How soon the writers may return to work. With these stories and more, im sara sidner with john berman and kate bolduan is off. This is cnn news central. And shortly, we will see new jersey senator bob menendez appear before the cameras, and his remarks in union city, new jersey, are the first since he was federally indicted on Bribery Charges late last week, and it should be noted that as a defendant, menendez has the right to remain silent, but minutes from now, he wont. He is going to speak, and we will bring you what he says live. Kara scannell is live at the location where this Press Conference is going to take place. And carkar kara, we can see the microphones set up behind you, and what is the expectation . Well, john, we expect the senator to give the first remarks since he was indicted on the Bribery Charges friday. They will begin in a half hour from now, and the senator has been defiant since he was indicted, and other democrats including senator phil murray said he should resign, but he said this he is not going anywher anywhere, and we expect he going to give those remarks similarly today. He is going to give the remarks in english and spanish, and we are at a Community College in union city, new jersey, and this where he grew up, and where he began the political career, and the place where he is choosing make the statements today. This is what is expected be a consequential week, because he and his wife and three new jersey businessmen will appear in Federal Court in manhattan where they will be arraigned on the charges, and first appearance, however, we will hear from the senator shortly and see what tone he is going to set coming into the big week, john. It seems as if he is going to be defiant based on the Paper Statement that he put on out friday. And Kara Scannell, he is going to be appearing right behind you, and so, keep us posted if you see or hear anything. And now, a Special Prosecutor and cnn special analyst john avalon is with us, and we have politics and the Law Colliding as well, and this time, democrat senator bob menendez, and looking at what was spelled out in the indictment, is this far from 2015 when he beat that case, bob . Well, it is different case, because it had to do with a friend of his, and someone he had known for a long time, and he had given benefits to along the way, and the government had a hard time connecting quid pro quo with benefits received and the favors extended. Here, it is not a close question. You have the government of egypt involved and you cant say that is a close friend. You have two situations where you have individuals under indictment by a Federal Grand Jury and another one in a state case, and these are the people who he just happened to meet through his wife after he met his wife and was dating her. So the arguments here are completely different, and the government is going to be able to show that he performed official acts in return for very specific benefits which were the gold bars, the mercedesbenz, cash, payments on mortgages, and whole series of things. And it just seems to me, and he has no place to go with this but to resign from office. He has known about it since june of last year when the government executed a Search Warrant on his home. Yeah, they know that he went in, and he knows that the government went in and he knows what they took. John avalon, i want to bring you into the conversation, and Kara Scannell said something in passing, and i dont want it to slip by, but it is going to be 5 to 10 minutes in english and in spanish, and the reason that jumped out to me is because of part of the Statement Last week when the charges were first brought, he said, it is not lost on me that a latino is being targeted by Law Enforcement here. So what is the takeaway . I think that trying to say that he is the victim of persecution because of his latino heritage doesnt hold any water at all. It sounds a little bit desperate, because the facts are so damning in the case, and the pattern of allegations are troubling over the course of his recent career, and there is apparently no learning curve. I mean, as just said, the details are so clear, he cannot be forced resign, but he is going to be apparently defiant and double down to make himself look like a victim which is what sometimes people do to not look guilty, and everyone is entitled to the Presumption Of Innocence, but i thought that tactic was not anything but divisible. What would you advise him to do in this Press Conference . I would tell him to keep the mouth shut and he has a right to go before the jury and they will determine whether he is guilty or innocent, and the part of him looking to be a victim is right out of the donald trump playbook, and that is the mirror image of the democratic side of the donald trump indictment, and if anything this indictment proves is that the Department Of Justice is an equal opportunity prosecutor. They prosecute republicans and they prosecute democrats equally, and if the facts and the law justify it. And just to jump in one more thing, you mentioned the fact that he is using a donald trump playbook, but what is different in this case is that many have come out to say he is needing to resign, but we are not seeing the same thing for donald trump so much. Correct. Only one u. S. Senator