Congressional MAGA Republicans and the Trump administration want you to believe that the looming government shutdown will be the fault of Democrats, which, not true.
Republicans have the votes to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open; all they have to do is blow up the Senate filibuster.
The filibuster – which requires 60 votes to allow a vote on a measure in the Senate – isn’t in the Constitution, isn’t in a federal law; it’s just a Senate rule.
Now, neither party in power has wanted to push the nuclear button getting rid of the rule, because everybody knows that the political pendulum swings back and forth and back again, and obliterating the filibuster means, you can’t use it when you’re back in the minority, which is inevitable.
Getting rid of the filibuster means you only need 51 votes in the Senate to pass a continuing resolution; Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
Instead of going the nuclear route, we have Donald Trump blaming Democrats for being “unreasonable,” without saying what they were being unreasonable about.
This, after Trump canceled a scheduled meeting with top congressional Democrats on Tuesday, calling their demands – which, again, he isn’t characterizing what exactly here – are “unserious and ridiculous.”
He then took to social media to assert that Dems want to “force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors,” an oddball statement that even the MAGAs in Congress have backed away from, because that nonsense doesn’t do anything to incentivize Democrats to negotiate.
To their credit, Dems have been consistent in demanding that the new budget undo the trillions in cuts to healthcare that were the key feature of the bill signed by Trump on July 4.
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“We have an alternative that we think is a good alternative, and not just for Democrats, but for Republicans, too. It’s directly responsive to some concerns that Republican members had raised about healthcare cuts, and our leadership asked for the chance to meet with the president, and the president accepted the meeting on Sunday, and then said now he refuses to meet,” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told reporters in a Thursday media call.
Kaine said his Democratic colleagues assume that Trump “wants a shutdown,” without knowing the endgame – though some are speculating about a possible link to the top military brass meeting called by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for early next week.
The meeting, according to reporting from The Washington Post, involves “all senior officers with the rank of brigadier general or above, or their Navy equivalent, serving in command positions and their top enlisted advisers.”
The all-hands-on-deck meeting, highly unusual, to say the least, is scheduled for Tuesday, which is the deadline for Congress to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded and thus operational.
Is the aim with having top brass fly in from all over the globe on short notice – and no reason given – to present a show of political power?
Maybe it’s just a purge, and the timing is coincidental.
Hey, maybe Hegseth just needs everybody to update their emergency contacts, and he figured this was the best way to do it.
Any case, back to the original premise of this piece, that Republicans could just pass their continuing resolution without Democrats by sandblasting the Senate filibuster – so, why not do that?
There’s certainly an element of, we want to be able to use the filibuster to obstruct down the road.
I think there’s something else at play here, too, though.
The generals meeting, the threats to fire federal workers – those are empty threats; the administration is already hiring back thousands who took the dumb DOGE buyouts – it’s all about trying to pressure Democrats to agree to a budget that guts their priorities with healthcare, to neutralize a campaign issue in the 2026 midterms.
For all the hue and cry from my friends on the left about how we’re already in a dictatorship, and we’re never going to have another election – Trump and his circle are keenly aware that they can’t lose the House next year, because losing the House means subpoenas for everybody who has been getting filthy rich from the Trump 47 grift train.
Lose the House and the Senate, and it’s, game over.
Passing the budget with all Republican votes is signing one’s own political death warrant; they need Democrats to capitulate.
It’s not an unwise strategy, honestly – Democratic leaders, to this point in Trump 2.0, haven’t done much more than send carefully considered, strongly worded letters expressing their mild displeasure, with all due solemnity and gratitude.
How this is going to play out: the government is going to shut down, and then, eventually, they’ll come to some compromise.
And the generals and admirals and such – the ones who don’t get purged – will have updated their emergency contacts.
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Chris Graham
