The Government Is Shut Down

There was a last-minute push to get some sort of can-kicking resolution through the Senate before 11:59 p.m. last night, but it failed, with the last, best hope getting all the Republican votes, but just three non-Republican votes (John Fetterman, D-PA; Catherine Cortez Masto, D-NV and Angus King, I-ME). That's not enough to overcome a filibuster, of course, and so the government "closed down" at 12:00:01 a.m.

We put "closed down" in quotations for two reasons. The first is that most federal employees will be required to report to work today (generally without pay) to execute an "orderly" shutdown. The second is that significant parts of the government will actually keep operating. There are some portions of the government that are funded through sources other than the annual budget, so those aren't affected. Further, under several bills passed by Congress, "essential" services continue (again, usually without pay). And it's basically left to the various agencies to decide what is "essential."

The upshot is that the following will still be operating largely normally, although some people might not get any pay during the shutdown. After the shutdown ends, they will get the back pay they missed:

• Most of the White House staff
• Congress
• The U.S. Postal Service
• The National Parks
• The Military
• Social Security and Medicare payments
• The TSA and air traffic controllers
• Border enforcement
• Embassies
• The National Weather Service

And these entities will function as normal for now, though they may shut down partly or wholly as existing cash reserves run out:

• Federal courts
• The IRS
• FEMA
• SNAP
• The Smithsonian Institution

These lists are obviously not exhaustive; we just picked things we thought would be of particular interest. For readers who want more of the nitty-gritty, here is a summary of the plans that have been announced by various agencies (though not all agencies have made an announcement yet).

It should be noted that the reality of the shutdown is more complicated than can be communicated in a list or a chart. To start, decisions made this week could be changed next week, or the week thereafter. On top of that, nobody can know what the impact of employees calling in sick en masse will be, or what will happen if the White House goes through with the mass firings it has threatened. And finally, just because something is not shut down does not mean it's entirely open, either. For example, people will get their Social Security payments, but if they have a question or a problem, a resolution may have to wait a good, long time. Similarly, the parks will be open, but they reportedly won't be staffed. During the last shutdown, the lack of staffing led to all kinds of bad behavior from park patrons—littering, vandalism, etc.—such that a group of former park directors asked the Trump administration to shut the parks entirely this time, rather than leave them open but unstaffed.

We wrote yesterday that once the government has been shut down for even a single second, a very big line has been crossed. Another one will be crossed relatively soon. If Congress can hammer something out today, or tomorrow, then the government won't really shut down in a meaningful way, and this incident will join the other seven shutdowns that lasted 5 days or less; remembered only so the list of shutdowns is comprehensive.

But if there's no resolution by Monday or so, then another very big line will be crossed, as the possibility of a brief, non-impactful shutdown will be gone. The seven "brief" shutdowns lasted 4 hours (twice), 1 day (twice), 3 days (twice) and 5 days. The next shortest shutdown after those, however, was a 16-day shutdown during the administration of Barack Obama. There have also been shutdowns of 21 and 35 days, the latter coming during the first Trump administration, when the Republicans also had the trifecta.

This means that the Senate may attempt to do some negotiating today and tomorrow, and may make another attempt or two to work things out. But if that fails, then it will be time for the blame game and lots of finger-pointing. Figuring out which party will get the blame (or, at least, more of the blame) is interesting from a horse-race angle, at least for the sorts of people who write and/or read this site. However, the more important thing is that if one party or another thinks that they are going to be the one to take a hit, that party will suddenly become much more amenable to compromise.

There has been a little bit of polling so far, and here are the early numbers:

Pollster	Blame Dems	Blame Reps	Blame Both	No Opinion
NPR/PBS/Marist	27%	38%	31%	4%
Morning Consult	32%	45%	N/A	23%
New York Times/Siena	19%	26%	33%	22%

As you can see, the Democrats would appear to be in the better position out of the gate. And the news actually gets worse for the Republicans, because Democratic loyalists basically all blame Republicans, and Republican loyalists basically all blame Democrats. So, the Democrats' "lead" is primarily because independents (aka swing voters) blame Republicans twice as frequently as they blame Democrats.

There are a few other things we'll throw out there, that might help round out the picture:

• Democrats' Other Issue: The official reason the Democrats are drawing a line in the sand (beyond the fact that Democratic voters want to see some fight) is to protect healthcare subsidies. And this isn't a lie; they really do want to rescue the subsidies. However, their other issue, which is apparently just as important to the Democratic members, is recission. They think that any agreement that does not address this problem is worthless, as the White House can just yank the rug out from under the blue team once a deal is approved by Congress. The linked article does not say, but we would guess the reason that Democrats aren't talking about this more is that it's kind of wonky and inside baseball.
  
