At Midnight Eastern on Tuesday night, unless there's a breakthrough, meaning Senate Democrats cave, the federal government will shut down for the sixth time this century. In four of the previous five occasions, the shutdown lasted a couple weeks or less, Only once, in 2019, were non-essential federal workers furloughed for longer than a month.
Logic would dictate that this shutdown, if it happens, would be very brief, but logic is not one of the primary drivers leading Democrats to the brink this time.
With Republicans controlling the House and Senate, albeit with the narrowest of majorities, normal business is ongoing. Budgets have been passed in both chambers, and while delayed, the appropriations process, is well underway in a welcomed return to regular order. The House passed the appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2026 on Agriculture, Defense, Energy, and Veterans Affairs. There's a little more work to do, but the House has by and large done its job.
Over in the Senate, on August 1st, the upper chamber passed a three-part package that funded Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, and the Legislative Branch. Due to the backlog on executive and judicial appointments, with Democrats going to the mattresses and clogging up time for every single nominee before Leader John Thune and the Republicans reformed the rules to remove the cloture requirement off non-controversial appointments and allow for bloc voting, the Senate has run out of time while the finishing touches on the remaining appropriations bills are negotiated in committee.
In a sane world, it's a no-brainer. Pass a temporary continuing resolution to lock in spending at existing levels for a couple of weeks, or as long as you need to in order to finish next year's package, and you're done. Not this time. Not this president. The Democrats have to oppose what they supported, because it'll help Trump.
Democrats used to be against shutdowns. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, was against them multiple times in recent history.
Flashback to @SenSchumer last September:
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 13, 2025
"If the government shuts down, it will be average Americans who suffer most. A government shutdown means seniors who rely on Social Security could be thrown into chaos."
So what changed, Chuck? pic.twitter.com/eyM07qBYv6
Even the fever swamp wing of Senate Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, took the floor to decry the impact shutdowns have.
.@SenWarren (2013): "The least we can do — the bare minimum that we can do — would be to pass a continuing resolution to keep the doors open and the lights on."
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 13, 2025
Threatening a shutdown, she says, is a "last resort for those who can't win their fights through elections" and "can't… pic.twitter.com/7t6yMra11C
Bernie Sanders once called a government shutdown "a serious and dangerous action that we must do everything possible to prevent" — so why are he and his fellow Democrats so willing to do it now? pic.twitter.com/Yc8CPCJXDy
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 13, 2025
Even Jack Reed spoke out against shutdowns from the Senate floor, while simultaneously searching for a fly buzzing around he could launch his tongue out at for a quick snack.
"A government shutdown of any duration would harm hardworking Americans," said @SenJackReed in 2023. "Shutdowns cost taxpayers billions of dollars a week. They cost businesses money ... and they force an unnecessary disruption of many vital services."
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 13, 2025
What changed, Jack? pic.twitter.com/0ugZbQoJzl
The existing spending levels are from Joe Biden's final budget. We're working off the same numbers Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries negotiated for a year ago. Why the shutdown now? Because the fever swamp is really tired of Donald Trump racking up wins, and they want a fight.
In March, there was another brief stopgap funding bill, and Schumer knew it was a clean bill, like this one is, and went along with it, because he knew then it was a political loser for Democrats to get blamed for a shutdown for no good reason. There is no good reason this time, either, but the calculus for Schumer and the Democrats changed. That calculus is that their base are stark-raving lunatics.
This time, Schumer cannot afford the negative criticism from his own base if he goes along with the C.R., and has fabricated a nonsensical list of demands in return for holding the temporary funding bill hostage. And if you're going to create a demand list, like Hans Gruber did in the original Die Hard, he might as well go big and ask for the release of the New Dawn Front, because he'd read about them in Forbes.
No, Schumer is holding the federal government hostage for enhanced Obamacare spending, covering millions of illegal aliens at U.S. taxpayer expense, that expire automatically by statute at the end of the year. Schumer wants free healthcare for illegals not just covered, but plussed up and extended. His proposal would cost over a trillion in new spending.
To say we're at an impasse is an insult to the definition of impasses. The Republicans are simply never going to agree with it, and Schumer and the Democrats aren't holding any cards to use as leverage, but are walking the plank because they fear their extremist base more than anything else.
On Fox News, Vice-President laid out what Democrats are trying to pull, and why that's a non-starter.
Democrats have been forcing you to provide healthcare benefits to the millions of illegal aliens Biden let into the U.S.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) September 27, 2025
That’s making your healthcare more expensive
Dems say they’ll shut down the government to keep this going
What’s your response?
pic.twitter.com/FqKazAd2Al
House Speaker Mike Johnson was part of the Sunday Show circuit, and reaffirmed that the House has already done their job, and they're not going to cave.
There is NOTHING partisan in the CLEAN CR House Republicans passed to keep the government open for the American people. No riders. No games.
