Forcing a shutdown would be a show of 'fighting,' but it would not advance Democratic policy interests — in fact, it would hurt them, and the public as well. Schumer is right not to do it.
"The importance of winning majorities is why Democrats should nominate more moderate candidates."
This point must be stated and restated - Dems are in the position they are now in both the executive and legislative branches because they felt it was more important to virtue signal in their presidential candidates and many of those for the house and senate, than to nominate people who WIN.
Repeat after me - the SINGLE point of an electoral campaign is to WIN. If you're running a campaign for any other reason, you're wasting everyone's time and money.
There's another reason that Democrats can't get leverage from shutting down the government: they have spent the past two months screaming to anyone who will listen that the contracts DOGE has canceled and the workers DOGE has fired are causing immediate, horrifying, intolerable consequences. To then shut down the government over an abstract question of principles or fairness is squarely inconsistent with that rhetoric.
Josh, what do you think of the argument that the CR, as written, is designed to undermine the government and the Democrats structurally, by (1) changing how DC money is spent, and (2) effectively empowering DOGE to the possible detriment of the legal challenges to it by giving the administration abnormal spending discretion? Doesn’t that make it something qualitatively different than a normal game of chicken?
On (2), my understanding is that the flexibility afforded in this CR is not different from that in other prior CRs, including the one the government is operating under right now (as Jeff Stein describes here in the 10th and 11th paragraphs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/14/trump-cr-power-government-spending-doge/) So democrats might be worse off in this regard than they would be with a full-year appropriations bill, but that’s not on the table; and they wouldn’t be worse off than they are now (or even than they would be under any shorter-term CR that is likely to pass.)
As for (1), yes, there are a few unfavorable policy changes included in the bill, but with that one being the most widely discussed. The question again is: compared to what? A shutdown does not put DC’s government in a better position, and I don’t see a convincing case about how a shutdown is supposed to lead to legislation to produce a better outcome for DC, let alone for the broader the federal government.
“Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.”
Never mind, I think the new saying is “oh, you’re going to step on me, let me lay down first.”
Every Dem should be in front of cameras and on Tiktok asking why the Republicans are shutting down the govt and removing essential services from Americans. After all, we’ve heard how dangerous Trump is, it’s been tiny signs, silence and now a vote to move forward his agenda. If you want to completely demoralize the Democrat base, I’m not sure what else would be more effective.
My childhood friend is a teacher. She probably didn’t vote, but if she did, she voted for Trump. Her husband voted for Trump. It’s been crickets from her, but she finally got upset when the Dept of Ed was officially on the chopping block.
The reality is these people have proven that their empathy only extends to those they personally know. I’m more and more in the accelerationist camp now. The only way this nightmare ends is when enough voters feel the pain, that THEY voted for, to demand their GOP representatives rein him in.
Republicans own both chambers of Congress and the WH. Dems need to sell to Americans that this is THEIR mess.
A govt shutdown and the chaos it would cause is just an acceleration of GOP goal; but as Josh Barro has keenly observed, the GOP goals are going to make Americans really mad. The sooner there are lots of mad Americans, the better.
And how would they sell Americans that is the GOP's mess when progressives have been making it clear that they want Democrats to *cause* the government shutdown and potentially keep it going?
You’re discussing an unforced error. Senate should have been on the same page as the House from the beginning. Strict messaging (“This is a Republican govt, they hold all the levers of power. It’s their mess”.)
INSTEAD, we’re having this discussion - for a week, Dems in Disarray.
4 years of strict messaging discipline resulted in a GOP trifecta led by Donald Trump.
Strict messaging discipline is not conducive to a big-tent political coalition and Democrats need a big-tent political coalition if they hope to get a majority because there aren't enough college-educated cosmopolitan progressives in this country to build a majority around that.
You and Schumer are playing Hearts when Dark MAGA has figured out that Americans wanted World-Wide Wrestling. Their objective is to knock the table over and break legs. Democrats passing the Queen of Spades will not stop that.
The CR maybe would enable Democrats to reduce the destruction of their "policy objectives" from 95% to 90% for a short period of time. How will that gain them any sway with the low information voters whose faces are about to be eaten?
The unified message should become, "Crazy-ass Trump invited weirdo billionaire Musk to do this to you."
To win elections.
So it's not about emotional validation. It's about the recognizing what serves the strategic long game because the immediate game is already lost.
