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Gather round and let me tell you a fantastical tale of the past, when government shutdowns were highly unusual. They didn’t even occur until the 1980s, and none lasted for more than three days until 1995. We’re 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.
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’s actions. Typically, this is where I’d deploy a journalistic cliché and call it a “gridlock,” but that implies that anyone is really trying to get free of it.
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, “No Kings” marches, extrajudicial attacks on purported drug boats, Trump’s shocking demolition of the White House’s entire East Wing. A second reason is jaundice. At some point, shutdowns start to become routine.
But an important third reason is that it feels like the government has largely been functioning—or not functioning—this way for a good chunk of Trump’s second term. Trump has asserted the authority to make war without Congress’s 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’t feel too much discomfort. Trump is selectively determining who feels the damage of the shutdown and who doesn’t, 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 “in trauma” anyway.
In the past, Republicans have shut down the government, and Democrats have been eager to reopen it. The record-setting 2018–19 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’t trust any deal they might cut with Trump unless it has strong guardrails—especially 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.
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’t had much luck shifting blame onto them: Trump, usually so eager to trumpet his dealmaking, can’t be bothered to show much interest in ending the shutdown. (During a lunch with Republican senators this week, Trump reportedly barely mentioned the closure.) And when the White House does intervene, it is to claim that major federally funded projects in blue states have been “terminated,” or to post a weird AI video of Vought as the Grim Reaper. Trump’s obvious relish makes it hard for him to pretend that he wants to reopen the government, and it lends credence to Democrats’ talking points.
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’s effects across the whole country, that would put more pressure on Democrats—but it might also court voter backlash against Trump, or harm the economy in a way that hurts his agenda.
The pain to the American economy, to American citizens seeking services, and to federal workers is real—and growing worse by the day—but 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’t fully staff national parks or Social Security offices but has no problem tearing down public property with impunity.
Related:
- Trump’s partisan redistribution of wealth
- Trump is trying–and failing—to shield MAGA from the shutdown.
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
- Trump’s partisan redistribution of wealth
- You’re getting “screen time” wrong.
- The appeal of the campus right
Today’s News
- Federal prosecutors charged more than 30 people—including current and former NBA players—in two cases: one involving illegal sports gambling and the other involving poker rigging. FBI Director Kash Patel said the schemes involved “tens of millions of dollars” in theft, fraud, and robbery.
- The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions yesterday on Russia’s two largest oil companies, following recent Russian attacks that killed at least seven people in Ukraine. The sanctions block the companies from U.S. financial systems.
- President Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, who served a four-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to enabling money laundering. The Biden administration pursued the case, resulting in Binance paying more than $4 billion in fines.
Evening Read
Why I Run
By Nicholas Thompson
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’m 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—a gift that opens the world to anyone who accepts it.
More From The Atlantic
- China gets tough on Trump.
- Jack Posobiec is MAGA’s most important influencer.
- Radio Atlantic: This movie makes nuclear war feel disturbingly possible.
- John McWhorter: “My students use AI. So what?”
- Arthur C. Brooks: What true wealth looks like
- Jeremy Strong is ready to let go, just a little bit.
Culture Break
Watch. Listers (streaming on YouTube) is an unexpectedly profound movie about bird-watching, Tyler Austin Harper writes.
Read. Philip Pullman, the author of The Golden Compass, writes fiction that tells us how to love this world. It isn’t easy, Lev Grossman writes.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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The post Neither Party Seems Interested in Ending This Shutdown appeared first on The Atlantic.
