The president offered what he called a "common-sense compromise" that both Republicans and Democrats ought to endorse:

• $800 million in urgent humanitarian assistance
• $805 for drug detection tech at ports of entry
• 2,750+ border agents
• 750 new judges to reduce backlog of almost 900,000 cases
• $5.7 billion for "strategic deployment of physical barriers" - not a 2,000 mile concrete wall "from sea to sea," but steel barriers in strategic locations.

"To build trust and goodwill," his proposal also includes:

• 3 years of legislative relief for 750,000 DACA recipients
• a 3-year extension of TPS for 300,000 immigrants whose status is facing expiration - time for Congress to work on a larger immigration deal

Democrats are up in arms over US President Donald Trump's proposal to fund a border wall in exchange for protection for DACA recipients and TPS immigrants, denouncing it as a one-sided non-starter.

Democrats began shredding Trump's compromise proposal even before he went public with his "major announcement."

Trump's offer has already been rejected by Democrats, however. After Axios published an outline earlier on Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) called it "a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total, do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people's lives."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed her stance shortly after Trump laid out the details of his plan to reopen the government, now almost a month in shutdown.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) chastised the Democratic opposition to the proposal as "completely irrational obstructionism," while Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) called the compromise "a sign of strength" rather than weakness.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) was also on board, calling it a "reasonable proposal," as was Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who described it as a "sensible compromise."

• Pelosi to Security Secretary Neilsen at border briefing: 'I reject your facts'
• Pelosi underwhelms Dems with her Dreamers protest
• Reality denial: Schumer and Pelosi refused to listen in border wall briefing meeting - violated their 'talking points'
• Trump campaign to troll Pelosi and Schumer by sending faux red bricks to their offices
• Hypocritical Pelosi confronted over her wealth while claiming GOP tax cuts benefit the ultra-rich at the expense of low-income Americans

• Amid Venezuela/Brazil spat, Maduro calls Bolsonaro a 'modern Hitler'
• 'Time for a new government': US endorses Venezuelan opposition seeking to depose Maduro
• US tries to isolate Venezuela but it only pushes Maduro closer to Putin

Coincidence? - Chief Nurse Of British Army Was First To Arrive At Novichoked Skripal Scene

[...]
Earlier reports mentioned that a 'military nurse' had attended to the Skripals. Following the above report Elena Evdokimova checked the name of the young woman's mothers and found a curiosity:

Here is the thing. Alison McCourt is not just one random 'off-duty army nurse'. She is the Chief Nursing Officer for the British Army in the rank of Colonel:

© QARANAC AssociationColonel McCourt at Downing Street 10

© QARANAC AssociationColonel Alison McCourt

© via Spire FMAlison McCourt with her daughter Abigail receiving the Livesaver Award

Colonel McCourt was appointed Chief Nursing Officer on February 1 2018, just one month before the Skripal incident happened. Colonel McCourt lives in Larkhill, a garrison town some 11 miles from Salisbury. She is known to visit elsewhere.

There is a discrepancy between the Spire FM report and Alison McCourt's narrative of the event in the video posted with the Spire report. The written report only mentions Abigal McCourt and her mother. But in the video the mother speaks of "Abigal and the rest of our family" who were the first to arrive at the Skripal poisoning scene. She continues to contrast "Abigail" and "we" and later again "Abigail" and "the rest of us" meaning that there were more persons on the scene than just the mother and the daughter. In a recorded interview at the bottom of the Spire FM page Abigal says that it was her brothers birthday and that "we" were out celebrating it. (She also mentions that "the woman [Yulia Skripal] was not breathing at the time we found her." How then could she vomit?)

In 2014 the Daily Mail reported (video) on Colonel Alison McCourt's deployment as British mission leader to Sierra Leone where she helped to fight the highly infectious Ebola disease. According to that report McCourt is married and has two children. Her son must by now be fourteen. There is no further information available about her husband.

Neither Colonel McCourt nor her daughter were affected by the extremely dangerous Novichok with which the Skripals were allegedly poisoned. But what about the other persons, her son and her husband, who were also at the scene? What were they doing?

No additional information about the McCourts has so far come to light.

Isn't it an extremely unlikely coincidence that the first person who 'by chance' attends to the Skripals is the top nurse of the British army? An experienced officer, highly connected, who is also know for handling highly infectious patients? Who wrote the script for this enthralling saga (rec.)?

This is one of the many, many 'coincidences', curiosities and lies that make the official Skripal poisoning narrative so unbelievable.

There are also many indications that the case is related to other British government operations. Indeed the whole Skripal incident might well have been staged.

Pablo Miller, the MI6 agent who recruited, handled and befriended Sergei Skripal, also worked for Orbis Ltd. Orbis is the company of the 'former' MI6 agent Christopher Steele who was paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign to write the 'Dirty Dossier' about alleged Trump connections to Moscow. Soon after the Skripal incident happened, the British government released a D-Notice that prohibited British media from further mentioning Pablo Miller's name and thereby the relation of the two cases.

© Twitter/Alex Thomson

Long before the Skripal incident happened an experienced Russia scholar asserted that the Steele dossier was written by someone trained by Soviet intelligence. It is thus quite possible that Sergej Skripal, the former Russian spy, was an informant or even author of the Steele dossier about Trump.

The recently exposed British military intelligence operation Integrity Initiative has shown extensive interest in the media echo the Skripal case had in various countries. Curiously one of its papers lists Pablo Miller, the Skripal handler, as a contact of the Integrity Initiative's leader Colonel Chris Nigel Donnelly.

There is additional suspicion that the Integrity Initiative, whose primary function is to stoke Russophobia, was one of the brains behind the Skripal incident.

The Initiative was also involved in the Steele dossier and the russophobic anti-Trump campaign. Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, is employed by the Institute for Statecraft, the shadowy parent organization of the Integrity Initiative funded by the Ministry of Defense and Foreign Office. It was Andrew Wood who helped to disseminate the Steele dossier to U.S. Senator John McCain. McCain then gave the dossier to FBI Director James Comey. The FBI used the dossier first to get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, and, after Comey was fired, to launch a counter-intelligence investigation (section 3) against Trump himself.

Here is a theory how all this may come together. Back in 2015 the Institute of Statecraft and its russophobic director Colonel Donnelly discussed how to increase sanctions on Russia. In 2016 the Steele dossier was created in an attempt to connect Trump to Russia. Steele's colleague Pablo Miller and his spy Sergei Skripal were quite likely involved in creating the dossier. The dossier was disseminated with the help of Donnelly's Institute of Statecraft.

For some reason the Skripals had to be taken out. Sergei Skripal probably threatened to spill the beans about the dossier after it became public. The highly scripted 'Novichok' incident in Salisbury was staged to remove Skripal and to smear Russia with an alleged murder attempt. Colonel McCourt, the trusted army nurse, was asked to help on the scene. After the Skripal incident, and with no evidence shown, Russia was blamed and massive sanctions followed. The Integrity Initiative, the propaganda arm of the Institute of Statecraft, analyzes the media results of the Skripal affair and continues to stoke the anti-Russia campaign.

It might be possible that Steele's 'dirty dossier', the Skripal case and the Integrity Initiative operation are unrelated. But that chance for that now tends towards zero.