Schumer isn't playing Hearts. He's simply in a Kobayashi Maru situation. You're right that it's "about the recognizing what serves the strategic long game because the immediate game is already lost." Where you're wrong is the idea that attempting World-Wide Wrestling will help.
About all a shutdown would be good for is "emotional validation" of partisan Democrats. But it would at best slow down enacting the CR, and it could easily aid DOGE's efforts to eviscerate the government.
I think you answered your own question - people's faces are going to get eaten thanks to the reckless pain that Trump is injecting into all corners of the economy. So it seems politically prudent to let the GOP own that pain and get clobbered in the midterms, instead of forcing a shut down that would muddy the political waters and potentially leave democrats absorbing the blame instead.
The narrative waters are already muddy has heck. Perceived attribution is shaped more by the characters than cause-and-effect what-ifs. Don't overthink it. Consider which plays better: "We fought for you tooth and nail at every step." versus "Ten Senators defied the caucus and let the GOP have its way, and see, it turned out bad."
This is a sincere question, not a gotcha: if it's so favorable to Republicans to shut down the government, why didn't they just...not all agree in the House already?
Republicans being the party responsible for the shutdown would hurt, whereas Democrats being blamed while Trump & co. wreak havoc is a perfectly happy place for them.
This is as good a defense of the substance of what Schumer did as any, and I think it is correct.
That said, it doesn't address the optics. Schumer and the House Democrats should have known what the endgame was going to be and had some sort of aplan for getting there rather than looking like idiots. Less than24 hours before Schumer agreed to the deal he told the public the CR was unacceptable and Dems were not oging to agree.
This sentiment right here is what annoys me most. Why can the Dems not get on the same page here re: messaging? This stuff is what makes Ds look chaotic - and, to many voters, no different than Rs.
I'm not going to complain about you explaining why Democrats lack the power in the situation.
But I'll complain that you write a post calling Elon's actions at DOGE illegal, yet to read the linked Fleischer thread about how the shutdown would empower DOGE, I have to log in to the platform owned by Musk to read it.
(I thought the "ban links to X" fad was dumb, but I'm still surprised how many opponent's of Musk will make their content available solely on the platform owned by him.)
The facts can be very frustrating. If AOC and Pelosi want power again they need majorities. This requires winning elections. I hope they are all laser-focused on 2026.
First of all, if you are dismissing potential voters' emotional needs, you missing at least 50% of explanatory variables in politics. But I will play the game and give you some non-emotional arguments.
1. Stop writing things like "Democrats could, if they wished, block the CR from coming to a vote and force a government shutdown", you are advertising the Republican narrative for free. Write instead "Democrats have to respond to Republican maneuver that will lead to government shutdown".
2. Trump is a bully and the Congress Republicans are bully followers (at least by this term, maybe they were better before, not sure). It's worthless to negotiate with bullies, they don't keep their promises, they just want to see you squirm. They delight in watching you decide which programs/agencies to save and see you suffer in making hard choices. But really, it doesn't matter what you decide, the bully and his followers will just do whatever they want eventually and take it all from you anyway.
3. Midterms and other elections. If Democrats show some integrity and vision and courage and fighting spirit, they can attract more voters. Voters like to see fighters, that's how Trump attracted a devoted following, he fights even when he can't win and he wins admiration for it. Staying passive with CR is not going to attract voters, it reinforces the idea that Dems are part of the "deep state", as they call it.
4. Letting the government shut down gives the Trump and Elon a chance to self-destruct faster. It prevents the Republicans from hiding behind the Democrats' support of CR. Elon will cut very popular programs and none of the Republicans will dare to say anything (if they do, let them fight amongst themselves). This let the voters get very angry at them. This will help Democrats win in midterms. If Democrats don't let this utter destruction happen, voters are not going to turn away from Trump. The Trump cult is not going to die if the Democrats stop its path of destruction of the entire federal government. If Dems keep trying to lessen the pain, the voters are going to get used to the pain little by little, and they will not be angry enough to go against the cult.
5. Finally, many federal regulations and programs need to go anyway, let the Republicans pay the price for doing these necessary cuts. I personally think some of Trump's cabinet members have very good ideas, big pharma and big food industry need to be held accountable, even Tulsi Gabbard has some interesting ideas.
