Biggest Loser: With flight delays rippling through the understaffed air travel system and thousands of unpaid Internal Revenue employees skipping work, President Trump yesterday declared victory in the face of defeat and announced the re-opening of the federal government after its longest closure in history.

  Last night Congress passed a bill to fund the government and Trump signed it.

 Trump said at the White House that he was “proud to announce” a short-term deal but he got nothing except a battering for his efforts. In backing down, he has retreated from every threat and promise he made in the last month. He said he would not re-open the government if he doesn’t get his wall, and he didn’t get it.

  Last night he tweeted, ‘This was in no way a concession. It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it’s off to the races!’

  What’s he going to do, “badly hurt” them again?

  The government will be funded for just three weeks, at the end of which Trump said that if he doesn’t get the money for his southern border wall he will declare a national emergency and build it anyway.

   “We really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier,” Trump said in the Rose Garden. “If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on February 15, or I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and Constitution of the United States to address this emergency.”

They Got Roger Stone:Trump associate Roger Stone appeared in federal court yesterday in shackles. He was ordered to surrender his passport and was released on $250,000 bond.

  The Stone indictment draws a closer link between Russians, the skullduggery of Trump associates, and the President himself. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday in a statement, “In the face of 37 indictments, the President’s continued actions to undermine the Special Counsel investigation raise the questions: what does Putin have on the President, politically, personally or financially?”

  On the courthouse steps, as hecklers chanted “Lock him up! Lock him up!,” Stone claimed innocence. The Trump loyalist said, “There is no circumstance whatsoever under which I will bear false witness against the president nor will I make up lies to ease the pressure on myself.

  This is a standard line in the Trump camp, that the people cooperating with the Russia investigation are lying to get an easy deal.

  A 24-page indictment lays out Stone’s communications regarding Wikileaks and the release of stolen emails that were damaging to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. The indictment says Stone kept the Trump campaign informed about document dumps coming from Wikileaks. The indictment says Stone told congressional investigators that he didn’t communicate in writing, but the Special Counsel indictment lays out an electronic trail.

  One such message says, “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.” 

  “Friend in embassy” is Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

  When a man described as an “intermediary” in the Wikileaks communications testified before the House Intelligence Committee, Stone wrote to him that, “You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.” That man was Randy Credico, a former radio personality. Stone even threatened to take Credico’s little emotional support dog.

  Little known about Roger Stone is that he has a tattoo of the late disgraced President Richard Nixon between his shoulder blades.

The Russian Connection: The NY Times reports that President Trump and his associates had at least 100 contacts with various Russians leading up to the 2017 inauguration.

  The paper reports, “Among these contacts are more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter. Mr. Trump and his campaign repeatedly denied having such contacts with Russians during the 2016 election.” The paper gathered its information from court and Congressional records and laid it out in an interactive graphic.

  You can see it here.

The Roundup:Seven people are dead and two hundred people are missing in a Brazilian village after a dam holding back mine waste collapsed. — Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says more than 45,000 members of the country’s security forces have been killed in warfare with the Taliban since he became leader in 2014. — The Texas secretary of state is questioning the citizenship of 95,000 registered voters who were found to have previously identified themselves as noncitizen, legal residents of the United States. The state’s attorney general is opening a major investigation. 

Black and White and Red All Over:With the news business in continuing turmoil as it deals with ever-changing patterns of business and technology, about 1,000 newsies across the country lost their jobs this week.

  Big layoffs have been announced at BuzzFeed, HuffPost, AOL, Yahoo News, and the Gannett newspaper chain. Big media companies are losing advertising revenue to Facebook and Google.

  To add to the humiliation, The Newseum, the Washington DC museum dedicated to the news business, is closing at the end of the year. Nobody wanted to pay admission any more than they want to pay for a newspaper. The building has been sold for $372.5 to Johns Hopkins University.

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