State of the Union: With the credibility of his presidency on the line over his fight for a border wall, President Trump is under pressure to give the most convincing speech of his life tonight as he delivers his State of the Union message.

  Ten days are left before the deadline he set for Congress to give him his border wall before he declares a national emergency and builds it anyway. Trump can be expected to say the wall is the only way to keep American safe, and he may even threaten to declare the emergency, but it will be at his own peril.

  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned Trump that a declaration of emergency could split his own party. There’s also a fear among Republicans that declaring an emergency to get his way will give license to any future Democratic president to do the same.

  Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, a Trump critic turned booster said, “This is the defining moment of his presidency.” 

Manchurian Candidate:In a hunt for illegal foreign influence and donations, the US Attorney in Brooklyn has ordered the Trump inaugural committee to hand over all of its records. That includes information about donors and event guests, gifts and photo opportunities, free tickets, photo opportunities with Trump, vendors, and contracts. Of particular interest is whether foreign donors illegally gave money to the inauguration.

Executive Time: The President spends the majority of his days in what is euphemistically called “executive time,” according to a report on the website Axios.Someone leaked the President’s schedule.

   Trump pretty much spend the first three hours of his day in the residence watching television and making phone calls. He doesn’t usually take a meeting until 11:30 am.

  The White House issued a statement in the President’s defense saying, “While he spends much of his average day in scheduled meetings, events, and calls, there is time to allow for a more creative environment that has helped make him the most productive President in modern history.”

In the Dog House: The capitol of Virginia is described as being in chaos over the uncertainty of whether Gov. Ralph Northam will buckle to demands for his resignation.

  And now there’s a B story as well.

  Both state and national leaders in Northam’s own Democratic Party are telling him he can no longer lead the state following the revelation of his medical school yearbook with a racist picture on his page. Northam’s own aides told him Sunday night that he needs to resign.

  Northam’s page features a picture of two men, one in blackface, and the other in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood. Despite previously admitting he was one of the people in the picture, Northam now says he was not. CNNreports that students at Eastern Virginia Medical School decided themselves which pictures would be on their page and personally delivered them to the yearbook editors. 

  Northam would be succeeded by Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who has now been accused of sexually assaulting a woman back in 2004.  “Does anybody think it’s any coincidence that on the eve of potentially my being elevated that that’s when this uncorroborated smear comes out?” Fairfax said to reporters surrounding him in the rotunda of the Capitol. 

  Just hours after The Washington Postpublished a story yesterday saying that the woman claims Fairfax assaulted her in Boston at the Democratic National Convention, the 39-year-old lieutenant governor said he and the woman had what amounted to a one-night stand.

   And here’s the C plot. Both stories about the yearbook and Fairfax were originally broken by the little-known right-wing website Big League Politics.

In the Hen House:President Trump announced he will nominate former oil lobbyist David Bernhardt, who’s now deputy chief of the Interior Department, to succeed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who resigned amid accusations of slippery ethics. 

  While Zinke had been the leader in rolling back protections of public lands, face of some of the largest rollbacks of public-land protections in the nation’s history, Bernhardt has been the guy carrying out the orders, opening millions of acres of land and water to oil, gas and coal companies. 

Paris Fire: Ten people died overnight, including a baby, in a fire that burned through a Paris apartment.

 French authorities say the fire may have been deliberately set and they have detained a woman.

  More than 30 people, including six firefighters, were injured. Fifty people were evacuated with ladders. 

Can’t Take It With You:Clients with $190 million holding with the cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX are very unhappy about the death of the company’s 30-year-old founder. They aren’t so unhappy that Gerald Cotton died, just that he seems to have taken their money with him.

 Cotton died in early December of complications with Crohn’s disease while doing philanthropic work in India. The company didn’t announce the death for more than a month and when they did, the company website went down when clients tried to withdraw their money.

 Cotton was the only one with the password to allow access to the money, and his laptop is encrypted. No one has been able to crack it. That $190 million is somewhere out there in cyberspace.

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