I generally agree, but the one place I get confused is if a shutdown would be so beneficial to Trump, why didn’t he engineer one? He seems to want this CR to pass because he worries about the political blowback more than he wants the flexibility to furlough workers at whim. So if Schumer had stuck to his guns would you really be arguing team Trump is wrong on its political analysis?
I think their hope was that this strategy would engineer a shutdown: that Senate Democrats would block passage because of the specific provisions designed to upset Democrats. (Matt Yglesias’s theory is that the DC provision was specifically designed to anger Dem *staffers* and create a “hothouse” environment that made it painful for Democrats to allow cloture.)
The fear in DC is that the likelihood of Collins-sponsored standalone DC-budget-fix bill being passed in the House (on or after March 24th) is slim to none. In other words, the concern is that the DC budget fix is a sham despite Collins’ words about Trump and Rep. Cole’s support. Why on earth would Johnson play ball if he didn’t last Tuesday at a committee amendment hearing? This wrenching of budget control from DC (and attempt to pass it off as a mistake) has been maddening this week in DC. Why has there been no reporting on this poison pill speculation? It’s treated like a mistake by WaPo, representatives, etc. I say this especially as a resident and parent of school kids in DC. I’m not a staffer or involved in federal or local government and there were a lot of us worked up and trying to get this fixed, showing up at the Capitol on Thursday. Is some control board-like disciplining of DC’s limited political autonomy in the works?
This article was back-to-back with Nate silver’s argument that Dems should have shut it down , because shutting down the government would accelerate the publics appreciation of government being functional, and hence more quickly appreciate the craziness of DOGE. Plus his general view is that Dems should take more risks. Thoughts about that view?
I’m not Josh but will reply nonetheless! I think Nate Silver forgets that 50+% of voters decided that Trump was electable and did so either knowing all the bad stuff and not caring … or being clueless about all the bad stuff. I’m not saying it’s not possible that voters will change their minds about Trump, but Nate’s view seems like one that relies on a populace that is either much more informed or that sees these actions negatively when, to a large degree, I don’t think the impact has yet hit home.
I think Nate Silver here is neglecting how a shutdown would empower DOGE. If that weren't an issue and a government shutdown would have played out like the previous ones did, then his political calculus would have been correct.
Preach! 100%! And so frustrated with my progressive friends and their “fight!” mantra. It sucks that the Dems are in this position, but they are—and what is basically faux-fighting accomplishes nothing.
"Elon Musk...{is}... simply firing workers and closing agencies, and doing so in violation of laws Congress passed that set out how the government should spend money."
This is not true, Elon Musk is making recommendations and sounds in some of his posts like he's doing the firing, but any staff reductions are being done by the agencies involved and not by Musk. The agencies are doing what they have the right to do and if the executive branch doesn't need Congressional or court approval to hire staff, they certainly don't need approval to fire. That's ridiculous, and part of the problem with overgrown and unaccountable government is that it's far too difficult to fire people, which it absolutely should not be. If the executive is in charge, it has control over the staff. Period.
Second, he is again not closing agencies, but making recommendations for cuts and potential closures. Trump and the executive branch is moving to reduce agency size and, in the case of USAID that was created by executive order, closing it by executive order, Congress is not involved.
Third, there is no violation of laws Congress passed about spending money when Congress has been deliberately vague for decades about what the agencies should be doing with money, leaving it to the discretion of the agencies, and almost all of the agencies are operating way beyond their original Congressional authorization for the scope of their activities. The executive branch is supposed to enter into contracts with other entities for services and administer the distribution of funds in accordance with those contracts. Who is supposed to oversee those contracts except the executive branch agencies, which apparently haven't been overseeing them at all for a long time? Again, it is the executive's responsibility to review those contracts and ensure that the expenditures are indeed within the lawful bounds of the enabling legislation. From the audit of USAID, it is crystal clear that there have been many billions expended that are far outside of any conceivable interpretation of the enabling executive order, halting the payments pending review is right and proper, and previous administrations have failed in their duty to the American people in not doing so.
Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, not sure which one or all of them, has said itself that it is paying out multiple hundreds of billions in fraudulent payments, which it has apparently not cared enough about to investigate and stop. I believe Trump's administration intends to find the fraud and stop it, and Elon Musk is providing the tools to troll through the impenetrable (deliberately so) federal payment systems to locate the fraud.
