The government shutdown overnight for the first time since… Donald Trump’s last term. Elect rapist clowns, you get this circus. Republicans have control of the presidency, the House of Representatives (219-213) and the Senate (53-47). Donald Trump currently has a 43% approval rating and his authoritarian “policies” are widely unpopular. Republicans are simply incompetent, too incompetent to challenge a weak, unpopular, batsh-t crazy president. Too incompetent to actually run a functioning government.
The US government shut down on Wednesday, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican plan to extend funding for federal departments unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.
The GOP, which controls the Senate and the House of Representatives, repudiated their demands, setting off a legislative scramble that lasted into the hours before funding lapsed at midnight, when the Senate failed to advance both parties’ bills to keep funding going.
The shutdown is the first since a 35-day closure that began in December 2018 and extended into the new year, during Trump’s first term. It comes as Democrats look to regain their footing with voters, who re-elected Trump last year and relegated them to the minority in both chambers of Congress.
“Republicans are plunging America into a shutdown, rejecting bipartisan talks, pushing a partisan bill and risking America’s healthcare,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday evening, as it became clear a shutdown was inevitable.
Last month, House Republicans passed a bill that would fund the government through 21 November, but it requires the support of some Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. It failed to gain that support in votes held late on Tuesday, while Republicans also blocked a Democratic proposal to continue funding through October while also making an array of policy changes.
“Far-left interest groups and far-left Democrat members wanted to show down with the president, and so Senate Democrats have sacrificed the American people to Democrats’ partisan interests,” Senate majority leader John Thune said.
Yeah… again, Republicans have the majority in both chambers of Congress. It’s not Democrats’ fault that the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House can’t whip votes to save their lives. If they want Senate Democrats to vote for any kind of Continuing Resolution, the Republicans have to make some concessions. That’s the way the bipartisan government works. In any case, the White House Office of Management and Budget blasted out an unhinged email across all agencies, blaming the shutdown on Democrats entirely. Morons.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- President Donald Trump gives remarks as he departs the White House Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 11 Sep 2025 Credit: Aaron Schwartz/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- President Donald Trump gives remarks as he departs the White House Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 11 Sep 2025 Credit: Aaron Schwartz/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- UNGA 80 Plenary Meeting General Debate taking place at the UN headquarters in New York with the theme: Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights Featuring: Donald Trump Where: New York City, New York, United States When: 23 Sep 2025 Credit: Niyi Fote/TheNews2/Cover Images
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- United States President Donald J Trump awaits the arrival Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu of Israel as he arrives at the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 29 September 2025. President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are due to meet in the Oval Office to discuss the peace process in Gaza and then participate in a joint press conference Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 29 Sep 2025 Credit: CNP/INSTARimages
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- United States President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu of Israel participate in a joint press conference in the State Dining Room of the White Housee Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 29 Sep 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
Have you seen the official HUD homepage? It has a bright red notice that reads “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need.” Everyone is calling it out for being a violation of the Hatch Act, but SCOTUS lets Trump do whatever he wants so nothing will happen.
Exactly. None of this is normal, appropriate, or legal. Sadly there is a generation growing up thinking that it is.
Because I feel powerless, I daydream of a reckoning for the fascists, a true reckoning. Finally doing Reconstruction, essentially, and not the half-butted version they did in the 1860s and 1870s, but a true tearing down to the bones, punishments where they are warranted.
My husband is convinced that NOT punishing the leaders of the confederacy has brought us to where we are today
This is the current Republican playbook, that even predates Trump. They were doing it during the Obama years under Mitch McConnell and John boehner. Expect Democrats to vote with Republicans, without any concessions because they are the” adults”. Republicans will never vote with Democrats and if they do they must get all the concessions.
This in turn pisses off constituents that don’t like the things that get cut, or the laws that get passed even if it does keep the government running. Democrats get blamed for the government being shut down, and then super online blame the Democrats for not having better “messaging”.
It goes back to Newt Gingrich in the nineties. He shut down the government to try to extort Bill Clinton on the budget.
Oh yeah I remember. I was in middle school and we had a mock American government to decide classroom things. Contract with America my ass.
People who are too young or weren’t very interested in politics back in the day probably don’t realize that it is Newt Gingrich who really started this new (now 30 year) era of obstruction on the part of the republicans. They all started using his playbook as time went on and when Obama became president it went into overdrive.
Honestly, as much as I loathe them, I can’t even blame the Republicans bc their playbook has worked multiple times before. The Democrats are the adults in the room and the Rs know that and behave accordingly. Here, the Dems will cave in one way or another bc they know the importance of keeping the government running so then it will be played as the Dems “gave in” so the government could keep running.
i’m a fed but we’re excepted so I’ll keep working and then get paid down the road, which sucks. My agency had separate funding in 2018 so that shutdown did not affect us at all, but the one in 2013 did. I got annoyed with that one bc we initially were not excepted, so we were furloughed, Then after 5-7 days they brought us back bc they realized it was a big problem having my component shut down indefinitely. But it bugged me because it felt like people only realized what we did when we stopped doing it. Either my work has value or it doesnt.
I say shut the whole thing down. No one cares when everything still works for the majority of citizens. If you take away checks, Medicare, air traffic controllers, etc. That is when people wake up. This mess lays at the feet of Republicans who have zero negotiation skills. If their ideas are so great then it should have been easy to get Democrats on board. Democrats are not obstructionists. If they don’t sign on, it’s because the plan sucks.
