1. Nancy Pelosi changes State of the Union

2. "Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29," wrote Speaker Nancy Pelosi to President Donald Trump on Wednesday. Speaker Pelosi made sure to note: "The Constitution established the legislative, executive and judicial branches as co-equal branches of government, to be a check and balance on each other.” Certainly Nancy Pelosi -- and Democrats -- will, of course, use as her reasoning that the SOTU is a special security event. And that it is President Trump who continues to demand $5 billion for his border wall -- keeping the government closed until he gets it. And that Congress is doing what she feels is the best course to keep everyone safe under the current circumstances. However, the more political reason is to establish that the new Democratic majority in the House stands on equal footing with the president. In other words, it is a power play designed to remind President Trump that a) Congress is a co-equal branch of government and b) his willingness to keep the government shuttered until he gets money for a border wall is going to have impacts on him as well.

3. In Other News
Men armed with guns and explosives burst into a hotel complex in Nairobi, killing at least 21 people in an attack that lasted hours and ended Wednesday morning. An American and a Briton were among the people killed when armed militants targeted the DusitD2 compound Tuesday, an upmarket cluster of shops and hotel facilities in the Kenyan capital. Sixteen Kenyans, one Briton, one American and three unidentified people of African origin are among the dead. Twenty-eight others have been hospitalized. The coordinated attack started Tuesday afternoon as an unknown number of gunmen attacked the complex, leading to a standoff that continued through the night, with people trapped in various parts of the buildings hours later. Somali Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was a response to US President Donald Trump's 2017 decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Al-Shabaab is a jihadist fundamentalist group based in East Africa. In 2012, it pledged allegiance to the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda.
YouTube has banned users from sharing videos of dangerous pranks on its platform because of concerns about challenges that put people's lives in jeopardy. The US-based website, which is owned by Google, updated its guidelines Tuesday and said it will not allow the upload of prank or challenge videos "that can cause death and/or have caused death in some instances," adding that they "have no place" on its site. It cited examples like the Tide Pod challenge, where social media users eat laundry detergent packets on camera, the Fire challenge, in which people douse themselves in flammable liquid and set themselves alight, and the Bird Box challenge, inspired by a scene in the Netflix movie "Bird Box," where users blindfold themselves and perform everyday tasks. The site said it is currently working to remove videos that violate the new guidelines. It has given creators a grace period of two months to "review and clean up content" before the ban comes fully into effect. The site is also banning "pranks that cause children to experience severe emotional distress, meaning something so bad that it could leave the child traumatized for life.”