POLITICO staff photographer M. Scott Mahaskey captures a sense of the high drama that gripped the Capitol as lawmakers attempted to conduct regular business amid the bleakest week yet of the partial government shutdown.

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<![CDATA[A few days before Washington staggered into what would become the longest shutdown in U.S. history, Chuck Schumer received a request from Donald Trump. The president wanted the Senate minority leader to visit the White House to discuss his demands for the border wall, which would need Democratic votes to pass the GOP-controlled Senate. Previously, Schumer had held one-on-one negotiations with Trump. But this time, the New York Democrat had a new condition: “Only with Nancy.” “We do it all together, that’s an agreement we had from the get-go,” Schumer said of his stance with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on not giving Trump an inch on the wall. “We realize we’re a team,” Schumer added in an interview. “Sometimes we talk strategy four to five times a day. And there are times we disagree. But we come to the same result.”Republicans have tried to drive a wedge between the duo for

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<![CDATA[When Mark Meadows didn’t get President Donald Trump’s chief of staff gig, he wasn’t losing much. Just 10 days later, the powerful conservative lawmaker managed to engineer what has since become the longest-running government shutdown — convincing Trump to pull the trigger right as the partial closure was on the brink of being avoided. Meadows picked up the phone to make his move just after Vice President Mike Pence had told lawmakers over lunch on Dec. 19 — two days before government funding would expire — that Trump was prepared to sign a clean spending bill to keep the government open through early February. The North Carolina Republican, who helped shutter the government in 2013 during a revolt against Obamacare, wasn’t prepared to back away from demanding funds for a border wall. And despite Pence’s clear-as-day comments, he assumed the president wasn’t either. Meadows was right. The following day, at

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