up to this point, and this is john fetterman, and that could change based on what we hear today. And john avalon, we were talking to john brisman from punch bowl news, and we do not expect him to say that he is stepping down, but the question that a lot of the democrats say is that he might use this News Conference to say he is going to announce reelection, and not only to say that i am not going anywhere, but iallin and he is up in 2024. Yes, and this is a clear contrast by the Democratic Party to the republicans tiptoeing around donald trump with the indictments, and clear course of condemnation from the delegation, and one of the members of the delegation of andy kim said that he is going to primary Senator Menendez which is significant and maybe more to come, but the senate does operate like a boys club, and they want to preserve the idea of innocent until Proven Guilty as appropriate and not forcing one of their colleagues out, because they did just that in effect with al franken, and to much regret down the line. But the core idea should be clear, as democratic crook is as bad as a republican crook, and you to uphold the equal standards above partisanship, and so it was good to see the democrats come out to condemn him when we are losing the moral clarity too often. And so, john, will this be used by the republicans going into the president ial race where one of the candidates donald trump has been indicted, i dont know how many times, and four separate times, and will this be used by republicans against democrats . Well, works both ways, and the troubling twotiered doublesided tier of justy, and the Justice Department under a democratic senator shows that this is equal justice under the law, and it does not ignore the facts regardless of the party, and so that is going to remove one of the republican Talking Points, and muddy it, but moral equivalencies between a senator, and the former president who tried to overturn the election who is now the front runner to be renominated, and they are in two different ball parks morally and practically, and so you have to keep in mind the difference of the responses and hopefully it is going to cut away from the Talking Point that says there is a twotiered system of justice and this is evidence that there is not. We are looking live at the setup in union city, new jersey, where senator bob menendez is going to make the first public statements since he was indicted on Corruption Charges last friday and a lot of anticipation of what he is going to say. And nick, while he is not taking your legal advice to stay silent. Obviously not. And he wont get into the details of the case or the charges here, but ei am curious here how viable of a defense for him to say, it was my wife. This is her money. These are her gold bars . Oh, that is a great defense when he has cash coming out of his pockets of the jackets. I went to high school, and i was holding it for my wife. It is absurd, and he is using position as chairman of the Senate ForeignRelations Committee to help out egypt and providing them with information about people in the embassy of cairo and helping them to get funding on armaments when there was a real issue with egypt as to whether or not they were abiding by equal rights and human rights in egypt. I mean, there is no way he has any argument here. He is absolute toast on this indictment. There is no reason whatsoever for him to continue in this senate or be a candidate for senate going forward, and the democrats have to be extremely firm. This guy has got to go. Nick ackerman and john avalon, both of you, thank you very much for all of the insight this morning. All right. So inside of the republican food fight as the Government Shutdown is days away, can Kevin Mccarthy save his job . And the Writers Guild in Hollywood Studios have a tentative deal to end the strik strike, and when you might get your new shows back. Matlock. And some billion years old rock drop and some new details. This morning a Government Shutdown seems all but certain. The House Republicans walked through the weekend and worked through the weekend and still could not reach a funding deal. The government will run out of money in five days unless theres an 11th hour deal from House SpeakerKevin Mccarthy and his divided caucus which means millions of federal workers could be affected, and somes forred to work without pay. Lauren fox is joining us from capitol hill this morning, and you caught up with speaker Kevin Mccarthy this morning and what did he tell you . Yeah, right now, the options are really limited for the speaker of the house when it comes to averting Government Shutdown, but he is still pushing the conference to unite behind some sort sof short term Spending Bill to some spending package. This is what he told me about the members holding out against that idea. Well, you have to keep the government open, and i mean, if people want to close the government, it is going to make it weaker, and why would they want to stop paying the troops or the Border Agents or the coast guard. I dont know what point you try to make . We have a border wide open today, and it is getting worse each month under joe biden, and we have Border Agents who you saw this morning being blooded. Why would you want to stop paying those individuals . I would not want to understand somebody who would want to do that . And right now the Republican Leaders want to pass a individual oneyear long Spending Bills on the floor of the house that would Fund Agencies like the department of defense, state, agriculture and Homeland Security, but those bills have no chance of passing in the United States senate, and that why the Republican Leaders are rallying the members to try to get behind a shortterm solution, but say they cant get behind that solution, and that there is not time to negotiate with the senate. The senate right now is trying to work its way through to a stand alone shortterm spending measure, and negotiated between the Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell and minority leader Chuck Schumer to avoid a shutdown if they put out on the floor, because they have to pass it, and get it out of the house and give it to the senate, and he has the decide to put it into floor, and the tricky part of that is to put it on the floor with democratic support could imperial mccarthys speakership. Thank you, lauren fox. And now you heard of him talking about the coast guard not being paid, and the military, and if the Government Shutdowns, many more people would not be paid. 4 million federal employees would immediately feel the impact. Some are essential and would have to keep working, and not see a pay check until it is funded. The health care officials, Law Enforcement, park rangers and tsa agents and Social Security workers and they on average earn 55,000 to 65,000 a year, and some less than that which made the president s union say that most of the members live paycheck to paycheck and they cannot afford the miss one payday and we are calling on congress to do its job. As for the americans who dont work for the government, a shutdown can bring major Travel Disruptions and Public Health risk and hazard waste sites, and low income americans could see disruptions in services at Housing Sites and water facilities. Thank you, sara. As this congress is headed to the possible shutdown, chip roy spoke to the six or seven or eight Republicans Holding out, and he said, i honestly dont know what to say to the fellow republicans other than you are going to eat a ssandwich and rhymes with rich. And you are going to have to eat it. In this context, congressman, what is the ssandwich . Well, john, good to be with you this morning, and you know, that sandwich is getting a bill from the senate that tries to jam us to do a clean continuing resolution, but it is not just going to be clean, but it is going to have a lot of other funding tagged along to it. You know, a continuing Resolution Says that we keep spending at the same level that we spent last year. I dont know anybody in the republican conference that wants to spend at the same levels the democrats put in place last year. Speaker mccarthy is the only one who has articulated a path forward and he has articulated many paths forward and another one this week where we have four big Spending Bills that should be on the floor, and this would account for 75 of the funding through the normal appropriation process, and another thing that we can do is to pass our own shortterm funding bill and focus on an issue that is a huge issue in our country right now, and this is the southern border. Whether we do it through the Homeland Security bill or whether we do it through the short term funding resolution, this is something that has to be addressed. The Biden Administration right now is planning to build Migrant Shelters on Park Service Land in new york city, and they arare waiving environmental laws to do it, the Endangered Species Act to build the Migrant Centers and it has people in the outrage and even the new york democrats have joined the lawsuit to stop the Biden Administration for doing it. So we have to be focused on keeping the government open, but closing the border and we have a pathway forward. And you are articulating system of the arguments that House SpeakerKevin Mccarthy has himself, and in the face of that, you have the republican holdouts who are not concerned about the possibility of a shutout. And andy biggs, your colleague said, dont let the d. C. Unity party scare you into thinking that the Government Shutdown is the end of the world seeming to diminish what a shutdown would mean. Do you agree with that . Well, i think that the point that he is trying to make and others are making is that when we have a shutdown, eventually when the government opens up, people get backpay, but it creates a huge inconvenience and a huge chaos that doesnt need to happen. We can keep the government operating, and we can keep the Border Patrol agents working, and parks open, and we can work towards sol vlg this funding crisis, but if we dont keep working, and if we dont address the issues and then we let opportunities like closing the southern border and addressing some of the outrageous spending tickets that the democrats put in the Spending Bills last year, we let it continue on, and i dont see how it helps the conservative cause. I am all for being fiscally responsible for cutting the budget, but you have to have a plan. And the plan cant be that we will shut down the government, because it has to be proactive to get results. That is what we