He doesn’t care about anything but himself, money and talking shit on social media. The last government shutdown was for 30 days when who was in office? Yup Humpty Dumpty here. I’ll sign off with my usual: the country is screwed.
That Guardian article is terrible. I’m sure other media are just as bad, but the Guardian is making it sound like the Democrats are making all sorts of unreasonable demands. The fact is that the Affordable Care Act subsidies are expiring along with the CR. The Republicans are refusing to renew the subsidies. The Democrats will not support any CR which does not extend the subsidies because not extending the subsidies will cause millions of Americans’ health care premiums to sky rocket, in some cases to double. The Republicans are using the blame for a government shutdown to kill the Affordable Care Act. And the media is helping them by not explaining what is actually happening. 🤯
THANK YOU! THIS!
I think part of the problem is that health care in this country is extremely complex and most of us don’t know how our own healthcare works, let alone the healthcare of our neighbors. I am glad the democrats are fighting form something, but they could have made a much better case by saying “We won’t fund the government until the troops are out of our cities.” or “We won’t fund the government until ICE stops disappearing our neighbors.” or “We’re not giving this pedophile another dime until the Epstein files are released.” They could make demands on healthcare, but the pitch should be to stop funding something else that is wildly unpopular, easy to understand, and morally indefensible. The pitch for what they’re doing should never include the words “co-pay” or “subsidies”…people hear those words and it’s Charlie Brown adult voice all the way.
One comms consultant I follow suggests “No dollars for dictatorship” or “No funds for fascism” which are both simple and straightforward and would make good protest chants. Talk about healthcare all you want, but put a snappy slogan up front (sort of like “Make America Great Again”) so people will listen. This is comms 101 and the democratic consultants are failing.
Sorry, but no. A big increase in health care premiums with open enrollment just days away is a much more immediate crisis for millions of people. This is the correct message. Millions are going to lose their health care! Is that a snappy enough slogan?
This is the perfect encapsulation of my comment above. Republicans are the ones that are trying to increase premiums by a thousand percent and make even the most basic health care out of reach for most Americans, and Democrats messaging is yet again the actual problem. At some point we have to stop treating people like they’re morons. Snappy slogans shouldn’t be what you need to pay attention to the fact that on Monday your copay will be $35 and your medicine will be a dollar and on Friday your copay will be $300 and your medicine $1,000. Democrats have very clearly stated why they are fighting and what’s to be lost. If that doesn’t have enough sparklers and balloons at some point we have to acknowledge that’s the fault of the person that’s not paying attention.
Look, I don’t disagree with you on the merits. I’m not talking about policy here. I’m talking about communicating that policy to voters who are busy, scared, and frustrated with democratic leadership for not taking the situation we’re in seriously enough.
I work in nonprofit comms, and I have seen time and time again that even with people who are extremely well educated and motivated to know about your issue, simple slogans work. It’s not dumbing things down to acknowledge that our brains like sound bites. We can and should use simple slogans to draw people into our messaging. The best comms grabs attention with slogans and THEN gets into the details once you’ve got their attention.
Republicans play this game WAY better than democrats. Of course, they have no details and rely entirely on slogans which is maddening.
When everything feels like a five alarm emergency, launching into an explainer about subsidies — even though I agree, they are extremely important! — is not going to get your message across as fast as your competition who is expressing the very simple message that democrats shut the government down. It’s not fair or logical or right. But it is how humans work. And lots of people will see through the nonsense, but we don’t need lots of people. We need a groundswell.
Yeah, I agree with @salmonpuff. the Dems get KILLED on messaging. It doesnt mean the Rs are right, or that the Dems policy goals are wrong, but we have been getting killed on messaging for ages now.
@Dee2 said “At some point we have to stop treating people like they’re morons. Snappy slogans shouldn’t be what you need.”
but the honest truth is that a lot of Americans ARE morons. A lot of Americans DO respond to snappy slogans. A lot of people see a headline and that’s it. They see the quote about Hillary Clinton calling Trump supporters deplorables and don’t bother to read the entire quote.
I think the healthcare premium issue is important and I think Dems can win on it, but they’ve been playing defense for the past few weeks once Rs launched the whole “Dems want illegals to get healthcare” talking point.
I think part of the issue is that Rs are not afraid to lie in their messaging -and why should they be, no one ever calls them out on it. So they just lie and then Dems have to play defense to get around that lie and its never going to catch on the way the lie did.
Also, I’ll add that I don’t think it should be like this. I think that saying “we don’t want your healthcare premiums to increase” should be a winning message. But unfortunately it doesnt seem to be.
In SM, the only one out there trolling and challenging MAGAs is Newsom. And hes getting a lot of attention(views, clicks and likes).
Not just HUD but the whitehouse.gov is in disgusting shambles. They have videos of Democrats describing “their shutdown in their own words” and a big note saying, “Democrats have shut down the government. Americans don’t agree with democrats’ actions” Like Dems aren’t Americans. It’s appalling and terrifying.
And the sad part is, the cult will believe it’s not their party who is screwing them. They will believe anything their cult leader says and even if Democrats put all of the evidence right in front of them they’d say FAKE NEWWWWS.
I hate it here.
MAGAs are still just a loud minority in this country. The people who didn’t even bother to vote this last election are actually now pretty psst off. They didn’t vote for Kamala and sat it out, but now they’re seeing for themselves this country is heading the wrong direction 🤦♀️. Many people I know are already feeling a recession coming and they’re blaming the Repubs.