All of us should be fully supportive of Trump's efforts, however they are accomplished, to find fraud, misappropriated funds, unauthorized expenditures, and contracts for purposes that are frivolous or against America's interests. The public approves of this by large margins. The Dems are doing themselves no favors by coming out strongly against it. They continue to marginalize themselves by opposing common-sense projects that the population supports, just because their rabid base wants them to "fight Trump". He is pursuing the course that he was elected to do, but he also is extremely good at putting Democrats in the position of defending the indefensible just because they don't dare agree with him about anything.
Yes the Dems should nominate more moderate candidates. But you and everyone knows they won't, because they are becoming the party of elite hard core leftists who hate normal people and don't care about what normal people want. They lie and pretend to care, and sometimes do win elections by lying, but the people are catching on to them. Even the apparently "moderate" candidates vote with the insane left when they get into office, and no one should forget this. A vote for any Democrat, now, is a vote for the crazy Left. period. If Democrats in Congress couldn't even vote for a bill to hold and deport illegal criminals, or to prevent men pretending to be women from competing in women's sports, none of them are moderate. If during the President's address to Congress, they could not applaud for any of the range of special guests Trump brought and called out during his speech, they are heartless, disgusting people who put progressive activists' demands before their humanity or their duty to the voters who elected them. The Democrat party as it is now cannot be saved, and deserves to be relegated to the dustbin of history. Something else must be built up in its place, to provide balance but within the context of respect for America and its unique culture, traditions, and history. I don't know what that is, or how to do it. But don't figure it out too soon, at least not until Trump has pared down government and gotten it back to its constitutional and statutory boundaries.
"Trump and the executive branch is moving to reduce agency size and, in the case of USAID that was created by executive order"
Now there's a half-truth. (Actually, one of many from you, but I'm picking one because I don't want to be here all day.) While US AID started from an executive order in 1961, it was established again in 1998 via legislative statute. More details here: https://www.justsecurity.org/107267/can-president-dissolve-usaid-by-executive-order/
"The importance of winning majorities is why Democrats should nominate more moderate candidates."
This point must be stated and restated - Dems are in the position they are now in both the executive and legislative branches because they felt it was more important to virtue signal in their presidential candidates and many of those for the house and senate, than to nominate people who WIN.
Repeat after me - the SINGLE point of an electoral campaign is to WIN. If you're running a campaign for any other reason, you're wasting everyone's time and money.
There's another reason that Democrats can't get leverage from shutting down the government: they have spent the past two months screaming to anyone who will listen that the contracts DOGE has canceled and the workers DOGE has fired are causing immediate, horrifying, intolerable consequences. To then shut down the government over an abstract question of principles or fairness is squarely inconsistent with that rhetoric.
Josh, what do you think of the argument that the CR, as written, is designed to undermine the government and the Democrats structurally, by (1) changing how DC money is spent, and (2) effectively empowering DOGE to the possible detriment of the legal challenges to it by giving the administration abnormal spending discretion? Doesn’t that make it something qualitatively different than a normal game of chicken?
On (2), my understanding is that the flexibility afforded in this CR is not different from that in other prior CRs, including the one the government is operating under right now (as Jeff Stein describes here in the 10th and 11th paragraphs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/14/trump-cr-power-government-spending-doge/) So democrats might be worse off in this regard than they would be with a full-year appropriations bill, but that’s not on the table; and they wouldn’t be worse off than they are now (or even than they would be under any shorter-term CR that is likely to pass.)
As for (1), yes, there are a few unfavorable policy changes included in the bill, but with that one being the most widely discussed. The question again is: compared to what? A shutdown does not put DC’s government in a better position, and I don’t see a convincing case about how a shutdown is supposed to lead to legislation to produce a better outcome for DC, let alone for the broader the federal government.
“Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.”
Never mind, I think the new saying is “oh, you’re going to step on me, let me lay down first.”
Every Dem should be in front of cameras and on Tiktok asking why the Republicans are shutting down the govt and removing essential services from Americans. After all, we’ve heard how dangerous Trump is, it’s been tiny signs, silence and now a vote to move forward his agenda. If you want to completely demoralize the Democrat base, I’m not sure what else would be more effective.
My childhood friend is a teacher. She probably didn’t vote, but if she did, she voted for Trump. Her husband voted for Trump. It’s been crickets from her, but she finally got upset when the Dept of Ed was officially on the chopping block.
