Late last night. And he avoided a Government Shutdown by signing a 1. 4 trillion spending bill. The president may be officially on vacation, but his team will be prepping for the expected Senate Impeachment trial during this holiday break. And despite this volatile week during which the president was impeached, President Trump did accept an invitation from House Speaker nancy pelosi to give the state of the Union Address in early february. Cnn White House ReporterSara Westwood joining us now from West Palm Beach, florida. President trump begins his holiday in impeachment limbo, but he is preparing for a senate trial that could happen in january. Thats right, amara and victor. That is something that he and his aides will be discussing over the course of the two weeks that hell be spending here in West Palm Beach because there are a lot of Unanswered Questions about what shape that defense will take heading into a impeachment trial that is expected to take place sometime in january. Still, despite the fact that House Speaker nancy pelosi at this moment is holding on to the articles of impeachment, white house aides have to work out who exactly will be delivering the opening and claurthosing argume. Whether there is a role for some of the president s conservative allies in the house. But there are concerns that the duration of this trip could affect how the president receives preparations for his senate trial at maralago, as weve discussed, the president is able to talk to a lot of his friends, a lot of his informal advisers. They have an unusual amount of access to the president at his resort and some white house officials told cnn that theyre concerned that some of those people might be able to influence the president s decisions about this trial. The president had discussed having a theatrical trial in the senate. He wants to be vindicated. But Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell had been able to convince President Trump that is shorter trial with no live witnesses could be in his best interest and in the best interests of republicans. There are some concerns that perhaps this time at maralago could on undue the president s decision on that front. Before you go, lets talk about this spending bill. 1. 4 trillion gets the president through september. What was left on the table . Certainly the white house wanted to see more in terms of border wall funding that what ended up in this bill. They want dollars to see more than 8 billion in funding for the construction of a wall. The administration will get about 1. 4 billion to continue building the wall. There were some progressives who saw that as too big a concession from speaker nancy pelosi. There are some things that both sides are touting as a win. For example, the fact that this bill will include pay raises for military and civilian federal workers, the fact that it will provide some funding for Election Security grants and for gun violence research. So some things that both sides can be happy about. There was a dispute about language that House Democrats wanted to include in the bill to force the white house to adhere to a strict timeline in terms of releasing Security Assistance to ukraine. White house officials were able to successfully negotiate that out of the spending bill. Sara westwood, thank you. Lets bring in margaret in axios. Welcome back. Good morning, victor. How are you . Im well. Hope you are, too. Leader mcconnell on thursday said that hes not sure what leverage there is in refraining from sending the Senate Something that they do not want. His play here, i mean, he ignored a Supreme Court nominee for almost a year for the rest of a term. Holidays now have come upon the country is split on impeachment. Youll turn to 2020 at some point. Is it plausible that he just holds out and pelosi will not get the concessions . Yes, it is plausible. But nancy pelosi i think is playing a couple of threads at the same time. One is to try to get the senate to make some concessions the democrats want in terms of witnesses. But the other is to sort of let the president stew a little bit and let things settle. The democrats, i think, have been a little bit concerned, probably, about the fact that the American Public wants to move on from impeachment and that some of the president s support has been shifting back to the president on this issue and they have very little to lose by saying were not going to just expedite this over to the senate when mcconnell and graham have both said weve made up our minds, were ready to move on very quickly. I think mcconnell and graham were doing that to try to send the president a signal to say lets move this quickly. You dont have to worry, were going to take care of this, but they opened up a gap that forced democrats to say, wait a second, youre supposed to be impartial. So that is kind of the Holding Period that were in right now. But most people think nancy pelosi is not prepared to hold this out indefinitely, that what happens between now and the winter holidays, at some point theyll come back in january and move forward. Is there some anxiety from those trump district democrats who i mean, the vote for impeachment was theirs. But some anxiety that this strategy from pelosi will hurt them . Yeah. A lot of that anxiety was dealt with before the vote. Everyone sort of cast their lot and now they own it. I think if this process dragged on for months, if it was summertime and the house was holding up those impeachment articles, you might have a real situation like that. But if this is a matter of waiting three or four weeks instead of one or two weeks, i cant imagine that is going to have much of an impact. By the time voters are voting, they might be thinking more about who the democratic nominee is for president. So lets talk about those vulnerable democrats. Leader schumer, obviously, democrats do not have the majority, but can force a vote on some of those witnesses, some of those documents. What is the potency of just getting those vulnerable republicans who are up in 2020 to say no . Yeah. Thats part of this calculation in terms of trying to get some of the democratic terms. Witnesses and so on and so forth. I dont think the democrats expect at this point, unless there are some major new revelation over the break, that theyre going to peel off that many republicans who would then vote for impeachment or against acquittal. But there are questions about whether senators like maybe Susan Collins or Corey Gardner will be bound by process questions. In other words, that their voters would want to say that they took the process seriously, that they wanted time for a deliberation rather than just to expedite this and get it over with. That is where democrats have some of this leverage right now. House democratic staff, they are working over the break. Well see what happens when everyone comes back in january. Margaret, always good to have you. Thanks very much. According to aaa, a Record Number of americans, more than 115 million, will take planes, trains and automobiles to get to and from their holiday destinations over the next ten days. That is the high eft number since aaa started tracking Holiday Travel almost 20 years ago. And a lot of people will be running into some terrible weather. Allison chinchar is joining us with what you need to know if youre traveling. Yeah. And were not just talking air travel. Were talking people that will be traveling on the roadways, even if its a short trip. If its in a couple portions of the country, you could be dealing with a longer trip than you anticipated. Notice this low pressure system. This is going to develop and take shape later on today. Then its going to start to push inland taking with it all of that moisture, meaning heavy rainfall across poreses of the southeast. Notice as we push late saturday into sunday, the storm doesnt move all that much in 48 hours. That allows it plenty of time to dump a stre amount of rain. How much rain . Widespread, 3 to 4 inches and as much as 8 inches of rain before this system does exit. Were not just talking florida, but the carolinas, georgia, across portions of alabama and mississippi. This is not good for travelers. Here is a look as that progresses into late sunday. It becomes an issue for the carolinas and even virginia as we head into monday. But another area that were looking at travel concerns, thats going to be on the west coast. Look at how much rain has already fallen across portions of washington state. 