Here’s what is so different about the brewing government shutdown
- - Here’s what is so different about the brewing government shutdown
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNNSeptember 29, 2025 at 12:00 AM
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The US Capitol in Washington, DC, on September 24, 2025. - Nathan Howard/Reuters
The possibly imminent government shutdown would be like no federal funding crunch before it.
The showdown ahead of a Tuesday night deadline is about far more than the classic feud over how the government spends its money, and whether a White House or its Capitol Hill foes will prevail in a political test of wills.
The clash between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats comes against the backdrop of the most aggressive attempt by a president to impose unfettered power in modern times.
So the shutdown brinkmanship will take on a wider narrative of whether a rampant president can be slowed or stopped on any issue.
In recent days alone:
► Trump has ordered troops to Portland, Oregon, to protect immigration enforcement operations, falsely declaring the city is a war zone after scattered protests.
► This follows his dismantling of the Justice Department’s independence after a newly installed prosecutor acted on his demands to charge former FBI Director James Comey.
► Trump also plans this week to attend a gathering of top military brass flown home at great expense in a mass meeting that is raising fears over further politicization of the armed forces.
► And the president is intensifying his assault on science, as he drives home Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attack on child vaccine schedules and hypes dubious claims that Tylenol causes autism.
► Trump is also asking the Supreme Court to strike down the right to birthright citizenship, which has been settled law for generations and the loss of which could spark chaos and uncertainty for thousands of natural born Americans.
This rush of hardline power plays follows eight months in which Trump has constantly tested the Constitution and the law. This context of an aggressive president in a hurry explains why each discrete political battle — including the shutdown saga — becomes something more critical than the sum of its parts.
Why Trump thinks he has the upper hand
Unless Congress agrees on a temporary funding deal by Tuesday night, large swaths of the federal machine will halt. Thousands of workers could be furloughed. Those deemed essential to running the country will work without pay.
Government shutdowns have become more common over the past 30 years, during a time of close elections; small, gerrymandered congressional majorities; and divided government in Washington.
But everything in the Trump era gets torqued up.
Trump’s demands for Democrats to provide sufficient Senate votes to keep the government open is only one front in his escalating battle for political omnipotence, which is intensifying 13 months ahead of midterm elections.
Events in the coming days will show whether his campaign to silence all opposition can be slowed on one front by Democrats, using their only leverage in Washington — the Senate filibuster that requires 60 votes for major legislation.
Given Trump’s threat to summarily fire thousands of bureaucrats to punish Democrats if they trigger a shutdown, the days ahead will be especially agonizing for those affected by an administration ready to impose human pain.
Normally, a government shutdown is risky for presidents — though history shows that the parties on Capitol Hill that trigger the impasse often end up coming off even worse. A shutdown can cost the economy billions and create anger and frustration against Washington at a time when voters are conditioned to punish incumbents.
But Trump has scrambled political logic and seems to care more about enforcing his own power now than about any long-term political repercussions. He heads into the week showing no intention of offering any compromise with Democrats. He’s due to meet the top two Democrats in the House and the Senate, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, on Monday, along with the Republican leaders who run both chambers. But the affair looks more like a pro forma attempt to spell out a no-compromise position than a bargaining session.
“Chuck Schumer came back with a long laundry list of partisan demands that don’t fit into this process, and he’s going to try to shut the government down,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday. “The president wants to talk with him about that and say, ‘Please don’t do that.’”
Given the president’s dominance in Washington, and a pliant Republican Party lining up behind him, it’s worth asking whether Democrats can gain much politically from a shutdown. It’s possible they could instead end up in an even worse position.
Senate Democratic Minority Leader Schumer said Sunday that if Trump is ready to negotiate, a shutdown can be avoided. “If the president at this meeting is going to rant, and just yell at Democrats, and talk about all his alleged grievances, and say this, that, and the other thing, we won’t get anything done. But my hope is it’ll be a serious negotiation,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
An American flag inside the US Capitol on September 23, 2025. - Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesDemocrats have a losing hand but may have to fight anyway
The complex psychology of shutdowns rests on each party believing that it has the capacity to inflict pain that the other will find so unbearable that it will have no choice but to concede.
