Thread by @JakeSherman

Playbook: How it looks at the end

GOOD FRIDAY MORNING. Here’s how your American government is ending the year -- and the TRUMP presidency.

-- THE GOVT runs out of spending authority this evening at midnight. Typically, the govt avoids shutting down officially if there is a spending bill on the horizon, so we may be spared that drama. Divided govt began in 2019 w a shutdown, and it may end with another funding lapse.

-- CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS are preparing the second-largest federal rescue package in our nation’s history, and no one has seen it just days before it will get a vote.

-- ALL OF THE POWER is centralized among four people and their aides: @SpeakerPelosi , @senatemajldr , @SenSchumer and @GOPLeader

-- PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP has continued his, um, mastery of Congress, by nearly blowing up the talks by demanding large stimulus checks at the last moment -- this is per @JStein_WaPo, the master of the direct check, at the WaPo.

-- ALL THE MEANWHILE, SENATORS are walking around clueless, with no idea what to expect or when to expect it. They are killing time by voting on more executive branch nominations with 33 DAYS left in the TRUMP presidency.

On Thursday, they plopped someone on the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Amazingly, MCCONNELL seems to have run out of judges to put on the federal bench.

-- OUR GOVERNMENT and its technology infrastructure are under siege by Russia. TRUMP has said nothing.

-- THE PRESIDENT is still falsely suggesting he has won the election.

-- 50 LAWMAKERS have contracted the coronavirus -- this per the great @kristin__wilson of CNN.

@kristin__wilson IN THE LAST FEW DAYS, Reps. MIKE ROGERS (R-Ala.) and JOE WILSON (R-S.C.) said they had the coronavirus. What do they have in common? They were both at the White House Congressional Ball Christmas party, per sources familiar.

@kristin__wilson -- COVID DEATHS are still spiking. Hospitals are getting more and more crowded.