  
• Republicans Divided?: Meanwhile, some Republicans, among them Trump, are at least somewhat amenable to the idea of saving the healthcare subsidies. They undoubtedly know that voters who lose their health insurance tend to be angry voters, and angry voters tend to be "throw the bums out" voters. This suggests that the Republicans aren't as unified as they would have the world believe, and that there may be room for a compromise on the Democrats' terms.
  
  
• Crank Up the Propaganda, Part I: The White House is cranking up the messaging to 11. Most or all federal employees have received an e-mail from the White House explaining that the Democrats are to blame for everything. The problem here is that federal employees know how the government works, and they are paying attention. They will reach whatever conclusions they are going to reach, and are not likely to be influenced by a mass e-mail written by a White House intern (or maybe by Stephen Miller).
  
  
• Crank Up the Propaganda, Part II: The administration has also posted messages to many departmental websites, for anyone who happens to surf by. Here's the one from HUD:
  
  
  
  Maybe this will convince some people. But maybe not. This is 1940s-style over-the-top, it reads like a World War II propaganda poster. The modern citizen tends to be leery of that kind of hamfistedness. We would suggest a lighter touch was called for.
  
  
• Crank Up the Propaganda, Part III: The White House is also trying to spin polling data as "proof" the Democrats are wrong here. Consider, for example, this press release, which quotes the NYT poll linked above, and is headlined "POLL: Most Americans Say NO As Radical Left Drives Democrat Shutdown." The release, as the headline suggests, points out that the majority of Americans do not want a shutdown, and presents as fact that this will be very bad for the blue team. The former part is true; the latter part is a very big assumption currently unsupported by evidence. Meanwhile, the use of phrases like "deranged, Radical Left base" is a variant of the problem outlined in the previous item on this list.
  
  In general, when a presidential administration is confident in its position, it does not feel the need to crank up the spin operation. That the White House is not only getting an early start on the spin, but is spinning so very hard, may be instructive. At very least, it does not give hope Trump will be in a compromising mood anytime soon.

And now... we wait. Trump is already the record-holder for most days of shutdown for a president. Now, if he really wants to, he can put that out of reach for all time, like Pete Rose's 4,256 hits, or Tom Brady's 89,214 passing yards. (Z)

Trump, Hegseth Attempt to Stage Rally at Nuremberg... er, Quantico

The much-discussed meeting of military bigwigs took place yesterday. As it turns out, there were no loyalty oaths, per se. Nonetheless, the clear purpose was to lay out the administration's general plans for the military, and to communicate that the generals and admirals better get on board or else get out.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth talked about all the "reforms" he's implementing. He said that beards are going to be prohibited, since you can't be a good commander if you have facial hair. You know, like that loser Ulysses S. Grant. He also bragged about his own physical fitness regimen, and said every other member of the defense establishment would be held to the same standard, as he is tired of fat generals. Hegseth added that he wants military trainees to feel "more fear," and feels the best way to accomplish that is to allow drill sergeants to physically assault their recruits. He also plans to bring an end to anonymous reports to the inspector general (which Hegseth described as "frivolous complaints"). That means that someone who thinks there's a problem will have to put their career on the line to make a report of potential bad behavior.

The portion that got the most attention was when Hegseth, a notorious misogynist, decreed that he is going to insist that the "highest male standards" be applied to combat troops. He probably can't unilaterally get rid of women in combat roles, but he can certainly make it damn near impossible for many women to serve in that capacity. And Hegseth himself noted that the new rules would significantly reduce the number of women in combat positions, and would leave some combat commands with no women at all. The Secretary's ideas in this area are definitely out of a different century, and we don't mean the one that just ended a few years back. Heck, even the Civil War guys (Simon Cameron and Edwin Stanton) had positive things to say about women's contributions to the war effort. Hegseth would fit right in with Napoleon, though.

After all, how could a 130-pound woman sitting at a computer inside a mountain in Colorado possibly pilot a drone in Asia? Would she have enough strength to push the mouse? What about a woman flying an F-35? What would she do if her squadron commander yelled "balls to the walls" over the radio? Mission failed. Hegseth has watched too many WW I movies. And on the subject of grooming, Hegseth failed to mention how many pounds of hair gel a soldier is allowed to wear. Can each service decide this on its own?

