Why this shutdown is different — and shows signs of lasting

In 1995, it was about spending cuts. In 2013, it was about a health care plan. In 2018, it was about a Mexican border wall.

This government shutdown is in large measure about something very different – the two parties’ rage at each other and their battle over who will run Washington for the next three years. That makes it far less predictable, and potentially much harder to resolve, according to people on both sides.

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“This is just much, much, much different,” said former congressman Vin Weber (R-Minnesota). “It’s not all about health care. It’s not about any specific issue. It’s about two parties whose base no longer believes they can afford to lose without losing their national standing. That’s what I think is at stake here.”

Most immediately, the shutdown is over Democratic demands that Congress extend health care subsidies and the Republican response that Congress first must pass a stopgap spending measure. But looming behind those questions are two groups of activists fighting a pitched battle to determine the country’s broader path.

“The MAGA movement dominates the Republican Party totally. The progressives don’t dominate the Democratic Party totally, but they are working on it,” Weber said. “There was a path to compromise in the past. Today that is missing in the psyche of the people on both sides of the debate.”

That is evident in the way the two parties have approached the standoff.

Democratic leaders were determined to block the Republicans’ next spending bill even before they had settled on specific demands. President Donald Trump has responded by freezing projects and firing workers, seeking to pressure Democrats in ways unrelated to the shutdown. (A judge Wednesday temporarily blocked those layoffs.)

Previous closures ended when swing voters made it clear whom they blamed for the dispute, prompting one party to cave for fear of the political consequences. Today, the number of such swing voters has shrunk, while the parties’ hardcore bases are more energized than ever, ready to revolt against any potential deal as an unacceptable capitulation.

For many Democrats, this fight is about standing up to an authoritarian president who is ignoring the Constitution and seeking near-dictatorial power. For Trump’s team, it is about establishing the president’s right to full control of the executive branch and federal spending.

The White House blames Democrats for not accepting the GOP spending measure, called a continuing resolution.

“We didn’t want the Democrats to shut down the government – the Administration wanted a straightforward and clean CR to keep the government open, the exact same proposal that Democrats supported just 6 months ago and 13 times under the Biden Administration,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email. “Unfortunately, Democrats have chosen to shut down the government because they think demanding free health care for illegal aliens is more important than paychecks for workers and benefits for American taxpayers. The Democrats can reopen the government at any time.”

Democratic leaders say it is a “lie” that they are seeking free health care for undocumented immigrants, noting that undocumented people are not eligible for the subsidies they want to extend.

Two weeks into the shutdown, some congressional leaders have begun predicting it could set a record for intractability. It is perhaps no accident that the longest shutdown before now occurred in Trump’s first term when partisan tensions were also high – a 34-day standoff over the border wall that began in December 2018 and extended into January 2019.

“We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history unless Democrats drop their partisan demands,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said Monday.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) says Republicans cannot be trusted to respect those demands. “There’s definitively no reason to ever trust the Republicans, particularly as it relates to the health care issue and the Affordable Care Act,” Jeffries told MSNBC recently.

If that lack of trust bodes poorly, so do the parties’ internal dynamics. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) agreed in March to a different GOP spending measure, only to see some Democrats attack his leadership and raise the prospect of a primary challenge. That gives Schumer a powerful incentive not to bend this time.

Ezra Levin, co-founder of the activist group Indivisible, said his group is actively urging its members to put pressure on Democrats to hold the line, calling congressional offices and making their views known in other ways. “Our mode right now is we are cheerleaders, playing the role we can,” Levin said. “Everyone has a role to play, and that is what we can do.”

Indivisible and other groups plan to turn out millions of protesters this Saturday for a “No Kings” demonstration against Trump, which they hope will bolster Democrats’ resolve to stick to their guns. Republicans are calling the demonstration a “Hate America” rally, saying it shows how Democrats are being bullied by their extremist base.

Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist, said Democrats’ defiant posture during the shutdown is winning them praise from progressive activists for the first time since Trump took office.

