Democrats are continuing to use their leverage in the federal-funding process to confront Republicans. Meanwhile, the threat of layoffs looms for many government workers. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined last night to discuss how long the government shutdown could last and more.
This shutdown is not necessarily something that Donald Trump would have chosen, “but he likes a fight,” Ashley Parker, a staff writer for The Atlantic, said last night. “He thinks—publicly, gleefully—that it benefits him and Republicans politically.” That, however, “still remains to be seen,” Parker argued.
The president is also using the shutdown as an “opportunity for the deconstruction of the administrative state,” Parker continued. But, she added, “there’s some understanding within his orbit that there might be some blowback if they were actually to do that.”
Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Leigh Ann Caldwell, the chief Washington correspondent at Puck; Andrew Desiderio, a senior congressional reporter for Punchbowl News; Ashley Parker, a staff writer at The Atlantic; and Toluse Olorunnipa, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Watch the full episode here.