But it’s hard to see in Trump’s case how such a scenario would unfold. Democrats could trigger a shutdown of the government, but might find it hard to impose enough pressure to force Trump into any kind of compromise. They might suspect the Office of Management and Budget’s threat to dismiss thousands of federal workers it deems unnecessary is a bluff or that it would end up being reversed in the courts. But Trump and hardliners in the OMB office have sought such an opening for months.
One potential risk for the president is that a shutdown could create new disruption to an economy already challenged by his attempts to gut the independence of the Federal Reserve and by Trump’s price-raising tariff policies. For all the economy’s resilience, a long-term shutdown that hurts growth could further anger voters who thought Trump would make their lives less expensive and more secure.
And while Trump’s MAGA fans wanted disruption, there’s a growing sense — fueled by his assault on long-held health care guidance, his attempts to prosecute his enemies and his strongman antics — that the chaos that marked his first term and contributed to his 2020 loss is beginning to gather once again.
But the political choices are more treacherous for Democrats.
They are fighting asymmetric warfare. If the government is a hostage in the current funding battle, Trump may not care that much whether it makes it out alive.
But there’s a reason Democrats can’t just let this moment of leverage pass, however insubstantial it may be. Their supporters are desperate for the party to stake out a line in the sand. Activist liberals want to fight back, seeking to finally start a revival following former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump last November.
Sometimes it’s good for a party to pick a fight it suspects it may lose in order to rally its supporters and to offer definition to a cause. In this case, the Democrats are demanding Trump accept the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire this year, which would cause insurance premiums to spike. Shutting down the government over this issue would focus attention on Republican policies Democrats argue will seriously restrict Medicaid. This would give them a jump on a message they hope will shape next year’s midterms.
“God forbid the Republicans shut the government down,” Schumer said on NBC. “The American people will know it’s on their back. First, they’re in charge. They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the presidency, so they know they’re in charge.” He went on: “Second, everyone knows that you need a bipartisan negotiation to get this done. The American people do. But third, there is going to be huge pressure on Republican senators, congressmen and even Trump to do something about this horrible health care crisis.”
Republicans do understand that if such an argument takes hold, it could be damaging. Senate Republican Majority leader John Thune, for example, said on NBC Sunday that Democrats should cooperate in extending funding in the short term to allow time for negotiations on items like Obamacare subsidies before the end of the year.
“We can have that conversation. But before we do, release the hostage. Set the American people free. Keep the government open,” Thune said.
Democrats are unlikely to take such an offer at face value, however, because trust has been fractured on Capitol Hill by Trump’s efforts to rescind funding for the party’s priorities already approved by previous iterations of Congress.
Is this the right time for the fight?
Still, lacking decisive leverage, the question remains: Is this the smartest time for Democrats to have this fight, given a political deck that is weighted against them?
If they don’t fight, they will look weak to their supporters and only invite more intimidation from Trump. But are political conditions any different now than in March, when Senate Democrats promised their supporters a fight and then caved? The capitulation only exemplified the party’s toothlessness.
Standing down again would be a bad look when the first hints of resistance to Trump are emerging nationwide. Democrats in California mobilized in a bid to match his grab for extra House seats in Texas with a mid-cycle redistricting plan. Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s tough talk seemed to postpone Trump’s plan to send federal troops to Chicago in an extension of his crackdown on crime. The dispatch of troops to Portland was triggered by the city’s attempts to frustrate Trump’s mass deportation drive.
Comey, in a video following his indictment, warned, “We will not live on our knees,” as he positioned himself as a rallying point for those who oppose Trump. And last week, ABC affiliates bowed to customer anger and economic realities when they restored Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, which the administration had tried to force off the air.
In such an atmosphere, a new Democratic surrender on Capitol Hill would invite mockery. But that doesn’t change a political battlefield that favors Trump.
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