With a deal to end the record government shutdown taking shape, President Donald Trump<\/u> is turning to foreign policy at the start of the week.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Trump will host Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, the first official visit by a Syrian leader to Washington. Officials describe the meeting as a landmark attempt to bring Damascus back into the diplomatic fold after years on the international sidelines.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It will be the third meeting between Trump and al-Sharaa this year, as Syria\u2019s new leadership works to rebuild a shattered nation and restore ties with Arab states and the West following the end of Bashar al-Assad\u2019s 14-year civil war.<\/p>\n
In a move paving the way for the talks, Washington eased key restrictions on Syria\u2019s leadership ahead of the meeting.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the United States lifted sanctions on al-Sharaa, mirroring a United Nations Security Council move a day prior, ahead of his meeting with Trump. According to a notice on the U.S. Treasury Department\u2019s website, the Specially Designated Global Terrorist designations were removed from both Sharaa and Syria\u2019s interior minister, Anas Khattab.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The White House meeting also comes against the backdrop of a grinding government shutdown that has paralyzed federal agencies and left Washington mired in a political standoff over funding.<\/p>\n
Senate Republicans and Democrats have reached a deal to end the impasse on Sunday evening, but the government won\u2019t officially reopen until the House, which has been out of session for nearly six weeks, approves the agreement. The measure would then go to President Trump for his signature.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Sunday evening, Trump said a deal to end the government shutdown was within reach.<\/p>\n
‘It looks like we\u2019re very close to the shutdown ending,’ he said.<\/p>\n
The shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, has become the longest in U.S. history. It\u2019s the 21st government shutdown<\/u> since 1976 and the longest since a 34-day standoff over funding for Trump\u2019s border wall halted operations from December 2018 to January 2019. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With a deal to end the record government shutdown taking shape, President Donald Trump is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moderncryptotrader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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