Yes, Stop Pretending This is Normal
Shut it down. But be smart about it.
"A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down; but a revolutionary age… leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance.” — Søren Kierkegaard
It’s September 2025. The president has declared a national emergency to deport migrants and order extrajudicial killings; he imposes taxes and deploys troops by emergency decree; the Supreme Court greenlights his usurpations via its emergency docket. Perhaps it’s time for congressional Democrats to recognize that this is not remotely business as usual, and begin to behave like it.
Almost like it’s an emergency.
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Shut it down this time?
Let’s connect some dots:
Via Axios: Even as Trump blasts through the confines of democratic rule: “MAGA dreams of greater power grabs on a shrinking timetable.”
On every political front, the movement is pressing for more — now.
This includes Russell Vought’s call to abolish the Government Accountability Office, and to eliminate the entire notion of independent federal agencies; more aggressive gerrymandering to ensure GOP control of Congress; the abolition of “blue slips” for judicial nominations; calls for military deployments everywhere; and suggestions that courts that block Trump simply be abolished and defiant judges prosecuted.
Meanwhile, hopes that the Supreme Court would be a meaningful check on Trump’s march toward authoritarianism, are vanishing by the day.
Which brings us to Congress.
On Sunday, Ezra Klein urged Senate Democrats to Stop Acting Like This Is Normal. “In a few weeks the government’s funding will run out,” he wrote. “If Democrats vote for a new spending bill, they will be funding Trump’s autocratic takeover — and I don’t see how they can.”
Under Senate rules, Trump and the GOP will need seven Democratic votes to reach the 60 vote threshold needed to keep the lights on. Klein draws the redline here: “Joining Republicans to fund this government is worse than failing at opposition. It’s complicity.”
Democrats faced a similar choice in March and ultimately decided not to shut down the government. (And, at the time, I thought that this was probably the right decision.)1
But, as Klein noted, the world has changed since then. “We are no longer in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency,” writes Klein. “We are in the authoritarian consolidation stage of this presidency.”
I want to be very clear about what I am saying here. Donald Trump is corrupting the government — he is using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power. He is corrupting it the way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled. You could still, under Mafia rule, get the trash picked up or buy construction materials. But the point of those industries had become the preservation and expansion of the Mafia’s power and wealth. This is what Trump is doing to the government. This is what Democrats cannot fund. This is what they have to try to stop.
I agree, but with some major caveats. If, indeed, Democrats refuse to keep Trump’s government funded, they cannot merely scratch their ideological id to relieve their frustrations. They must have a clear message and a clear goal. This means that they must (1) clearly explain what they are fighting for, (2) pick a winning issue, and (3) have an exit strategy.
While he is sounding the proper alarm, Klein doesn’t seem to have those plans.
“Democrats would have to pick a small set of policies and stick to that, ”writes Klein. “They would have to choose those policies wisely. They would have to hold the line even when it got tough.”
OK, but what are these hills he wants to die on? And how confident is Klein that any of this is a good idea? “I am not certain that Democrats can win a shutdown—I am not certain that they have the leaders that they need,” he admits.
But Democrats will either pull the trigger or they won’t. And every day the pressure is mounting against another cave-in. So the details matter. A lot.
This is what Josh Marshall is talking about when he warns that Democrats need to “get the wording right.” They need to articulate what they are negotiating for. Marshall has some suggestions:
What should they demand? I would class them all under the package heading of Ending Dictator Rule. Trump has to follow the Constitution if he wants Democrats’ help. Three broad areas to target are: 1) Forcing Trump to get Congress to pass a law making his tariffs legal 2) Force him to end his rescissions and make him follow the congressionally passed budget. 3) End the invasions of American cities.
Yes on all points. But, let’s be honest. This may be a noble fight, but it’s not one that the Democrats are likely to win.
Do I have a better idea? No. But I think Matt Yglesias might: “The base is itching for a fight, but Democrats need to pick a winning fight — that means focusing a government funding debate on expiring health care subsidies.” He expanded that argument here:
The solution is to pick a winnable fight on a specific issue — ideally an issue that Democratic challengers in the midterms are comfortable with.
Health care is that issue. Former President Joe Biden increased the generosity of the subsidies available for families to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. That saves money directly for those families, but it also benefits people like me, who buy unsubsidized plans, because it expands the risk pool.
