The President Fancies Himself a Wall Architect

As the shutdown drags on, the president cannot seem to shut up about the positive attributes (strong, tall, anti-climbing, beautiful) of walls. He not only tweeted about this (see below), he also printed out this graphic and held it up at a meeting in the White House to further his point (see above):

Buckle up, babes—it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Here’s all the shit we couldn’t cover today:

The government shutdown is set to become the longest in U.S. history, as the weekend approaches and congressional Republicans and Democrats still refuse to back down from their respective positions on the issue of funding for President Donald Trump’s inane border wall. [Politico, Politico]
Because of the conditions that migrants are experiencing while being forced to wait at the U.S.-Mexico border forced, many are missing their turn to apply for asylum. [KQED]
While they suffer, federal contractors are doing just fine: A California company that provides tent-city equipment just got a $60.5 million contract with the U.S. government for “facility management services.” [Miami New Times]
Surprise: The guy who started the GoFundMe for the border wall seems to be a real jerk, and also a liar. [BuzzFeed News]
It took a year to produce a report on men who petition for child or teenage brides from abroad to come live with them in the U.S., after a 2017 request for more comprehensive data on the subject by Senator Ron Johnson and then-Senator Claire McCaskill, and the results are just awful: Thousands of petitions are approved every year, with a majority coming from older men requesting for younger women to come live with them. The testimonies from women who have been in forced marriages show this shit shouldn’t happen. [NBC News]
The Tarrant County Republican Party voted on whether its vice-chairman, Shahid Shafi, should be removed from his position because he’s Muslim and… he prevailed in the vote. But I agree with my colleague Esther Wang, who yesterday suggested maybe it’s time for Shafi to switch parties.
Juan David Ortiz, a Border Patrol agent, pleads not guilty to killing four women who were sex workers. [NPR]

Here are some tweets the president was allowed to publish:

What the hell is this shit? Why does it look like a trailer for something from the Bourne Identity series?