The reality is these people have proven that their empathy only extends to those they personally know. I’m more and more in the accelerationist camp now. The only way this nightmare ends is when enough voters feel the pain, that THEY voted for, to demand their GOP representatives rein him in.
How is shutting down the federal government not "interrupting your enemy" when the enemy is the majority party running the federal government?
Republicans own both chambers of Congress and the WH. Dems need to sell to Americans that this is THEIR mess.
A govt shutdown and the chaos it would cause is just an acceleration of GOP goal; but as Josh Barro has keenly observed, the GOP goals are going to make Americans really mad. The sooner there are lots of mad Americans, the better.
And how would they sell Americans that is the GOP's mess when progressives have been making it clear that they want Democrats to *cause* the government shutdown and potentially keep it going?
You’re discussing an unforced error. Senate should have been on the same page as the House from the beginning. Strict messaging (“This is a Republican govt, they hold all the levers of power. It’s their mess”.)
INSTEAD, we’re having this discussion - for a week, Dems in Disarray.
4 years of strict messaging discipline resulted in a GOP trifecta led by Donald Trump.
Strict messaging discipline is not conducive to a big-tent political coalition and Democrats need a big-tent political coalition if they hope to get a majority because there aren't enough college-educated cosmopolitan progressives in this country to build a majority around that.
Mr. Barro,
You and Schumer are playing Hearts when Dark MAGA has figured out that Americans wanted World-Wide Wrestling. Their objective is to knock the table over and break legs. Democrats passing the Queen of Spades will not stop that.
The CR maybe would enable Democrats to reduce the destruction of their "policy objectives" from 95% to 90% for a short period of time. How will that gain them any sway with the low information voters whose faces are about to be eaten?
The unified message should become, "Crazy-ass Trump invited weirdo billionaire Musk to do this to you."
To win elections.
So it's not about emotional validation. It's about the recognizing what serves the strategic long game because the immediate game is already lost.
Schumer isn't playing Hearts. He's simply in a Kobayashi Maru situation. You're right that it's "about the recognizing what serves the strategic long game because the immediate game is already lost." Where you're wrong is the idea that attempting World-Wide Wrestling will help.
About all a shutdown would be good for is "emotional validation" of partisan Democrats. But it would at best slow down enacting the CR, and it could easily aid DOGE's efforts to eviscerate the government.
I think you answered your own question - people's faces are going to get eaten thanks to the reckless pain that Trump is injecting into all corners of the economy. So it seems politically prudent to let the GOP own that pain and get clobbered in the midterms, instead of forcing a shut down that would muddy the political waters and potentially leave democrats absorbing the blame instead.
The narrative waters are already muddy has heck. Perceived attribution is shaped more by the characters than cause-and-effect what-ifs. Don't overthink it. Consider which plays better: "We fought for you tooth and nail at every step." versus "Ten Senators defied the caucus and let the GOP have its way, and see, it turned out bad."
And what does, "We fought stupidly to look like we were doing something even though it only made things worse" say?
This is a sincere question, not a gotcha: if it's so favorable to Republicans to shut down the government, why didn't they just...not all agree in the House already?
Republicans being the party responsible for the shutdown would hurt, whereas Democrats being blamed while Trump & co. wreak havoc is a perfectly happy place for them.
This is as good a defense of the substance of what Schumer did as any, and I think it is correct.
That said, it doesn't address the optics. Schumer and the House Democrats should have known what the endgame was going to be and had some sort of aplan for getting there rather than looking like idiots. Less than24 hours before Schumer agreed to the deal he told the public the CR was unacceptable and Dems were not oging to agree.
This sentiment right here is what annoys me most. Why can the Dems not get on the same page here re: messaging? This stuff is what makes Ds look chaotic - and, to many voters, no different than Rs.
I'm not going to complain about you explaining why Democrats lack the power in the situation.
But I'll complain that you write a post calling Elon's actions at DOGE illegal, yet to read the linked Fleischer thread about how the shutdown would empower DOGE, I have to log in to the platform owned by Musk to read it.
(I thought the "ban links to X" fad was dumb, but I'm still surprised how many opponent's of Musk will make their content available solely on the platform owned by him.)
*edit* I forgot nitter.net is back alive. And the main content is here https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com/p/how-a-shutdown-could-empower-trump
The facts can be very frustrating. If AOC and Pelosi want power again they need majorities. This requires winning elections. I hope they are all laser-focused on 2026.