Donald Trump, for his part, did exactly what we and everyone else expected, and delivered a rambling monologue focused mostly on his own accomplishments, and on his "enemies." Last week, he seemed to have given up on the Nobel Prize, but he must have changed his mind again, since he spent some time yesterday saying that he really should get one, and that it's ridiculous that he hasn't gotten one already. He also, at various times, bragged about the quality of the paper he uses for generals' commissions, kvetched about Joe Biden's use of an autopen (and bragged about how be-utiful his own signature is), lamented that you can't really use EITHER "N-word" ("Nuclear" and... the other one), peacocked about how great his tariffs are (and how they've apparently brought in $17 trillion), and said that the U.S. is finally respected again, after years of being laughed at by the nations of the world. This last claim is not only ridiculous, but it means he's pissing on all the people in the audience, since it's not like they commenced their careers, and dedicated their lives to serving their country, on January 20 of this year.

The most important/frightening part of the speech was when Trump told the brass to be ready to fight an "enemy from within" and to prepare to use America's cities as a military training ground. He explained: "We're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms. In our inner cities—which we're going to be talking about because it's a big part of war now. It's a big part of war." The Commander-in-Chief also made very clear that any officer who does not see things his way would be shown the door.

Take it from a historian, this kind of rhetoric is straight out of Mein Kampf. Trump could not sound more Hitler-esque if he somehow used a Ouija board to have Hermann Göring write his speeches for him. Remember, the core argument of the future leader of the Third Reich was that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by Jewish bankers and other enemies within Germany. By virtue of his professional training, (Z) recoils at drawing Hitler comparisons. But when the shoe fits so well it might as well have been made by the finest cobbler in all of Christendom, what can you do?

Soldiers are trained, of course, to be apolitical. And any soldier who does not internalize that lesson very early is not going to rise to become a general officer. Since both Hegseth's and Trump's speeches were VERY political, the crowd was not going to respond the way that Trump's rally crowds do (or the way that the Nazi faithful did at Nuremburg; see Triumph of the Will for more on this point). Even with that caveat, witnesses to yesterday's spectacle said the stony silence was noticeable, and that you could have cut the tension with a knife.

Clearly, Trump is laying the groundwork for issuing orders that are plainly illegal (even more so than the orders he's already issued). Whether he will actually issue those orders is still an open question; he usually does the TACO thing, and note that he's now threatened Chicago, Memphis and Portland with imminent invasion, and yet has not yet made a move. Note also that Trump apparently didn't even know about yesterday's meeting until a few days ago, so this was not part of a broader plan (if he even has broader plans).

If and when he does issue a plainly illegal order, then the rubber will meet the road for one or more unlucky generals or admirals. They will have to choose between their oath to defend the Constitution and their responsibility to obey their commander-in-chief. Yes, there are a few Mike Flynns out there, but beyond those, it's a real pickle. Nobody can know what decision those officers will make until they actually have to make it. Probably even they don't really know.

That said, yesterday's little performance did not improve Trump's chances of turning the U.S. military into his own personal Wehrmacht. First, if they did not know already, the brass now knows they have a real, career- and nation-threatening problem on their hands. They are going to talk to each other. Those conversations may be quiet, they may be behind closed doors, they may be very circumspect. But they WILL talk. And they will get a sense of where the other generals and admirals stand, and how much support there will be for an answer of "no, sir, that is an illegal order, and I cannot follow it."

Second, if there is defiance from an officer (or many officers), and that officer (or those officers) tell Trump to pound sand, there will be a court martial or some other such inquiry, where the accused will have to explain the basis for their choices. And they will now be able to say: "I saw the President's rambling, disjointed, often slurred speech in person, and was left with the strong impression of someone who is not fully competent. The illegal order confirmed that impression, and I acted accordingly."

In short, as is so often the case, it looks to us like the administration weakened its hand at a time when it was trying to strengthen it. We accepted long ago that Trump does not play 3-D chess, but what we really need to accept is that he can't even play checkers. He can play tic tac toe, but can win only if he cheats. (Z)

Judge Delivers Scorching Rebuke to Trump

Federal court judges are typically not given to lengthy diatribes in their written opinions. They might gently reprimand or remind the parties and their counsel of certain protocols, but their decisions don't get personal. Unless, of course, one of those parties holds the highest office in the land, and is abusing that power to destroy American democracy, while simultaneously having the audacity to claim they have the absolute right to do so. That tends to piss a judge off.

