The government shutdown is already the longest in American history. But it’s also perhaps the most punishing, in part because President Trump has taken actions no previous administration ever took during a shutdown.
Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration cut food stamps for millions of low-income Americans. It tried to fire thousands of government workers and withhold back pay from others, while freezing or canceling money for projects in Democratic-led states.
It remains to be seen whether there will be a political price to pay for Mr. Trump or his party, with polls showing that voters generally blamed Republicans more for the shutdown. But for now, the tactics appear to have worked, after a group of Democrats agreed to support a bill to end the shutdown and drop the concessions their party had demanded.
“Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work,” Senator Angus King, independent of Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, said on MSNBC Monday. “It actually gave him more power.”
The bare-knuckle politics the Trump administration employed during the shutdown — often coming from his budget director Russell T. Vought, whom Mr. Trump refers to as Darth Vader — became too brutal for the handful of centrist Senate Democrats, who never liked the idea of the shutdown much anyway.
The deal they voted for on Monday reverses much of the pain Mr. Trump inflicted. Under its terms, the president must rescind his layoffs and restore back pay to other government workers. Democrats will also get a vote on extending subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, something that Senate Republicans weeks ago offered them.
While the shutdown may be ending, Democratic officials say the party learned a lesson that base voters reward them when they fight. Democratic leaders view last week’s elections, with big victories in governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, as evidence that their strategy was working. They point to polling that indicates that the public was blaming Mr. Trump and Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown.
“Republicans all across the country got wiped out,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the House, adding, “As House Democrats, we know we’re on the right side of this fight.”
Democrats also believe they now have an issue to run on in the midterm elections. They have highlighted issues important to voters, positioning themselves in the public’s mind as the party fighting for lowering health care costs, while they can contrast those efforts with the Trump administration’s attempts to deny food stamps to needy families.
But Trump officials have also learned a lesson.
If they wait out Democrats long enough — and turn up the pain enough — they will back down.
Early in the shutdown, White House officials had predicted Democrats would eventually fold. They saw little need for Mr. Trump to negotiate with the Democratic leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Mr. Jeffries.
The strategy, White House officials said, was to wait out the Democrats, ramp up the pain and then watch as they eventually caved.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he approves of the deal under consideration to reopen the federal government.
“We’ll be opening up our country very quickly,” Mr. Trump said. Asked if that meant he would back off his attempts to fire federal workers, he said: “I’ll abide by the deal. The deal is very good.”
Mr. Trump also made it clear that he wants to position the Republicans as the party that is working for lower health care costs. He said he wants to move toward a health care system that cuts out insurance companies.
“We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies,” he said. “And I tell you, we’re going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time.”
But Mr. Trump offered no details about what such a plan could look like or how it could save money for consumers.
There may still be more fallout from the shutdown even after it is resolved.
Some House Democrats, dissatisfied that Mr. Schumer couldn’t better control his caucus and hold the line on Democratic demands, called for him to be replaced.
“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said in a post on X. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
But Mr. Jeffries said he was standing by his counterpart in the Senate.
“The overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, have waged a valiant fight over the last seven weeks,” Mr. Jeffries said.
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
The post For Trump, Nothing Was Off Limits During the Shutdown appeared first on New York Times.