First of all, if you are dismissing potential voters' emotional needs, you missing at least 50% of explanatory variables in politics. But I will play the game and give you some non-emotional arguments.
1. Stop writing things like "Democrats could, if they wished, block the CR from coming to a vote and force a government shutdown", you are advertising the Republican narrative for free. Write instead "Democrats have to respond to Republican maneuver that will lead to government shutdown".
2. Trump is a bully and the Congress Republicans are bully followers (at least by this term, maybe they were better before, not sure). It's worthless to negotiate with bullies, they don't keep their promises, they just want to see you squirm. They delight in watching you decide which programs/agencies to save and see you suffer in making hard choices. But really, it doesn't matter what you decide, the bully and his followers will just do whatever they want eventually and take it all from you anyway.
3. Midterms and other elections. If Democrats show some integrity and vision and courage and fighting spirit, they can attract more voters. Voters like to see fighters, that's how Trump attracted a devoted following, he fights even when he can't win and he wins admiration for it. Staying passive with CR is not going to attract voters, it reinforces the idea that Dems are part of the "deep state", as they call it.
4. Letting the government shut down gives the Trump and Elon a chance to self-destruct faster. It prevents the Republicans from hiding behind the Democrats' support of CR. Elon will cut very popular programs and none of the Republicans will dare to say anything (if they do, let them fight amongst themselves). This let the voters get very angry at them. This will help Democrats win in midterms. If Democrats don't let this utter destruction happen, voters are not going to turn away from Trump. The Trump cult is not going to die if the Democrats stop its path of destruction of the entire federal government. If Dems keep trying to lessen the pain, the voters are going to get used to the pain little by little, and they will not be angry enough to go against the cult.
5. Finally, many federal regulations and programs need to go anyway, let the Republicans pay the price for doing these necessary cuts. I personally think some of Trump's cabinet members have very good ideas, big pharma and big food industry need to be held accountable, even Tulsi Gabbard has some interesting ideas.
I generally agree, but the one place I get confused is if a shutdown would be so beneficial to Trump, why didn’t he engineer one? He seems to want this CR to pass because he worries about the political blowback more than he wants the flexibility to furlough workers at whim. So if Schumer had stuck to his guns would you really be arguing team Trump is wrong on its political analysis?
I think their hope was that this strategy would engineer a shutdown: that Senate Democrats would block passage because of the specific provisions designed to upset Democrats. (Matt Yglesias’s theory is that the DC provision was specifically designed to anger Dem *staffers* and create a “hothouse” environment that made it painful for Democrats to allow cloture.)
The fear in DC is that the likelihood of Collins-sponsored standalone DC-budget-fix bill being passed in the House (on or after March 24th) is slim to none. In other words, the concern is that the DC budget fix is a sham despite Collins’ words about Trump and Rep. Cole’s support. Why on earth would Johnson play ball if he didn’t last Tuesday at a committee amendment hearing? This wrenching of budget control from DC (and attempt to pass it off as a mistake) has been maddening this week in DC. Why has there been no reporting on this poison pill speculation? It’s treated like a mistake by WaPo, representatives, etc. I say this especially as a resident and parent of school kids in DC. I’m not a staffer or involved in federal or local government and there were a lot of us worked up and trying to get this fixed, showing up at the Capitol on Thursday. Is some control board-like disciplining of DC’s limited political autonomy in the works?
Superb piece, Josh. I think it’s right strategically and ethically for the sake of federal workers.
This article was back-to-back with Nate silver’s argument that Dems should have shut it down , because shutting down the government would accelerate the publics appreciation of government being functional, and hence more quickly appreciate the craziness of DOGE. Plus his general view is that Dems should take more risks. Thoughts about that view?
I’m not Josh but will reply nonetheless! I think Nate Silver forgets that 50+% of voters decided that Trump was electable and did so either knowing all the bad stuff and not caring … or being clueless about all the bad stuff. I’m not saying it’s not possible that voters will change their minds about Trump, but Nate’s view seems like one that relies on a populace that is either much more informed or that sees these actions negatively when, to a large degree, I don’t think the impact has yet hit home.
Josh, feel like it’s worth noting that someone who I know you very much respect and someone who knows a thing or two about what moves voters disagrees with you. https://www.natesilver.net/p/democrats-should-have-shut-it-down
I think Nate Silver here is neglecting how a shutdown would empower DOGE. If that weren't an issue and a government shutdown would have played out like the previous ones did, then his political calculus would have been correct.
