Dem
47
GOP
53
There are going to be some bleary-eyed baseball fans in Toronto today. For those who did not watch and have not seen the story, Game 3 of the World Series, featuring the Dodgers and the Blue Jays, was historic in a couple of ways. It is, first of all, tied for the longest World Series game ever played (by innings). It ended in the 18th inning (on a Freddie Freeman home run), and lasted 6:52, meaning that the game concluded at 2:51 a.m. Toronto time. On top of that, Shohei Ohtani recorded hits in his first four at bats, followed by five walks, which were varying levels of "intentional." That's the first time in modern MLB history (i.e., since 1900) that a player has reached base nine times in a postseason game. If we extend that to the regular season, it's only happened three other times, with the most recent being in 1942 (Stan Hack of the Chicago Cubs, against the Cincinnati Reds).
The federal government shutdown is not quite record-breaking yet, but it's getting there. It will enter its fifth week at 12:01 a.m. ET tonight, which will mean one more week to tie the record of 35 days, and a week plus a day to break the record. Since nobody is talking right now, and Donald Trump is not even in the country, reaching the 36-day mark seems likely. That said, let's take a look at the pressure points that might eventually change the calculus for one party or the other—or both.
Federal Workers: This is one of the most visible pressure points, and was the one that loomed largest in the news yesterday. First, Everett Kelley, the National President for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 members, penned an open letter calling for an end to the shutdown. While he did not mention any political party by name, he did declare that Congress should "Reopen the government immediately under a clean continuing resolution that allows continued debate on larger issues." That, of course, is the Republican position on the shutdown.
Democrats who spoke to reporters yesterday after the letter was made public said it would not affect their approach to the shutdown. They are probably telling the truth. However, it is possible that Kelley will get the most important thing he wants (pay for the members of his union) nonetheless. Last week, the Democrats wanted to pay everyone during the shutdown, while the Republicans wanted to pay only "essential" personnel (basically, military and air traffic controllers) and also to make clear that Donald Trump is allowed to fire any employees he wants to fire.
This week, the Republicans' lead negotiator on this point, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), is offering a different deal. His new proposal is that everyone would be paid, but the language affirming Trump's right to fire federal workers would remain in the bill. It's plausible that Democrats might take that deal, perhaps persuading themselves that: (1) Trump has already fired most of the employees he could plausibly fire, or (2) that the firings are a violation of the Pendleton Act, and will eventually be overturned in court.
Military Pay: Military pay has the potential to be a huge pressure point, since nobody wants to deal with the blowback involved in soldiers missing paychecks. That said, the Republicans have the trifecta, and not only do not want soldiers to go unpaid, but also do not want Democrats to get any credit for riding to the soldiers' rescue. The first military payday was covered by money that the White House "found" and reappropriated for the purpose. The next military payday is on Friday, and the administration announced over the weekend that it would be covered by a $130 million donation from an anonymous Trump "friend." Yesterday, it came out that the donor is longtime Trump supporter Timothy Mellon.
Readers probably don't need our help to figure out that "gifts" like this are against the rules. They are a violation of both Pentagon policy on gifts, as well as the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the executive branch from spending money beyond what has been appropriated by Congress. Of course, the Antideficiency Act ship sailed the moment that Trump took $300 million for the White House ballroom. Clearly, neither the majority in Congress nor the DoJ has any interest in actually enforcing the law.
The other problem, which is probably also obvious, is that $130 million works out to about... $100 per active duty servicemember. Needless to say, that's not even enough to cover the paycheck of a buck private, and hasn't been since, oh, the days of the Korean War. If the government makes payroll on October 31, where will the other money come from? And is the $130 million cover, so as to hide the primary source of funding?
Air Traffic Controllers: The nation's air traffic controllers have been calling in sick at an increasing rate since the shutdown began. For some of them, it's probably a protest against going unpaid. For others, it's because they need the time to earn some money—say, driving an Uber, or delivering DoorDash—to pay the bills. In any case, there have already been temporary shutdowns of airports, including LAX, ORD and EWR (that's Los Angeles, Chicago and Newark, for those who don't know their airport codes).