Yesterday, while Donald Trump was declaring war on Americans to 800 stone-faced and unimpressed military officers, a Ronald Reagan-appointed judge was declaring Trump a menace to the country. In an absolutely blistering 161-page opinion, which he described as the most important of his 40-year career on the bench, U.S. District Court Judge Bill Young found that Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and the rest of the clown car violated the First Amendment when they arrested legal non-citizens for protesting the treatment of people in Gaza. Young is the judge also overseeing the NIH grants case, where the government suspended more than $800 million in grants ostensibly for "DEI" reasons. In granting a preliminary injunction reinstating the grants (which was later stayed by the Supreme Court), Young said that he had "never seen government racial discrimination like this." And that's a guy who was appointed by Ronald Reagan and who's been on the bench for nearly half a century.

Young's opinion starts with an anonymous note that was received in his chambers on June 19. On the top of what's called the caption page, which normally just lists the party names and identifies the court where the case is located, the judge included a copy of the handwritten postcard, which reads, "Trump has pardons and tanks... what do you have?" Just below it is the judge's reply: "Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous: Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution. Here's how that works out in a specific case—"

The case was brought by university professors and free speech groups alleging that Trump's targeting of non-citizen student activists, who had been protesting in support of Palestinians, was an intentional violation of the First Amendment to intimidate students generally and chill free speech. After a two week trial on the merits, Young ruled that the defendants "deliberately and with purposeful aforethought, did so concert their actions and those of their two departments intentionally to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble of the non-citizen plaintiff members of the plaintiff associations." He held that non-citizens who are lawfully present in the U.S. have the same free speech rights as U.S. citizens and that Trump's deliberate targeting of activists like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk served to "strike fear" into all students and stifle political speech he disagrees with. The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble..." "'No law' means 'no law,'" he wrote. Young pointed out that while there are limits on free speech, those limits are the same for citizens and non-citizens alike. "The president's palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans' freedom of speech." He noted how the administration went to great lengths to publicize the arrest of Ozturk and Khalil and that the president himself trumpeted their arrests on social media and claimed that others who engage in speech deemed unacceptable or "antisemitic" are also at risk of detention and deportation.

But the Judge didn't stop there. He offered a full assessment of Trump's abuses of power beyond college campuses. Section V of the opinion is titled: "Justice in the Trump Era." He notes that Trump ignores everything, "The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies—all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act." He continues, "Small wonder then that our bastions of independent unbiased free speech—those entities we once thought unassailable—have proven all too often to have only Quaker guns. Behold President Trump's successes in limiting free speech—law firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the President, media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism." The courts don't escape Young's criticism either. In a footnote, he admits that the courts' deliberateness, which is usually an asset, only serves Trump's overall goals: "The federal courts themselves are complicit in chilling would-be litigants. It is not that we are less than scrupulously impartial. We demonstrate our judicial independence and utter impartiality every day whatever the personal cost. It is, rather that in our effort to be entirely fair, thorough, and transparent, we are slow, ponderously slow. This in turn means we are expensive, crushingly so for an individual litigant. Frequently, the threat of federal civil litigation, however frivolous, is enough severely to harass an individual and cause his submission."

Young also had some choice words for ICE, who pose as police and who wear masks during operations. "ICE has nothing whatever to do with criminal law enforcement and seeks to avoid the actual criminal courts at all costs. It is carrying a civil law mandate passed by our Congress and pressed to its furthest reach by the President. Even so, it drapes itself in the public's understanding of the criminal law though its "warrants" are but unreviewed orders from an ICE superior and its "immigration courts" are not true courts at all but hearings before officers who cannot challenge the legal interpretations they are given." On the subject of masks, Young says this, "ICE goes masked for a single reason—to terrorize Americans into quiescence. Small wonder ICE often seems to need our respected military to guard them as they go about implementing our immigration laws. It should be noted that our troops do not ordinarily wear masks. Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor—and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it. "We can not escape history," Lincoln rightly said. "[It] will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation." Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message to Congress (Dec. 1, 1862)."

The only thing left for Young to do is to fashion a remedy. Importantly, he determined that simply telling Trump to knock it off would be wholly inadequate. He's going to hold additional proceedings to determine the appropriate relief. He could conceivably enjoin ICE from making arrests on college campuses or could designate certain areas as off-limits. He could also prohibit agents from being masked while on campus. Trump will no doubt appeal, but at some point even SCOTUS will tire of this recurring drama. (L)

Antoni's Goose Is Cooked

There are many people who are more qualified to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics than E.J. Antoni. Any faculty member in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, for example. OK, OK, we hear you. The Chicago school of economics is a bit controversial, so any random assistant professor of economics at one of the top three schools, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. Any of the eight people who are currently serving as associate commissioners of the Bureau. Just about any small business owner. (V). (Z). (L). (A). The staff dachshunds. Maybe even the staff mathematician.

