Even by its own bleak standards, Washington’s new record is a monument to failure by leaders who are harming citizens they were elected to serve.
The government shutdown became the longest ever on Wednesday as it entered its 36th day. And while several groups of lawmakers are fumbling for a plan, there’s no clear way out.
This means, the extreme pain and fear being inflicted on millions of Americans will get worse in the bitterest confrontation yet between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats of his second term.
While the showdown is a fight over health care and a Democratic demand to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, it has an underlying cause that explains why it’s grinding on so long: It’s all about power.
Trump has become accustomed in nine months back in the White House to getting his own way on almost everything. He barely even recognizes Congress’ constitutional role. And now he’s demanding Democrats capitulate. He’s recently added another demand: that Republicans abolish the Senate filibuster rule that requires a 60-vote majority to pass most legislation.
This would be a simple way of passing a short-term funding bill to reopen the government, which Democrats refuse to support. But it would represent a fundamental reshaping of political life, and Republican leaders fear a future Democratic majority would use the new leeway to give the nation a liberal makeover.
But Trump is a man in a hurry. “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER NOW, END THE RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY, AND THEN, MOST IMPORTANTLY, PASS EVERY WONDERFUL REPUBLICAN POLICY THAT WE HAVE DREAMT OF, FOR YEARS, BUT NEVER GOTTEN,” he wrote on Truth Social Tuesday. “WE WILL BE THE PARTY THAT CANNOT BE BEATEN – THE SMART PARTY!!!”
That doesn’t sound like a president looking for a way out.
Democrats are also flexing power. They are using the only leverage they have in Republican-red Washington: withholding their votes to frustrate a president who demands total deference.
The clash is playing out over a critical issue fundamental to American life — the struggle of many citizens to afford health care. But at some level it’s also a political game, with both parties seeking to expand their influence and neuter their rivals while pundits keep a daily score.
The shutdown playbook usually dictates that one party will fold once it becomes clear that the political price of keeping the government closed outweighs the embarrassment of the concessions required to get it open. But as is customary in the Trump era, normal assumptions have buckled.
Trump at first deactivated some of the normal shutdown pressure points — for instance, by finding ways to pay the military. Each side, meanwhile, seemed to believe the other was being damaged more by the impasse.
But as those with power wage political warfare, it’s the powerless who are suffering.
Food stamp recipients have so far not gotten their November assistance as the Trump administration is locked in a legal fight that may result in only partial benefits going out. They are joining some furloughed government officials at food banks to try to feed their families.
Millions more are staring at impossible-to-afford hikes on Affordable Care Act insurance. And the nation’s already crowded skies and airports are being hit by severe delays and long airport security lines. Fears of wider economic damage are growing.
There’s rarely been a starker example of how government dysfunction brewed from splintered national unity has reduced the government not just to a force that can’t protect the people, but to one that hurts many of them.
“I understand that both sides are trying to make points,” Annemarie King, a recipient of nutrition assistance under the SNAP program, told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Tuesday. “But … it almost feels like we’re being used as pawns on both sides.”
The Trump White House seems to be on another planet, boasting Tuesday that since taking office, the president had transformed the country.
“The president secured a mandate to make America great again, and he has delivered in record time,” the president’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. Reality looks different, however, on November 5, 2025 — a year to the day after Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris. Millions of blameless Americans are worried about running out of food or losing access to health insurance; the government is shuttered; the country is plunging into a deeper domestic crisis; and public confidence in Trump’s presidency is plummeting.
Democrats have spent months mourning their defeat last November and the Republican takeover of every center of power in Washington.
Trump’s ruthless steamroller of a presidency — which has gutted parts of the federal government, rolled back spending on Democratic priorities previously passed by Congress and tested the limits of the Constitution — has left them helpless. A promise earlier this year by party leaders in the Senate to fight Trump, with a shutdown if necessary, was followed by a climbdown and humiliation. Fury among Democratic base voters meant they had no choice but to fight hard this time.
Tactically, Democrats seem to have made smart decisions in the shutdown. They trained public scrutiny on the issue of spiking Obamacare costs. When policy holders started getting shocking renewal notices on November 1, they’d prepared the political ground.
Democrats could have chosen to base the showdown over another demand — Trump’s authoritarian power grabs, for instance. But their chances of success were slim. And as they prepare to assail Republicans in the coming midterm election campaign over cuts to Medicaid under his domestic agenda law, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” they’ve established a firm rhetorical foundation. And it’s a theme that fits a broader emerging argument.
“Here in America, the cost of living is way too high. Donald Trump and Republicans promised that they were going to lower costs on Day 1,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday. He bemoaned rising prices for groceries, housing, childcare and electricity. “The American people know it — that Donald Trump and Republicans have failed to make their life more affordable,” Jeffries said.
An NBC News survey published Sunday found 52% said the stalemate was on Trump and congressional Republicans, while 42% said it was the Democrats’ fault. This breakdown suggests that the president’s ultra-loyal base is sticking with him, but unaffiliated and independent voters are deserting him — in a scenario that would be disastrous for the GOP if repeated in next year’s midterm elections.
But it’s one thing to win a tactical political victory. It’s another to turn it into a tangible one. Democrats must also ask whether the costs being borne by many of their own constituencies are worth the expected gain. Trump’s strategy is to try to force them to choose between the trauma of Americans who have lost access to food stamps and that of those losing health care.
As it stands on the day the shutdown record was broken, Republicans say they are willing to negotiate on Obamacare subsidies, but only after Democrats vote to reopen the government. Democrats don’t trust them and want guarantees on lowering costs first. This is hardly surprising, since Trump has never put forward a serious health care reform plan of his own.
And Democratic leaders will court trouble from their left if they seek a way out.
“If the Democrats cave on this, I think it would be a betrayal to millions and millions of working families who want them to stand up and protect their health care benefits,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent said Tuesday, speaking for many progressives.
Still, Senate Majority Leader John Thune insisted Tuesday he was optimistic that the shutdown might even end this week. The South Dakota Republican heaped pressure on more moderate Democratic senators to break with their party and join Republicans to end the crisis. “All it takes is five of them,” Thune said.
Some Republicans wonder whether the political ground will shift following Tuesday’s elections — for governor in Virginia and New Jersey; for mayor in New York; and on a Democratic-led redistricting push in California.
“Schumer was afraid that they open it back up, that they would lose momentum in those races, that their voters would stay home,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday.
Democrats might make the opposite case. Their good night after winning campaigns — in two gubernatorial races, especially — based on the high cost of living might spook vulnerable Republicans who fear the 2026 midterm elections. Even Trump might be forced to confront unfavorable political realities.
Several attempts are underway to unpick the deadlock. The most serious appears to be among centrist senators in both parties to address the rising costs of health care, to reopen the government and to clear the way for passing major budget bills to fund federal operations on a more permanent basis next year.
But the gaps are wide. And whoever you blame for the nightmare in Washington, millions of Americans are hurting. And they can’t wait much longer.
