Fact check: True. But can Republicans close the trap? 

That still seems at least theoretically in doubt this morning. J.D. Vance showed up at the House Republican caucus meeting this morning to urge unanimity behind the clean CR that Speaker Mike Johnson will put on the floor later today. The Vice President argued that Donald Trump needs to clear the boards to advance the MAGA agenda as fast as possible, as well as return to regular-order budgeting, Manu Raju reported earlier:

VP Vance just left the House GOP conference after meeting for about 40 mins. The pitch, per members: Get behind the stop-gap bc that’s what Trump wants and that will help them achieve their larger agenda.

“The pitch that the Vice President made is very simple, and that is the President is asking every member of the United States Congress to vote for what was a continuation of last year’s spending for 25,” Pete Sessions told me.

Did the pitch work? Not entirely; Raju reports that there are "still several Rs undecided" on the CR. 

Still, only one Republican has publicly committed to opposing it -- Thomas Massie, who has earned the ire of Trump and perhaps the brunt of his vengeance next year. That might be enough to convince the holdouts to pull together for the sake of unity. House Speaker Mike Johnson seems confident that they will vote to support the bill in the end:

Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview Tuesday morning he expects House Republicans “are going to pass” a bill to fund the government later in the day, ahead of the looming March 14 deadline to avoid a shutdown. ...

Johnson predicted there would be “maybe just one” GOP defection on this bill, appearing to reference Rep. Thomas Massie. President Donald Trump has called for a primary challenge against Massie over the Kentucky Republican's opposition to the funding plan, which Trump is pressuring House Republicans to support.

Johnson has won this brinksmanship battle more than once in his tenure atop the House. He has needed Trump's backing to do so more than once too, but in this case he has Trump's enthusiastic endorsement. That will likely matter to everyone but Massie among House Republicans, especially given the Wall Street Journal's argument about where passage will leave Democrats. They will have to face a choice between a Trump-run government shutdown or a tactical retreat, and right now it doesn't appear clear which path Democrats detest more:

The Democratic base has been begging party leaders to fight harder at every turn, but on most issues congressional Democrats are powerless in Republican-controlled Washington. They can’t stop President Trump’s nominations, his still-developing tax bill or GOP regulatory repeals, let alone the cuts that Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk are making to the federal workforce.

This week’s bill to keep the government funded is the first big issue where Democrats have leverage, because Republicans need Democratic votes—maybe in the House, and definitely in the Senate. But what looks like leverage is something of a trap. Democrats want to keep the government open, and blocking a bill that does that could be counterproductive—handing even more power to the president to manage federal operations.

Exactly. This is why Democrats don't like to trigger shutdowns during Republican presidencies, and why they can play with Republicans when Democrats run the White House. Shutdowns are managed through executive authority, not congressional direction. Barack Obama made a big show of shutting down national parks during one such interregnum, and made sure to generate headlines by closing down some vital services to particularly newsworthy recipients. 

Trump already wants to shut down vast parts of the federal bureaucracy on which Democrats rely to impose progressive policies even under Republican presidents. Trump would love nothing better than to get to the next stage of budgeting to capture reductions more rationally. However, if Democrats want to force a shutdown by blocking a clean CR [see update] from the House, then Trump has lots of choices to make Democrats and their allies miserable while the CR sits in the Senate after Friday. (And they can do it: I was wrong Sunday about a CR being a privileged motion not subject to the filibuster.) The Protection Racket Media may not play along with Trump and will try to find ways to blame him for it, but in the meantime a lot of bureaucrats will lose paychecks and power. And that won't be bad for Republicans. 

Chuck Schumer's playing his cards close to the vest, the WSJ notes:

Schumer hasn’t laid out his stance on the bill, and other Senate Democrats have also kept their cards close, with some criticizing Republicans over the bill but not saying how they would vote. 

They just scolded Republicans into a clean CR in December, when Democrats still controlled the Senate and White House. They can complain about a clean CR now, but voters won't likely be too convinced -- especially after the national tantrum Democrats in Congress threw last Tuesday during Trump's speech. They made it clear that they intend to obstruct for obstruction's sake, so Tim Kaine's claim that a clean CR is now suddenly a "shutdown bill" is transparently gaslighting on the issue. A government shutdown over this CR promises to make Democrats even more unpopular than they are now ... if that's even possible.

Of course, that's only going to happen if House Republicans pull together to set the trap and close it. Stay tuned.

Update: It's more accurate to say "relatively clean." It runs 99 pages, which is relatively short for CRs, much of which is used to zero out some spending items. But as Olivier Knox pointed out, it also sets up tariffs, which "alone would drive most Dems away ... in today's tariff/trade world, not insignificant." That's a fair point, but the CR only makes slight adjustments to spending levels with an overall reduction of $7 billion over current spending authorization levels. That's relatively clean for a CR, even if the administration is ending spending under that authorization by tens of billions of dollars. 

Update: This is what Olivier referenced, via Billy House of Bloomberg:

It's a poison pill, but Democrats may have no choice but to swallow it. Do they want to shut down the government over tariffs?

Speaking of traps, House Republicans have an opportunity to set one on the Protection Racket Media, too. Watch how they report on a clean CR and a government shutdown when their Democrat clients are on the hard side of both! The gaslighting and false narratives from the mainstream media, combined with censorship efforts still ongoing, make our VIP, VIP Gold, and VIP Platinum members so critical to the success of our mission. They allow us to operate independently and provide us the resources to defend dissent, debate, and truth in public discourse. 

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