\n<\/p>\n
Thirty-four days<\/span> into the previous government shutdown, in 2019, reporters asked President Donald Trump if he had a message for the thousands of federal employees who were about to miss another paycheck. \u201cI love them. I respect them. I really appreciate the great job they\u2019re doing,\u201d he said at the time. The following day, caving after weeks of punishing cable-news coverage, he signed legislation to reopen the government, lauding furloughed employees as \u201cincredible patriots,\u201d pledging to quickly restore their back pay, and calling the moment \u201can opportunity for all parties to work together for the benefit of our whole beautiful, wonderful nation.\u201d<\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t really sound like the same guy, does it? This time, it took Trump fewer than 24 hours to turn a shutdown into a weapon wielded against the civil servants he once praised and the opposing party he has long derided. The administration has targeted Democratic districts, announcing holds on more than $25 billion in projects in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, and elsewhere, with more cuts believed to be on the way. Trump has threatened to fire government workers en masse, casting the lapse in funding that led to their furloughs as an \u201copportunity\u201d to further decimate their ranks and gut agencies he doesn\u2019t like. Officials have defied ethics guidelines, with blatantly partisan out-of-office messaging and banners blaming Democrats for the shutdown splashed across government websites.<\/p>\n This is what happens when a partial closure of the government meets the president\u2019s second-term campaign to expand his powers and punish his enemies. The dynamic has created widespread uncertainty, as some Republicans blanch at the brazen norm-busting and some Democrats begin to reconsider how much pain they\u2019re willing to bear in what they hoped would be a fight over health-care subsidies.<\/p>\n The president has shown no willingness to retreat, even as millions of federal workers and military troops are now working without pay or staying home. \u201cI have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,\u201d Trump wrote this morning on Truth Social, referring to the director of the Office of Management and Budget. \u201cI can\u2019t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.\u201d Compare that with Trump\u2019s comments a year ago, during a presidential debate, when he said: \u201cI have nothing to do with Project 2025. I haven\u2019t read it. I don\u2019t want to read it purposely. I\u2019m not going to read it.\u201d<\/p>\n Democrats have quite obviously taken note of Trump\u2019s more aggressive tactics now that he\u2019s president again, as has anyone paying attention. Last time around, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia told us, \u201cthere was none of this kind of activity, because there were people inside the White House who put guardrails on him.\u201d Now those people are gone, and Trump has \u201cpeople like Russ Vought, who\u2019s whipping up a frenzy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n When we asked him whether Trump\u2019s actions would lead the Democrats to reconsider their strategy of trying to force Republicans to negotiate before reopening the government, Warner would say only that he was \u201cnot going to predict\u201d what would happen next. But at one point, he openly speculated about whether the federal workers he represents may eventually ask the Democrats to fold.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we had to bring the fight\u2014it\u2019s about health care. But it\u2019s spurred on by the fact that there are so many norms and laws that have been broken, and there\u2019s so few times that you can actually join the fight,\u201d he told us, adding that many of his constituents have encouraged him to stay in the fight, at least for now. \u201cNow, but I\u2019ll be the first to admit it: Will they still say that if this goes for two or three weeks? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n Even<\/span> before the shutdown began yesterday, Trump-administration officials had begun working the levers of government to inflict pain on the Democrats. Vought appeared to be directing much of that activity. Two senior White House aides told us that Trump, though at times reluctant to elevate the fame of his staffers, likes Vought in the role of a \u201cbad cop\u201d and sees his eagerness to slash the bureaucracy as a potentially useful bargaining tool. Senate Majority Leader John Thune also warned Democrats about what they have unleashed, telling Politico<\/em> that the party has effectively handed \u201cthe keys\u201d of government to Vought.<\/p>\n Yesterday morning, the OMB director announced a freeze on $18 billion in federal grants for infrastructure projects in New York City, a move that New York Democrats blasted as nakedly partisan. Later that day, Vought announced that the government was canceling more than $7.5 billion in grants for green-energy projects. He listed all of the states that would be affected, including Democratic strongholds such as California and Illinois. (No state that Trump won last year will be affected.) The Department of Energy said in a statement that the cancellation of the 321 projects resulted from \u201ca thorough, individualized financial review\u201d and suggested that more projects will be reviewed for potential termination.<\/p>\n Vought has said that the shutdown will open the door for agencies to send out significant \u201creduction in force\u201d notices, known as RIFs, and make permanent reductions to federal-agency staff. White House officials said those notices could begin going out imminently. But on a group video call yesterday, some federal workers at the Department of Health and Human Services were told that leaders had received no information about impending RIFs, according to a person on the call who requested anonymity to disclose internal communications.<\/p>\n Such layoffs would represent a major escalation and a departure from how previous shutdowns have been handled, Abigail Andr\u00e9, the executive director of the Impact Project, which has been tracking the fate of federal workers during Trump\u2019s second term, told us. \u201cBest case, it\u2019s a very serious threat,\u201d she said a day before the shutdown. \u201cWorst case, it\u2019s thousands and thousands of more federal workers fired.