\n<\/p>\n
With the government shutdown well into its second week, President Donald Trump\u2019s strategy to break Senate Democrats has become clear: Maximize the pain of the closure to force them into retreat. His administration is firing civil servants en masse, threatening to withhold back pay from furloughed federal employees, and canceling billions of dollars in funding for states that voted for his opponent last year.<\/p>\n
Yet with only a couple of exceptions, the party\u2019s senators are holding firm\u2014to the unexpected delight of House Democrats worried that their counterparts across the Capitol, whose votes are needed to reopen the government, might cave in the face of Trump\u2019s heavy-handed pressure campaign. \u201cI\u2019m surprised, but I\u2019m happy,\u201d Representative Eric Swalwell told us. Like many of his House colleagues, the California Democrat had been bitterly frustrated when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer surrendered the last spending fight in March, making the current shutdown nearly a forgone conclusion.<\/p>\n
Far from folding, Senate Democrats appear to be unusually united and even more emboldened with each passing day the government remains closed. They haven\u2019t budged from their insistence that, before they will vote to end the shutdown, Republicans first must agree to extend health-insurance subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. \u201cWe know what we are fighting for. Folding is not an option right now,\u201d Senator Patty Murray of Washington State, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told us.<\/p>\n
Instead, it is Republicans who are showing signs of strain, questioning their leaders\u2019 tactics and, in one high-profile defection, calling on them to essentially meet the Democrats\u2019 demands. At the White House, Trump muddied the party\u2019s message during the shutdown\u2019s first days when he told reporters that he wanted to make a deal on health care and was \u201ctalking to Democrats about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments were news to congressional leaders in both parties, given that Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune had each declared that no negotiations over health care would take place before Democrats agreed to reopen the government. Republicans were also startled by a memo from Trump\u2019s budget office suggesting that furloughed workers might not receive back pay, since it conflicted with a federal law that Trump himself had signed during his first term and which both Johnson and Thune voted for. \u201cWe\u2019re a little less on the same page than we should be,\u201d a White House official told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment of the GOP\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n
Trump has allowed his budget director, Russell Vought, to serve as the administration\u2019s \u201cbad cop.\u201d In the days leading up to the shutdown, Vought had issued a warning that a lapse in funding would prompt the administration not merely to furlough federal workers deemed nonessential\u2014as is standard in a shutdown\u2014but to lay many of them off entirely. Soon after the shutdown began, Vought announced that funding for key infrastructure projects in New York\u2014home to both Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries\u2014would be canceled (to ensure contracts are not based on \u201cunconstitutional DEI principles\u201d), as would energy projects (\u201cGreen New Scam funding\u201d) in a litany of states that all happened to vote Democratic last year.<\/p>\n
The administration initially made no moves to fire federal employees en masse, leading Democrats to believe they had effectively called the president\u2019s bluff. (Some Republicans had also pushed back on the idea.) But this afternoon, after the Senate broke for the long weekend without reopening the government, Vought said the layoffs were starting. They \u201chave begun and are substantial,\u201d an official with the Office of Management and Budget told us, without offering details on exactly which agencies or how many people would be affected.<\/p>\n
For Democrats, the administration\u2019s escalation had already been baked in. \u201cThey want everybody to be afraid,\u201d Murray told us. \u201cOh my gosh, he\u2019s going to do this. Oh my gosh, he did that. Oh my gosh, he threatened that. But when you deny somebody that fear, you diminish their power. And that is what we think is absolutely critical.\u201d The risk that Trump would use the shutdown to initiate widespread layoffs also carried less weight with Democrats because he had already cut the government deeply without congressional approval. \u201cThe threats would have been more powerful if he weren\u2019t doing all of those things already,\u201d Senator Adam Schiff of California told us before Vought\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n