The Kaiser Family Foundation calculates that if the subsidies lapse, out-of-pocket costs will rise by a staggering 75% for the average family. That’s awful enough that Republicans might actually give in and do what Democrats are asking for, allowing Schumer and the Democratic leadership to tell the base that not only did they fight Trump — they won.
Of course, Republicans might also stick to their guns and the government will shut down. What happens then is anyone’s guess, but at least Democrats would have a quick and easy explanation of what it is they are fighting for: not a total rollback of the Trump presidency, but a concrete win for Americans’ pocketbooks.
Your thoughts?
Nota bene
The Trump letter makes the birthday book inherently newsworthy. But it is far from the most disturbing or lecherous of the book’s contents. A section titled “Brooklyn” includes recollections of Epstein’s horrible sexual escapades, apparently including making a maid watch people have sex and holding a knife up while telling women to take off their swimsuits on a boat—a story told in the book under the heading “Girls on My Boat.”
Given what we know about Epstein’s sex crimes, including his sex crimes against minors, the birthday book is a sickening document.
Over its 238 pages, Epstein’s friends, “girlfriends,” and business acquaintances offer lurid tributes to the pedophilic multimillionaire in the form of acrostic poems, drawings, and letters extolling him as “a liver, a lover,” and, affectionately, the “Degenerate One.” Individual contributions vary but it is the sheer volume of sexual references and jokes that ends up being most shocking. So much so that I suggest you read the document yourself.
**
Kamala Harris on Biden’s decision to run again. (Gift link)
(An excerpt from her forthcoming book appears in The Atlantic.)
[Of] all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win.
“It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.” We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized.
Was it grace, or was it recklessness?
In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.
The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.
Exit take: Wowza.
**
The enshittification of CBS is way worse than you thought. Via Oliver Darcy:
On Monday, David Ellison’s Paramount named Weinstein the new ombudsman of CBS News, charged with reviewing complaints about the news division. While Weinstein tried to sanitize his digital footprint by deleting his X account, the internet is forever and an online paper trail remains—one that is devoid of any journalism expertise, but reveals a staunch conservative and vocal Trump supporter….
Weinstein also made his political preferences clear ahead of the 2024 election. Speaking on a panel in October, Weinstein fiercely advocated for Trump to win reelection. Meanwhile, he declared that he was “concerned about a [Kamala] Harris presidency,” describing her prospective administration as “a team that preferred often times to make preemptive concessions to our adversaries rather than to show signs of strength.” The possibility they could be in positions of power, he added, “really worries me.”
Weinstein hasn’t hidden his contempt for the press either. In late 2024, he tweeted: “Could the presence of one righteous man [Tony Dokoupil] save [CBS News] from utter condemnation?”—a jab tied to Dokoupil’s contentious interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates. In 2015, the Hudson Institute honored right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch. During a speech at the event, Weinstein gushed that he was “so pleased” to present the award to the Fox News owner, calling Murdoch a “revolutionary” who had “transformed global media”—never mind the toxic waste that Murdoch’s properties have dumped into the public information environment.
Wednesday dogs
The thing about dogs is that they never forget what truly matters.
This is what I wrote back then:
Remember: charging into the guns is not the same as victory; and a tactical retreat is not the same as surrender. Sometimes it’s the smartest play available.
In this case, the options were atrocious. The House GOP CR is a partisan mess and an extraordinary surrender of Congressional power (over tariffs) to the president. It was a poison pill wrapped in a shit sandwich.
But — and I really hate to write this — the alternative was worse, because Trump/Musk would love nothing more than to shut down the government that they are in the process of dismantling. And, as Schumer notes, there was no clear exit from a shutdown… no plausible way to “win”.
Worse, it would have allowed Trump/Musk to change the subject at the very time they are digging their own very deep hole.
Shut down the government now. They want to abolish everything our country stands for. My family members who shed blood for their country would be mortified to see what our country has become. I am in contact with my senators and congressman and they are doing what they need to stop this power grab. Pretty ironic that Republicans accused Democrats to cheating yet they do it right out in the open. Time to vote all these idiots out of office and take back our country. They want a dictatorship go to Russia or anywhere but here,
Just resist, but remember, Aileen Cannon in Florida, then John Roberts Immunity decision, then the picture is clear and damning, may they go to hell.