Pelosi blocks Donald Trump State of Union speech

New York: Raising the stakes in the US government shutdown standoff, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has blocked President Donald Trump from delivering the highly symbolic annual State of the Union address to the joint session of Congress even as a group of centrist Democrat and Republican lawmakers met him to find a way out of the impasse. In a letter to Trump on Wednesday, Pelosi cited the shutdown as the reason for not holding the ceremonial address on January 29. She asserted that it would not be possible to provide the required “special security” needed for the event because the employees of the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been paid for 25 days. Trump could instead send a written message as was the custom till 1913, or wait for the government to reopen and schedule a new date, Pelosi suggested.