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) September 28, 2025
Democrats, on the other hand, want to give free health care to ILLEGAL ALIENS paid by hardworking Americans, CUT $50 BILLION from rural… pic.twitter.com/lUBwik3mvP
Senate Majority Leader Thune was on Meet the Press and reaffirmed what he told Hugh Hewitt on his radio program a week ago. Democrats aren't acting in good faith, or with any rationality. They're running scared from their own base, so it's making them take a nonsensical, unserious position.
WELKER: Is the government going to shut down this week?@LeaderJohnThune: "It's totally up to the Democrats... There is a bill sitting at the desk in the Senate right now. We could pick it up today and pass it... THIRTEEN different times, we did Continuing Resolutions in the… pic.twitter.com/PcpBUUs5zG
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 28, 2025
The President in multiple press gaggles has rejected outright the Democrats' proposal to add another trillion in spending for illegal aliens, and why shouldn't he? He's holding all the cards. Schumer's best hope is that whatever media Democrats have left - broadcast networks, New York Times, Washington Post, and a few low-rated cable outlets, will blame the Republicans for it, and public sentiment will pressure Republicans into caving. That worked a decade and a half ago when there weren't as many conservative podcasters and X being more open to information and argument from the right. It also worked because Barack Obama was president and did things like closing the national parks and blocking the road so you couldn't view Mount Rushmore.
This time, however, the media monopoly is over with over half the American people, and Democrats don't control the Executive Branch. So they don't get to set the terms of who is going to be inconvenienced by the shutdown. Enter Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. He does.
Kim Strassel in the Wall Street Journal this weekend laid out Trump's trump card, permanent federal employee layoffs, and why Democrats are about to hose themselves for a long time to come.
Put another way: Democrats will give the Trump team exactly what it’s been wanting—a shutdown—in return for Democrats’ continuing to demand something they will never get. What a deal. Even Faust got some worldly pleasure in exchange for a soul. This is trading hellfire for brimstone.
Mr. Trump’s biggest second-term transgression, according to opponents, has been his dismantling of the federal apparatus. The Department of Government Efficiency enacted firings or resignation incentives expected to result in 300,000 fewer federal employees by year’s end. The president has clawed back grant money and frozen funds. What’s an incandescent Democrat to do? Hand him a gift-wrapped opportunity to do more of the same. Obviously.
The true scope of this losing proposition came clear with a memo Mr. Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, issued Wednesday night, explaining how a shutdown will roll. Shutdowns usually mean furloughed federal employees, who suffer temporary inconvenience before resuming their jobs. Not this time.
The Vought memo orders agencies to identify all programs that depend on discretionary funding (which lapses next week) and don’t align with the president’s priorities. Employees who administer those disfavored programs or projects won’t be furloughed. They will be fired.
320,000 Virginia residents, most of them living in counties in the northern tip of the state, are federal employees. Some, obviously, will be deemed essential workers. A whole bunch, however, will not. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner both represent the Commonwealth in the United States Senate. Imagine their next town halls where they have to explain why a metric excrement ton of their constituents didn't just get furloughed, but fired in return for a demand to expand healthcare for illegals, something that would never pass anyway. Even if Democrats won both houses in the midterms in 2026 and passed an Obamacare extension for illegals, Trump would veto it, and there would not be the numbers to override.
There is no possible good outcome for Democrats who want to support illegal aliens with your money until 2029 at the earliest. So the course the Democrats are charting is to permanently fire large numbers of their political base in return for exactly nothing. That's not even holding a pair of two's. That's a 10-high with an off-suit as your hole cards and going all in. It's political suicide.
Trump is going to invite the big four - Schumer, Jeffries, Thune, and Johnson, to the White House Monday for one final negotiation. Except it's not really going to be a negotiation. My guess is it'll be full of charts and graphs so that Schumer and Jeffries learn how many federal employees are living in blue states. I mentioned Virginia. Maryland, home to another two Democratic Senators, has 159,000-plus of its residents earning a federal paycheck...until Tuesday. They may be hitting the streets looking for work as of Wednesday.
This is unsustainable for the Democrats, and everyone in the Oval Office Monday knows it. Maybe the meeting in and of itself is Schumer's offramp. Perhaps he can leave the meeting and address reporters and his fellow Democrats, saying we have achieved strategic victories for the future, even if he walks out of there with nothing. If not, this will be a rather enjoyable couple of weeks, if not longer.
Democrats seem to want to go die on the hill of public funding and support of illegal immigration, an issue that cuts against them 20-80. I'm not sure why all of them save John Fetterman want to go through all that work in order to go die on that hill, but if that's their inclination, Republicans should at least be as accommodating as possible.
I suggest we pave a path to the summit of that hill, one that has a panoramic view, maybe with flowers lining it, refreshment and water stands along the way, and with enough switchbacks to make the climb a pleasant one and not too steep. Many of them are getting quite long in the tooth, you know.
And lest the Democrats get lost during that journey on their hill on which to go die, the path should be paved with Russ Vought's pink slips. There ought to be thousands of them available by Wednesday.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member