Although<\/span> Democrats remain united at the moment, the party\u2019s caucuses in the House and Senate could diverge. Jeffries has said Democrats in the House want to see a permanent extension of the health-care subsidies. Senate Democrats, however, might agree to a compromise short of that to end the shutdown, perhaps even one that relies on separate negotiations over health care. \u201cI want show, not tell,\u201d Swalwell told us, saying he wants a renewal to be written into legislation reopening the government.<\/p>\n An agreement that wins the support of most Senate Republicans would need only a handful of additional Democratic votes to defeat a filibuster. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who is seen as a potential swing vote because she opposed a government shutdown in March, has been one of the few Democrats who has held informal talks with Republicans over the past week about a possible deal involving insurance relief. In an interview, she blamed both parties for a lack of real negotiations. \u201cThere are lots of ways to skin this cat,\u201d Shaheen told us, \u201cbut you\u2019re not going to do it unless you get people to sit down at the table and actually negotiate. And that\u2019s not happening.\u201d<\/p>\n Democrats have clearly succeeded, at minimum, in elevating the issue of health care. They have won an unlikely supporter in the ultra-MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has called on GOP leaders to extend federal insurance aid, in part because her family is one of millions across the country who would face a steep spike in costs if Congress fails to act. Republicans in swing House districts have also pushed to renew the subsidies, fearing an electoral backlash in next year\u2019s midterm elections. And Trump, too, is now paying attention. The president has begun watching the polls, the White House official and an outside ally told us. And he is slowly growing leery of the impact of rising health-care costs, knowing that Republicans tend to be on the losing side of the issue.<\/p>\n In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the chamber out of session entirely, ostensibly as a means of continuing the pressure on Senate Democrats to approve a temporary funding bill House Republicans passed that could reopen the government. But as the shutdown has dragged on, some of his members have grown antsy. \u201cThe House needs to return to session,\u201d GOP Representative Kevin Kiley of California posted on X. \u201cIt\u2019s absurd to be cancelling weeks of legislative business when the government is shut down and Congress hasn\u2019t enacted a budget in 19 months.\u201d<\/p>\n If the two parties agree on anything, it\u2019s that Trump\u2014and perhaps Trump alone\u2014can break the stalemate by instructing GOP leaders to cut a deal. He remains stung by coming out on the losing end of the lengthy shutdown in his first term. And aides wonder whether he\u2019ll shift positions once he fully focuses on the shutdown; of late, he\u2019s instead been fixated on a cease-fire deal in Gaza and National Guard deployments in American cities. Thune and Johnson have not moved off their positions, but both have deferred to the president\u2019s wishes throughout the nine months of his second term. \u201cThey are afraid of him more than the policy they are fighting,\u201d Murray said.<\/p>\n The political dynamic could easily shift. The fallout from Trump\u2019s layoffs remains to be seen, and as our colleague Toluse Olorunnipa reported, other real-world effects of the shutdown will only escalate in the days ahead, ramping up pressure on both sides. But for now it is Democrats who are exuding confidence\u2014in some cases to the point of bravado. \u201cEvery day gets better for us,\u201d Schumer told Punchbowl News. Republicans said the boast displayed insensitivity to the many Americans negatively affected by the shutdown, and the Democrats we spoke with notably declined to echo Schumer\u2019s sentiment. \u201cThere\u2019s no glee in the government being shut down,\u201d Representative Pete Aguilar of California, the House\u2019s third-ranking Democrat, told us. \u201cThis isn\u2019t about winning and losing.\u201d<\/p>\n Gleeful or not, the impasse doesn\u2019t appear close to a resolution. A party that averted a fight months ago is relishing its newfound resolve. When we asked Murray about the possibility that her Senate colleagues would tire of the standoff and reopen the government without a health-care deal, she replied instantly: \u201cI absolutely do not see that happening.\u201d<\/p>\n Illustration Sources: Anna Moneymaker \/ Getty; Kevin Dietsch \/ Getty; Annabelle Gordon \/ Bloomberg \/ Getty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the government shutdown well into its second week, President Donald Trump\u2019s strategy to break Senate Democrats has become clear: Maximize the pain of the closure to force them into retreat. His administration is firing civil servants en masse, threatening to withhold back pay from furloughed federal employees, and canceling billions of dollars in funding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[581,2171,11209,809,4657],"class_list":{"0":"post-27401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-democrats","9":"tag-fight","10":"tag-shutdown","11":"tag-theyre","12":"tag-winning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27401","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=27401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}