With the hours ticking away until a government shutdown begins at midnight, America’s two political parties remain united on one issue alone: their commitment to not backing down.
Despite a last-minute White House summit on Monday afternoon aimed at resolving differences between Democratic leadership, the president and his Republican allies in Congress, the two sides were no closer to an agreement to keep the government funded by Tuesday evening.
In fact, key players on both sides indicated that relations and the tenor of negotiations were at an all-time low.
At the White House, the president reportedly turned against the idea of negotiating with Democrats after the meeting on Monday: “He read all the s**t they’re asking for, and he said, ‘on second thought, go f**k yourself,’” a White House aide told Politico.
On Monday, Washington’s eyes were on Chuck Schumer as he emerged from the White House meeting with the president and signaled that a short-term deal to avert a shutdown while negotiations continue was off the table.
Nancy Pelosi, no longer in Democratic leadership, nevertheless also echoed the sentiments felt by much of the center of her party to reporters on the Hill: “I’ve listened to their s**t. And I tell them to go f**k themselves.”
Having cried wolf on shutdowns countless times before, Congress has hardly whipped Americans into a frenzy over fear of one’s effects. But voters in both parties are furious, and itching for a fight.
On the left, Schumer and the top Democrat in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, face an uninspired and disbelieving base demanding that the party hold the line on something — anything — using what little leverage they hold thanks to the Senate filibuster. Schumer, finally sensing the way the winds are blowing, is now vowing to stand firm after calling the same gambit too risky in the spring. Trump’s voters, meanwhile, remain enraged over the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an act that fueled a longstanding desire for vengeance and retribution on the right.
Obamacare subsidies passed under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act have become the battlefield of Schumer’s choice as he digs his heels in. On Tuesday, he triumphantly told reporters that Republicans were in trouble if he was successful in shifting the conversation to health care, which he explained was his intention.
Another intention: staving off demands for his resignation as Democratic minority leader from his own voters, who’ve viewed him unfavorably since he declined to demand a halt to DOGE-caused mass firings or use his party’s leverage in any meaningful way the last time a shutdown was threatened in March. At the time, he and nine other Democrats worked with Republicans to pass a funding resolution through the end of the fiscal year.
That may have been a blow to their popularity that Schumer in particular will find unrecoverable, but even the institutionalist Democratic Senate leader recognized that a change of course is necessary to protect his caucus from primary challenges.
His Senate counterpart, John Thune, meanwhile told reporters that he would end negotiations entirely if a shutdown occurred, giving members only a few hours to hammer out a deal before he walked away from the table altogether. On Obamacare subsidies, Thune said he was open to discussions with Democrats — but not under threat of a shutdown. His caucus, too, is under threat of primary challenges and other rebellions mounted by angry conservatives — John Cornyn is already facing one in Texas.
What happens next?
A shutdown at midnight would halt many nonessential government operations. A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis put the figure at 750,000 federal workers who would be furloughed, going without paychecks for the duration of the dispute. The agency projected that the last major shutdown, in 2019, caused a projected 0.02 percent drop in annual GDP in unrecovered revenue over the course of the five weeks of reduced federal activity.
But going beyond the basic effects of a shutdown, which would be significant and personally disastrous for many federal employees, the fight could also spur further retaliation from the president. On Tuesday, Trump vowed to do “irreversible” damage to federal agencies with mass layoffs and funding cuts if a shutdown took place, a surreal threat to be issued by the president of the United States and one that was likely to thrill his hardline supporters who now appear to view all federal employees as inherent targets.
“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people and cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.
As of Tuesday afternoon, it didn’t seem possible for Republicans to break a filibuster in the Senate without Schumer’s support. Just one Democrat, John Fetterman, said he planned to vote for a Republican continuing resolution to fund the government while one GOP senator, Rand Paul, was a “no”: Thune will need eight Democratic votes to break a filibuster in total.
All eyes are still on Schumer and Thune as votes approach this evening. But neither leader was showing any side of movement — each now sufficiently cowed into line by their own respective parties’ furious supporters.
With Donald Trump watching the dynamic he’s encouraged for years play out from the comparatively distant view of the Oval Office, Washington’s days of quiet, behind-the-scenes bipartisanship may have finally ended.