\u201d Trump\u2019s post this morning suggested that he has not yet made up his mind on how many government jobs he wants to eliminate during the shutdown. (Federal-employee unions have already filed a lawsuit challenging the president\u2019s authority to conduct mass layoffs during a lapse in funding.)<\/p>\n The president previewed the political nature of the push in the hours before the shutdown began, saying on Tuesday that a closed government would allow him to \u201cdo things\u201d to Democrats that would be \u201cbad for them and irreversible by them.\u201d He said to reporters at the White House, \u201cWe\u2019d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be really affected, and they\u2019re Democrats; they\u2019re going to be Democrats.\u201d Had there been any ambiguity about his plans, he also said that the shutdown would allow his administration to \u201cget rid of a lot of things that we didn\u2019t want. And they\u2019d be Democrat things.\u201d<\/p>\n Although upwards of 600,000 federal employees have been furloughed, some were drafted into the partisan battle just before they were sent home. At the Small Business Administration, furloughed employees were told to adjust their out-of-office message to say that they would not be working \u201cfor the foreseeable future because Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal funding bill,\u201d according to a copy of the email we reviewed.<\/p>\n A banner on the Department of Agriculture\u2019s main website says that the page will not be updated \u201cDue to the Radical Left Democrat shutdown,\u201d echoing similar notes on the websites of other departments, including Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, and State. Critics have fumed that the messages violate Hatch Act regulations that limit the political activities of federal employees who work with taxpayer-funded programs. \u201cThere\u2019s no question that it violates things like the Hatch Act and probably more,\u201d Max Stier, the head of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that aims to strengthen the federal bureaucracy, told us.<\/p>\n Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, told us that the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cprofoundly corrupt\u201d actions make Richard Nixon \u201clook like someone who revered the law.\u201d<\/p>\n When we reached out to the White House press office for a response to such criticism, we received an automatically generated response. \u201cDue to staff shortages resulting from the Democrat Shutdown, the typical 24\/7 monitoring of this press inbox may experience delays,\u201d the email, signed by the White House press team, said. \u201cAs you await a response, please remember this could have been avoided if the Democrats voted for the clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government open.\u201d (The White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded to us later, saying that \u201cDemocrats have chosen to shut down the government\u201d and echoing the political attacks Trump has made core to his messaging.)<\/p>\n Some Democrats have said that Trump\u2019s actions have only increased their resolve to ensure that he is not rewarded for what they see as bullying behavior. \u201cTime to stiffen our spines and demand that we only fund a government that obeys the law,\u201d Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat, wrote on X yesterday. But at least some Democrats have broken ranks, with three senators voting on Tuesday in favor of the continuing resolution that would fund the government for seven weeks without making the changes to health-care law that their party has sought.<\/p>\n Not all Republicans support what Trump and Vought are doing by freezing congressionally approved funding in Democratic districts. Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a Republican, told Semafor<\/em> that Vought is \u201cless politically in tune than the president\u201d and that \u201cbeing aggressive with executive power in this moment\u201d carries political risks. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina told HuffPost<\/em> that the Trump administration\u2019s power moves could \u201ccreate a toxic environment here,\u201d jeopardizing any possibility of a deal to end the shutdown.<\/p>\n Democrats, for their part, remember that Trump took the brunt of the blame for the three shutdowns during his first term. Several pointed to a Washington Post<\/em> poll released today that indicates that more people blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats. Many Democrats think that those numbers will only get worse for the president, particularly if his administration goes through with the promise of mass layoffs that he\u2019s been taunting Democrats with. More broadly, many in the party have taken note of Trump\u2019s falling approval ratings\u2014and, they believe, growing authoritarian instincts\u2014and are casting this moment as ripe for a fight that they can win.<\/p>\n The situation suggests a prolonged battle that leaves no participant unscathed, Stier told us. \u201cIt seems as if the answer will be that there will be so much pain that eventually one side or the other will determine that they need to withdraw,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there will be so much collateral damage from that fight that we\u2019ll all suffer. And that\u2019s just bad for a country.\u201d<\/p>\n Katherine J. Wu and Russell Berman contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thirty-four days into the previous government shutdown, in 2019, reporters asked President Donald Trump if he had a message for the thousands of federal employees who were about to miss another paycheck. \u201cI love them. I respect them. I really appreciate the great job they\u2019re doing,\u201d he said at the time. The following day, caving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1671,558,11209,15407],"class_list":{"0":"post-25508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-atlantic","9":"tag-government","10":"tag-shutdown","11":"tag-weaponized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}