7, 8, 9 inches of rain. You also have areas of oregon that have picked up 5 to 6 inches of rain. The concern, thats enough to trigger flooding alone. But we also have more rain thats going to fall. So you have flood watches in effect for both washington and oregon. The other concern is that system is going to start to push that moisture south as we go through the day today. Now Northern California has the potential to pick up significant amounts of heavy rain. Were talking cities like san francisco, even sacramento. So if you have some travel plans to any one of these places here or even in the southeast, please check with your air carrier or pack some patience if youre on the roadways in the next couple of days. A whistleblowerer claims that the tsa is focussing on speed instead of security. Is that an opening for terrorists and putting you and millions of other travelers at risk . 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Her team treated her cancer and strengthened her spirit. So viola could focus on their future. Cancer Treatment Centers of america. Appointments available now. A whistleblowerer tells cnn that the tsa is so concerned with speeding up security lines that they have dropped security. The whistleblowerer says the tsa has told officer to keep conveyer belts moving in precheck lines which could affect their ability to spot questionable items in bags. Lets discuss now with mary schiavo. Mary, its so unsettling to hear about these quote unquote shortcuts. Its the holiday season. In general, more people are traveling than ever on airplanes. And you say that these are the kinds of security shortcuts at airports that led to 9 11. Are we safe . No, not when this is the attitude and this is whats happening at security. This is exactly the lead up to september 11, 2001. Back then, the airlines were responsible for security. They did it through contractors which they hired. But i was Inspector General in the 90s and we did tests all over the country and the failure rates at checkpoints were 95, in some cases 100 . A few airports were good. But what happens next with the t sk a sa is going to determine what happens next. These disclosures are very important, but they should be used to beef up security. Back in 2001, in the lead up to september 11, of course, the same thing happened. There were great problems disclosed, the media covered them, but the airlines didnt respond properly and the hijackers were watching the response and what would happen when these short comings in security were disclosed. The hijackers tested the airports in may. In september, we had the attack. Wow. Okay. You would think that we would learn from this and never have lack security procedures. So one of the things from renee marshs report is that these walk through metal detectors at all u. S. Airports have been switched to a reduced sensitivity setting. What exactly does that mean and what kind of items would be missed under these settings . What that means is theyve turned down how frequently the system, the walk through metal detectors would alarm. In other words, its not as sensitive as it would be otherwise. If it was at the levels where they have and remember, these levels are set by testing and by design. They set the levels to test certain kinds of items. They dont set them randomly. So if you turn down the sensitively level, perhaps small knives could get through. Its very important. So the more you turn them down, the more metal that can get through the detector. So you were on the Litigation Council for the families of the passengers who passed away during the 9 11 attacks. And you learned a lot of things about how terrorists operate, how they actually carefully watch and test the Security Systems and look for flaws and weaknesses. So i guess the terrorists, you think, are, if not now, are aware of these lax security measures and can take advantage of it at any time. Thats right. One of the things that was so interesting working on the september 11 cases for 12 years of my life was that we learned and i literally read every document about how the terrorists went through the security and what was astonishing in some ways but simple in another is they walked right through the security checkpoints with knives, pepper spray and box cutters. And all of those items were forbidden and we had video, for example, of them going through the check points. And so knowing, of course, in retrospect that they have these items in their carry ones and in persons, what had happened was the system had been set to a level and in some cases it simply was not working where it would not pick up any of these items. So thats why its so important that you just dont decide to change the security settings to reduce wait times because what does that mean . It means the system isnt alarming because youre not checking items. Just quickly, this is an urgent situation. We want to see changes at the airports, period. How quickly will we see changes, do you think . Well, this is up to the tsa. What the tsa says and does next will literally determine the safety of the United States of america for the coming years because this is something that the terrorists watch and they must respond forcefully and reassure the screeners and the traveling public that them they will be backed up when they find alarms to have good security. Thank you. Police say they found the body of a missing mother in houston along with a baby girl who is still alive. What we know about the suspect, next. Finally a little quiet time, huh . Oh my goodness. 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The speaker has not yet transmitted the articles of impeachment to the senate and that raises the question that some are considering this weekend has the president been impeached . Im joined now by janet ellis, a senior Legal Adviser to the trump 2020 campaign and attorney to President Trump and steven griffin, professor of constitutional law at tulane university. Welcome to both of you. Thanks so much for having us. Happy to be here. So, jenna, there is the reporting from cbs news and others weekend that the white house is considering arguing now that the president really has not been impeached because the speaker has not sent the articles over to the senate and they lean on this oped from noah feldman in bloomberg. Lets put it up here. He says impeachment as contemplated by the constitution does not consistent merely of the vote by the house, but of the process of sending the articles to the senate for trial. Both parts are necessary to