all of this is the trump administration has taken it upon

themselves to promote the park maintenance backlog as one of ideas thatation-ish they could get behind. our parks have been loved too death for so long that they face about a $12 billion backlog in maintenance fees and projects that congress hasn't and the administration hasn't funded for quite a long time. $5 billion would go a long way -- digging us out of the hole we are already in with taking care of our national parks. not to mention the fact that all of this damage being done to our parks and our public lands generally, national forest, etc., that will take us a while to dig out of from a budgetary perspective. and so i think for those folks who do care about how government

resources are used, this is not only bad policy, but it is a waste of money. amy: and president trump, once again, trying to cut off federal funds defy california wildfires saying the money is being wasted. your response? >> you know, complete ignorance without forest policy works, without forest ecosystems work. how forced ecosystems work. with this shutdown, one of the prime times for our forest service and the associated companies that work with the firefighters in them, the time they played for the upcoming fire season is when they do their training,g, when they wrie equipment, for fighting forest fires. and they're not able to do that. there are examples in california specifically where projects are being put on hold, mitigation projects that would help alleviate concerns for ththe

upupcomingng fire season. a lot of these entities already are dealing with longer firefighting seasons and shorter care is of time to plan. so this is eating to desk eating into an already small window that they have to prepare for an upcoming likely rough fire season again, as we've seen with climate change. amy: jonathan asher, government relations manager of conservation funding, the wilderness society. and robert weissman president of , public citizen. we will link to your report "ass shutdown drags on, agencies devoted to consumer and worker health and safety unfunded and deprioritized." when we come back, a woman will be freed from prison by the governor. ♪ [music break]

amy: that's lady gaga singing "til it happens to you" joined by sexual assault survivors on stage at the oscars in 2016. lady gaga apologized wednesday

for collaborating with r kelly on the 2013 single "do what u want with my body." prosecutors are considering against r. kelly, chronicling years of sexual abuse. lady gaga herself is a survivor of sexual assault and says she will remove her single with r. kelly from streaming services like spotify. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace reportrt. i'm amy goodman. we turn now to the story of cyntoia brown, who on nday was granted full clemency by republican tennessee governor billll haslam after serving 15 years in p prison. the decicision follows months of intense public pressure and outrage over her case. brown was sentenenceto life in prison after being convicteded f first-degree murder for shooting her rapist as a teenager. she had been sexually trafficked and repeatedly abused and drugged. the shooting happened when brown was just 16 years old, but she was tried as an adult. this is cyntoia brown speaking at her clemency hearing in may. >> been a very long time.

when i was 16, i did horrible things. and i have carried that with me this whole time. you always have people say, if i could go back and if i could change things, but when you really realize that you have done something you can't undo, like, it stays with you. and it stayeyed with me this whe time. people here today, like, i hurt them. they are hurting now, 14 years later. they have e been hurting for 14 years, and i did that. can't fifix it. i can't fix it. like, i had to change because i could not live with myself being the same person that did that. i couldn't do that. i can't face that. i can't make up for what i did,

but they have given me a chance to do so much more. i have been able to help people. which is amazing. young people, young kids. and they listen. and i'm still going to try to help people. i still am because it is something that people need to understand, something that people need to know. there are some of the things that i understand now that i did not know. there are so many young people who still don't know. i feel called to share that. decide, ier you respect it, but i do pray