“This is the first time in a year the far-left base hasn’t been screaming at Democrats,” Gorman said. “It’s like the old saying, ‘The best part of an elephant stepping on your foot is the feeling when the elephant stops stepping on your foot.’ Why would the Democrats stop? Their base, for once, isn’t foaming at the mouth, screaming obscenities towards them.”

But Republicans, especially those in the White House, also appear to see little reason to change course. Closing parts of the government is not a problem for the Trump administration, but a centerpiece of its agenda. Long before the shutdown, Trump was seeking to close down agencies and firing thousands of federal workers.

“I don’t think the Trump administration, and perhaps even the Republicans in Congress, have the same sort of anxiety about shutdowns as earlier administrations,” said John Lawrence, who served as chief of staff to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California). “In effect, they have been conducting their own shutdowns for six or seven months.”

Lawrence, who is also a historian, said that while it is ostensibly congressional Republicans who are negotiating with Democrats, it is actually Trump who is calling the shots on the GOP side. And he does not have the same incentive to reach a deal as Republicans who face an election next year.

“The Congress is sidelined to some extent, even though it’s their role to come up with a solution,” Lawrence said. “It’s difficult to do that when the administration is in charge, and the administration is not feeling the heat. Far from it – I think Trump enjoys exercising the executive power.”

Several potential catalysts for a deal have been taken off the table. Trump recently ordered that paychecks be sent to military service members during the shutdown, removing a factor that Republicans hoped would force Democrats to back down.

Polls have yet to show voters overwhelmingly blaming one side or the other, so neither party faces pressure to change course. An Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday showed that 39 percent of Americans blame Trump and the GOP for the shutdown, while 33 percent fault the Democrats – a relatively small margin and one that has narrowed in recent days.

That split among the population at large leaves more clout in the hands of the impassioned believers on each side. “The bases of both parties are operating on nuclear energy right now,” said former congressman Steve Israel (D-New York). “That is where most of the activism and motivation is.”

All of this makes for a far different landscape from previous government closures.

The first major shutdown – a shock at the time – came in 1995, when a triumphant House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), who had recently led Republicans to control of the House for the first time in decades, demanded that President Bill Clinton agree to sweeping spending cuts.

But polls quickly showed that voters sided with Clinton and were worried about the excesses of the surging “Republican Revolution.” After three weeks of damaging headlines, the Republicans backed down.

In 2013, the government closed when Republicans tried to defund the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, and Democrats resisted. In the end, minor changes were made to the ACA, and the government reopened after 16 days.

The longest shutdown came in 2018-19, during Trump’s first term, when Trump insisted that Congress allot more than $5 billion for a wall on the southeastern border. As airline delays mounted and federal workers missed their second paycheck, Trump relented.

It is not clear he will be equally flexible this time around. More Americans are likely to feel the shutdown’s impact in coming weeks, as the lack of federal paychecks takes a bite from the economy and air traffic controllers continue working without pay. But Trump has taken a far more confrontational approach in his second term, and with Democrats determined to match his aggressiveness, neither side seems ready to soften.

Each successive shutdown appears to prompt less urgency from voters. Presidents have learned to limit the fallout by exempting various government functions as “essential services.” And since January, Americans have grown accustomed to roaring political battles that may make the shutdown feel like one more chapter in an unceasing drama.

“Neither side, in my opinion, thinks they are going to, quote, win,” Weber said. “They just think that losing would be unacceptable.”

Lawrence, the former Pelosi staffer, said he initially believed the dispute over whether to extend enhanced ACA subsidies – the ostensible reason for the shutdown – lent itself to a simple solution: extend the subsidies temporarily, until after the 2026 midterms. That is how such fights would have been resolved in the past, he said.

But he said he has concluded the White House is after something much bigger – not resolving one spending dispute, but establishing its right to control government funds in an unprecedented way.

“That’s really what makes this different – you have a new level of autonomous arrogance coming out of the White House,” Lawrence said. “I don’t mean that in a negative way. They see it as an opportunity to demonstrate how they have concentrated power. They are not going to give up very easily.”

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