Preach! 100%! And so frustrated with my progressive friends and their “fight!” mantra. It sucks that the Dems are in this position, but they are—and what is basically faux-fighting accomplishes nothing.
"Elon Musk...{is}... simply firing workers and closing agencies, and doing so in violation of laws Congress passed that set out how the government should spend money."
This is not true, Elon Musk is making recommendations and sounds in some of his posts like he's doing the firing, but any staff reductions are being done by the agencies involved and not by Musk. The agencies are doing what they have the right to do and if the executive branch doesn't need Congressional or court approval to hire staff, they certainly don't need approval to fire. That's ridiculous, and part of the problem with overgrown and unaccountable government is that it's far too difficult to fire people, which it absolutely should not be. If the executive is in charge, it has control over the staff. Period.
Second, he is again not closing agencies, but making recommendations for cuts and potential closures. Trump and the executive branch is moving to reduce agency size and, in the case of USAID that was created by executive order, closing it by executive order, Congress is not involved.
Third, there is no violation of laws Congress passed about spending money when Congress has been deliberately vague for decades about what the agencies should be doing with money, leaving it to the discretion of the agencies, and almost all of the agencies are operating way beyond their original Congressional authorization for the scope of their activities. The executive branch is supposed to enter into contracts with other entities for services and administer the distribution of funds in accordance with those contracts. Who is supposed to oversee those contracts except the executive branch agencies, which apparently haven't been overseeing them at all for a long time? Again, it is the executive's responsibility to review those contracts and ensure that the expenditures are indeed within the lawful bounds of the enabling legislation. From the audit of USAID, it is crystal clear that there have been many billions expended that are far outside of any conceivable interpretation of the enabling executive order, halting the payments pending review is right and proper, and previous administrations have failed in their duty to the American people in not doing so.
Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, not sure which one or all of them, has said itself that it is paying out multiple hundreds of billions in fraudulent payments, which it has apparently not cared enough about to investigate and stop. I believe Trump's administration intends to find the fraud and stop it, and Elon Musk is providing the tools to troll through the impenetrable (deliberately so) federal payment systems to locate the fraud.
All of us should be fully supportive of Trump's efforts, however they are accomplished, to find fraud, misappropriated funds, unauthorized expenditures, and contracts for purposes that are frivolous or against America's interests. The public approves of this by large margins. The Dems are doing themselves no favors by coming out strongly against it. They continue to marginalize themselves by opposing common-sense projects that the population supports, just because their rabid base wants them to "fight Trump". He is pursuing the course that he was elected to do, but he also is extremely good at putting Democrats in the position of defending the indefensible just because they don't dare agree with him about anything.
Yes the Dems should nominate more moderate candidates. But you and everyone knows they won't, because they are becoming the party of elite hard core leftists who hate normal people and don't care about what normal people want. They lie and pretend to care, and sometimes do win elections by lying, but the people are catching on to them. Even the apparently "moderate" candidates vote with the insane left when they get into office, and no one should forget this. A vote for any Democrat, now, is a vote for the crazy Left. period. If Democrats in Congress couldn't even vote for a bill to hold and deport illegal criminals, or to prevent men pretending to be women from competing in women's sports, none of them are moderate. If during the President's address to Congress, they could not applaud for any of the range of special guests Trump brought and called out during his speech, they are heartless, disgusting people who put progressive activists' demands before their humanity or their duty to the voters who elected them. The Democrat party as it is now cannot be saved, and deserves to be relegated to the dustbin of history. Something else must be built up in its place, to provide balance but within the context of respect for America and its unique culture, traditions, and history. I don't know what that is, or how to do it. But don't figure it out too soon, at least not until Trump has pared down government and gotten it back to its constitutional and statutory boundaries.
Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm genuinely curious. Did you write this all yourself or use an LLM or copy paste?
"Trump and the executive branch is moving to reduce agency size and, in the case of USAID that was created by executive order"
Now there's a half-truth. (Actually, one of many from you, but I'm picking one because I don't want to be here all day.) While US AID started from an executive order in 1961, it was established again in 1998 via legislative statute. More details here: https://www.justsecurity.org/107267/can-president-dissolve-usaid-by-executive-order/
Dasvidaniya.