Trump, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Credit: Getty

It was most likely the airports that finally broke the dam. Friday afternoon, as news reports of disrupted flights poured in and the shutdown hit Day 36, Donald Trump finally announced that he would cave completely—if temporarily—on his demands for a border wall. The government will now reopen for three weeks, at the end of which time, he was careful to threaten, he may declare a national emergency if he doesn’t get his way.

Despite weeks of reporting on how the shutdown was affecting workers, Trump still appears to have no idea about why federal employees matter or why their acute hardship is problematic. It’s a fitting coda to what we’ve witnessed over the past few weeks. There was Donald Trump’s buffoonish claim Thursday that federal workers who turned to food banks to feed their families during the shutdown can just “work along” with shops and banks. He was trying to correct […]