\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
Gather round and let me tell you a fantastical tale of the past, when government shutdowns were highly unusual. They didn\u2019t even occur until the 1980s, and none lasted for more than three days until 1995. We\u2019re now in the sixth shutdown since the start of the Clinton administration. Today is the 23rd day since the government ran out of funding, still short of the 35-day record set during the first Trump presidency, and although there are sporadic signs of movement in Washington, this shutdown looks like it could go on for a very long time.<\/p>\n
A closed government seems to suit Donald Trump just fine, and he shows no concern for whether Congress authorizes him to do what he wants. The Republicans who control Congress take their cues from him, and Democrats see little incentive to reopen the government, which they argue would legitimize the president\u2019s actions. Typically, this is where I\u2019d deploy a journalistic clich\u00e9 and call it a \u201cgridlock,\u201d but that implies that anyone is really trying to get free of it.<\/p>\n
Past shutdowns have been dominant news stories, but this one feels secondary at best. It is nowhere on the front page of The New York Times today, appears in a single sentence on page 1 of The Wall Street Journal, and is addressed tangentially in a story about Obamacare on A1 of The Washington Post. As the former Democratic-messaging maven Dan Pfeiffer notes, this trend mirrors reader interest more broadly. One reason is the glut of other big stories: the tenuous Gaza peace deal, ICE raids in major American cities, \u201cNo Kings\u201d marches, extrajudicial attacks on purported drug boats, Trump\u2019s shocking demolition of the White House\u2019s entire East Wing. A second reason is jaundice. At some point, shutdowns start to become routine.<\/p>\n
But an important third reason is that it feels like the government has largely been functioning\u2014or not functioning\u2014this way for a good chunk of Trump\u2019s second term. Trump has asserted the authority to make war without Congress\u2019s say-so, to impound funds appropriated by Congress, and to move money around as he sees fit. Meanwhile, the frequency of shutdowns has given administrations lots of experience in keeping just enough of the government running that average citizens don\u2019t feel too much discomfort. Trump is selectively determining who feels the damage of the shutdown and who doesn\u2019t, repurposing funds to cover the salaries of troops, FBI agents, immigration agents, and other federal law-enforcement officers. The real pain has so far been felt by government workers, whom the top Trump aide Russell Vought has said he wants to put \u201cin trauma\u201d anyway.<\/p>\n
In the past, Republicans have shut down the government, and Democrats have been eager to reopen it. The record-setting 2018\u201319 shutdown pitted Republicans in Congress against the White House and ended once Democrats took control of the House in January 2019. But this time around, the Democratic Party incited the closure. The reasons were much the same as those that led the GOP to block funding in the past: Its base was demanding gestures of resistance. But congressional Democrats have also made the valid point that they don\u2019t trust any deal they might cut with Trump unless it has strong guardrails\u2014especially when he can easily accept a funding agreement that requires 60 Senate votes, then turn around and ask Republicans to rescind funding with a simple majority. Democrats have also rallied around popular health-insurance subsidies that are set to expire, and that Republican leaders are not acting to extend.<\/p>\n
Democrats have also calculated that Trump and Republicans will take more of the political blowback, which public-opinion polling confirms. Even though Democrats started this, the GOP hasn\u2019t had much luck shifting blame onto them: Trump, usually so eager to trumpet his dealmaking, can\u2019t be bothered to show much interest in ending the shutdown. (During a lunch with Republican senators this week, Trump reportedly barely \u200b\u200bmentioned the closure.) And when the White House does intervene, it is to claim that major federally funded projects in blue states have been \u201cterminated,\u201d or to post a weird AI video of Vought as the Grim Reaper. Trump\u2019s obvious relish makes it hard for him to pretend that he wants to reopen the government, and it lends credence to Democrats\u2019 talking points.<\/p>\n
Trump has attempted to get out of this political bind by trying to ensure that heavily Democratic jurisdictions bear the most pain, but as my colleague Annie Lowrey reports today, some of the worst damage of the shutdown is happening in red states. If the Trump administration stopped using workarounds and loopholes to mitigate the shutdown\u2019s effects across the whole country, that would put more pressure on Democrats\u2014but it might also court voter backlash against Trump, or harm the economy in a way that hurts his agenda.<\/p>\n
The pain to the American economy, to American citizens seeking services, and to federal workers is real\u2014and growing worse by the day\u2014but also diffuse enough that no one in power is willing to blink. The result is a perverse circumstance, different from previous shutdowns, where both parties see political upside in extending the closure. The Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett predicted that a deal might be struck this week, which, given his track record with forecasts, is grounds for deep pessimism. Even the optimistic scenarios would see the shutdown extending until November 1. In the meantime, the country is left with a government that can\u2019t fully staff national parks or Social Security offices but has no problem tearing down public property with impunity.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Ike Edeani.<\/p>\n Why I Run<\/p>\n By Nicholas Thompson<\/p>\n There are a lot of reasons I run. I like the mental space it gives me. I like setting goals and trying to meet them. I like the feeling of my feet hitting the ground and the wind in my hair. I like to remember that I\u2019m still alive, and that I survived my cancer. I think it makes me better at my job. But really I run because of my father. Running connects me to my father, reminds me of my father, and gives me a way to avoid becoming my father. My father led a deeply complicated and broken life. But he gave me many things, including the gift of running\u2014a gift that opens the world to anyone who accepts it.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Akshita Chandra \/ The Atlantic<\/p>\n Watch. Listers (streaming on YouTube) is an unexpectedly profound movie about bird-watching, Tyler Austin Harper writes.<\/p>\n Read. Philip Pullman, the author of The Golden Compass, writes fiction that tells us how to love this world. It isn\u2019t easy, Lev Grossman writes.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Gather round and let me tell you a fantastical tale of the past, when government shutdowns were highly unusual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3037,11209],"class_list":{"0":"post-30184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-doesnt","9":"tag-shutdown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30184","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=30184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n