There are (or, really, were) two problems with Antoni's candidacy. First, he doesn't have the chops to assume such an important job at this point in his career. It is true, he does have a Ph.D. in economics. However, it was conferred only a few years ago, and from a university that is not exactly among the elites in that discipline (Northern Illinois University). Further, anyone who's been to grad school knows that pretty much anyone who can jump through the hoops can get hooded. That's why a person needs to produce something useful AFTER they graduate, to show they're not just a hoop-jumper. Antoni hasn't done that.

That leads us to the second problem. Part of the reason that Antoni doesn't have a useful record of publications is that he hasn't had all that much time to build up his résumé. But the other part is that he is clearly guided by politics first, and by the data/scholarly ethics second. To the extent that he HAS produced anything, it's been highly partisan stuff, and stuff that violates the old Sherlock Holmes maxim about not twisting facts to suit theories. BLS Commissioner is one of those jobs where the person really needs to be scrupulously nonpartisan, so people will trust the numbers and believe that nobody is putting their thumb on the scale. Antoni is not that kind of person.

And actually, there is also a third problem... maybe. Antoni was present at, and potentially a participant in, the 1/6 insurrection. He also has a fondness for, well, Nazi artifacts. The Trump administration does not always have an issue with people who have these characteristics, but maybe they are a bit too much for someone who also has other liabilities. It's hard to say.

In any case, Antoni's nomination was withdrawn yesterday. He will remain at his job at The Heritage Foundation, producing think pieces that require little actual thinking. A replacement nominee is "forthcoming," according to the White House.

There are really only two possibilities here: (1) GOP senators communicated to Trump that Antoni didn't have the votes for confirmation, or (2) one or more grown-ups in the administration persuaded Trump that Antoni would not be able to do the job properly. Since nearly everyone in Washington, besides Trump, knows enough to keep such things under wraps, so as to avoid embarrassing anyone, it's not clear if it's #1, #2, or both #1 and #2. Maybe that will eventually come out, maybe it won't.

We will soon see what kind of person Trump taps as the replacement. Will it be another partisan hack, or will it just be a partisan? The latter option is not ideal, but it's probably the best that can be hoped for from this administration, and is certainly better than the former option. (Z)

Johnson Is Dragging His Feet with Grijalva

Speaking of partisan hacks, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is up to some sleazy shenanigans, yet again. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D) won her election a week ago in a landslide. Under those circumstances, the House will sometimes let a member start their duties immediately. Johnson, however, insisted that the certificate of ascertainment—the paperwork that formally reports the results and declares the candidate to be duly elected—be completed and presented to the Secretary of the House.

That is certainly Johnson's right. However, the paperwork is now complete and has been presented to the Secretary, and yet... Grijalva still hasn't been sworn in. Johnson's office says that they just can't swear her in until the House is in regular session on October 7. This is known as "making up crap out of thin air" (Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, is a skilled practitioner of this art). There is nothing that says the House has to be in session to swear a member in, and there's certainly nothing that says the House has to be in regular session. As is invariably the case these days, the House is holding pro forma sessions every couple of days, and Grijalva could be sworn in then. But... no. We fear that Johnson's memory may be failing. He seems to have forgotten that in April, when two Republicans won special elections in Florida to fill vacant seats, they were sworn in during a pro forma session.

The obvious goal here is to prevent Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) from collecting the 218th signature for their discharge petition. Johnson, who apparently is in the business of protecting the secrets of sexual predators, must be hoping that something happens in the 7-8 extra days to remove one of the other signatures from the list. Perhaps he's planning to put on a full-court press for the Republican signatories, or maybe he's hoping that another Democratic member will die.

There is a price for Johnson's clumsy chicanery, though. First, it's more ammunition for those who would make the argument that House Republicans are using and abusing their powers to protect some very sleazy people. Second, when you bend over backwards (and forwards and sideways) like this, it is pretty much like hiring a skyplane to broadcast the message: "WE HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE." Finally, Democrats have long memories, and will remember this little stunt. If delaying a Republican member (or many members) from being sworn in sometime in the future serves their needs, they will feel absolutely entitled to do it. (Z)

---

If you wish to contact us, please use one of these addresses. For the first two, please include your initials and city.

• questions@electoral-vote.com    For questions about politics, civics, history, etc. to be answered on a Saturday
• comments@electoral-vote.com   For "letters to the editor" for possible publication on a Sunday
• corrections@electoral-vote.com To tell us about typos or factual errors we should fix
• items@electoral-vote.com            For general suggestions, ideas, etc.

To download a poster about the site to hang up, please click here.

---

Email a link to a friend.

---The Votemaster and Zenger