If things continue on this track, says CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean, the situation will undoubtedly get worse. Travelers hate delayed flights, of course. And the rules used to determine "on time" rates mean that once a flight is 10 minutes late, it might as well be 8 hours late. So, some people will experience delays that are far longer than "brief." On top of that, if airports are non-operational for a few hours (or more), then carefully calibrated flight routes won't work, and flights will be canceled. Travelers hate that, too. And if the shutdown goes on long enough, the problem could end up in a head-on collision with Thanksgiving. The Tuesday and Wednesday before that holiday and the Sunday after are the three heaviest travel days of the year.
If the current "pay the government employees" bill makes it through the Senate, it will theoretically resolve this problem, maybe for 2 weeks, maybe for longer. However, the people whose travel plans were ruined might not forget so easily. And if there is some sort of accident, due to an overtaxed air traffic control system, then heaven help us all.
SNAP: This one is a biggie. On Saturday, 42 million people will lose SNAP (food stamp) benefits. That is about one in eight Americans. If they are hungry, they might just start paying attention. Who they blame could be critical.
Democrats have urged Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins to use the Department's contingency funds to pay beneficiaries. For a while, it looked like the Dept. of Agriculture had some spare funds lying around somewhere that could be used to pay benefits, which come to $8 billion/month. Now Rollins has said that the contingency funds are not available to cover regular benefits. Unless somebody pulls a rabbit out of a hat, the 42 million beneficiaries are not getting their food stamps next month.
If the administration wanted to find the money somewhere, it surely could. Obviously, not finding it is a tactic intended to pressure Democrats to fold. After all, Democrats actually care if people, especially children, go hungry. Donald Trump certainly doesn't care. In case there was any doubt about that, here is the masthead that now appears on the DoA website:
There is no world in which that is NOT a violation of the Hatch Act. But again, nobody in a position of power is much interested in enforcing the law right now.
The Republican finger-pointing speaks to a certain amount of desperation, which implies that Trump & Co. know they are more likely than not to get the blame here. That said, we are surprised that the Democrats—as far as we know—have not introduced a bill to fund SNAP during the shutdown. It would not pass, presumably, but then the members of the blue team could say "We tried to fund SNAP, but the Republicans voted it down."
If millions of people do go without, you can expect Democrats to wield that like a hammer during next year's election cycle. They don't like to say it out loud, but they know very well that ads next year featuring very skinny, pitiful-looking children crying that they are hungry could be good material for blaming the Republicans as heartless monsters who care only about tax cuts for billionaires. It could be an effective juxtaposition: hungry kids vs. billionaires, as part of a larger theme of "the Republicans are for them, and the Democrats are for you."
Health care: This is the area where Democrats are absolutely convinced they have a winner. And they are probably right about that. It is no longer the case that "soon, many Americans will get a severe case of sticker shock when they see what their health insurance is going to cost this year." In fact, that day has already arrived. Many states do not open enrollment until November 1, but those crazy kids in Idaho do it on October 15. So, some people there are about to get an unpleasant surprise. We haven't seen any reaction pieces yet, but we assume a few reporters will be headed to the Gem State in short order. Assuming their flight to BOI (Boise) isn't canceled, that is.
This is certainly the issue where the biggest chinks in the GOP armor are showing themselves. A group of Republican members of the House, who just so happen to represent swing districts, have been making lots of noise about their party's lack of a plan when it comes to health care for poor people. Someone should tell these swing-district members that their party actually does have a plan; it's just that the plan is to kick 10 million people off the insurance rolls. In any case, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), who is serving as something of a point person for this group of Republican members, said yesterday that, when it comes to creating a plan for working-class people to access affordable health care, "It's morally bankrupt not to do it and it is politically stupid." We can't see anything there we disagree with.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), for his part, spoke to reporters yesterday and insisted that he and his fellow Republicans are "working on a fix for health care." He also picked up and waved around some papers; the papers apparently were the plan that Johnson and several other conservatives cobbled together back in 2019-20. Inasmuch as Republicans have been claiming for 15 years that a better plan than Obamacare is just around the corner, and that the Johnson plan has been knocking around for 5 years without even coming up for a vote, we are... skeptical, let's say, that the GOP is miraculously going to pass a brand new health care plan, especially not by the end of the year, and especially with Congress not even in session right now. The fundamental problem is that you can't take $1 trillion or so out of the health care budget to give a tax break to rich people AND insure the same number of people AND keep the deficit from skyrocketing even further. One of these three things has to give.
Mike Johnson: Speaking of the Speaker, he's been dancing around like a trained monkey, trying to deflect responsibility for the shutdown from himself and from his political party. In the last 5 days, he's offered three explanations for why the shutdown is still ongoing, and why he hasn't called the House back into session (either to work on some sort of shutdown resolution, or to work on the actual budget, or to work on something else). His first explanation is that it's a tactical move meant to place pressure on the Senate. The general idea is that the House has passed a sorta clean bill kicking the can down the road, and the Senate can take it or leave it.
Johnson's second explanation, which he shared with reporters yesterday, is that the members of the GOP conference:
...are having some of the most meaningful interactions at a time of great crisis with their constituents they've ever had. And that's really, really important. So, I don't want to pull them away from that work right now when their insight and their counsel and their assistance... that is most essentially needed back home.Hm. While we appreciate that constituent services are an important part of the job, we could have sworn that representatives are elected to, you know, REPRESENT their voters in Washington. And let's not get started about the fact that many Republican members, possibly most, are not actually holding public events, for fear of being lambasted about the Epstein files or other issues.
Johnson's third explanation is the wildest one of all. He says that the blame for the shutdown lies with... New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Here are the Speaker's exact words:
We can't allow a rise of Marxist and far-left activist in one party to shut down the entire operation of the federal government, and that is exactly what they are allowing them to do. The Democrats have got to come to their senses. You can endorse communists all you want, but at least keep the government operating for us.According to our high school civics teachers, city mayors, let alone candidates for city mayor, do not, in fact, have the power to shut down the federal government. Maybe Johnson's civics class taught him differently, though we must confess, we've tried to parse his words a dozen times, and we still don't exactly understand the sequence of events here. The Democrats have shut down the government because Mamdani has hypnotized them into demanding Marxism? Is that the argument? We really don't follow.
In any event, Johnson is clearly under a lot of pressure right now. Democrats have adopted the talking point that the Speaker "has dissolved" the House of Representatives. That is usually the prerogative of monarchs, so the implication that Johnson has appointed himself king is pretty clear (though we would actually say he's more like a court jester, performing tricks to keep the actual monarch amused). Many Republicans are also grumbling, and one of them—Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA)—keeps showing up for work every day, as a form of protest. We'll see how long Johnson can hold out, or if he finally bows to pressure and reopens the House.
The Filibuster: Like a fire extinguisher—break glass in case of emergency—Republicans in the Senate are most certainly keeping in mind that they could end all of this by killing the filibuster. Some of them are now talking about that quite openly. In particular, folks like Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Rick Scott (R-FL) are talking about the SNAP situation (above) as the main reason they are willing to go nuclear.
We are not persuaded that Hawley or, in particular, Scott care all that much about hungry people. SNAP might just be useful political cover. But, in any case, if the Republicans do kill the filibuster, that will almost certainly be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Obviously, they could ram through a budget and anything else that the GOP (with its slim majority in the House) can agree on. But the filibuster would be dead, with zero blood on the Democrats' hands. And the next time the Democrats had the trifecta, they would tee up a long Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Eid/Lunar New Year list, including statehood for D.C., changes to the Supreme Court, anti-gerrymandering legislation and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and most of his colleagues on that side of the aisle are not stupid, and they know what they would be signing up for. The question is: Does it eventually become worth it for them?
Last night, the announcers calling the Dodgers-Blue Jays game were talking about how it might go 19, 20, 21 innings. They were somewhat giddily discussing the prospects of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Kevin Gausman coming in to pitch. This was a big deal, because those two players pitched on Saturday and, under normal conditions, would never pitch on 2 days' rest. They were the last-ditch options, however, as all the other pitchers had been used up. Then, Freddie Freeman hit that home run, and it was all over, practically in the blink of an eye.
Is that a rough metaphor for how this shutdown will end? Maybe one of the pressure points will blow, and then all of a sudden things will get hammered out and the government will reopen? Could be. But we haven't the faintest idea which of the pressure points above might be the one. (Z & V)