One of the very sharpest lines in the television show Succession might well stand as an epitaph for the second term of a president known as Donald J. Trump. It occurs when Logan Roy, the megalomaniac owner and chief executive of the media conglomerate he founded, makes a rare visit to the broadcast newsroom floor, roaming silently and spreading terror throughout the staff sitting at their desks. Observing from an executive suite above, a wide-eyed Cousin Greg relays the scene as it unfolds.
“It’s like Jaws,” he says in horrified awe. “If everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws.”
It often seems as though Trump moves through US political waters with the instincts and remorselessness of a shark, never resting while his cabinet, lawmakers in Congress, conservative media movement and the entire Republican Party he has remoulded works for him without a word of dissent.
One of the unintended consequences of the current government shutdown, activated by a refusal of the Democrats to pass the Republican funding Bill before the clock struck October 1st, has revolved around the threat of mass federal lay-offs because of the shutdown.
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“It’s likely going to be in the thousands,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt predicted on Thursday when asked how many federal workers might lose their jobs.
“It’s a very good question. And that’s something that the office of management and budget and the entire team in the White House here is unfortunately having to work on today. These discussions and these meetings would not be happening if the Democrats had voted to keep the government open.”
On Wednesday, vice-president JD Vance offered much the same observation: that American government workers are going to lose their jobs because the Democrats, by shutting the federal offices down, gave president Trump the opportunity to hasten mass lay-offs. The irony of that fact seemed to escape everybody, even though it was made explicitly clear by president Trump himself in a Thursday posting on Truth Social, the president gleeful at the prospect.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent, I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly, and quickly, Make America Great Again.”
The background to the latest government shutdown revolves around the issue of the extension of the Affordable Care Act. But beneath it runs the tensions and themes of an issue largely defined by the results of the 2024 election: illegal immigration. The Republicans are adamant that the Democrats’ obstinacy on approving a Bill that they voted through in March is related to their wish to restore medical aid to undocumented workers or residents in the country.
There has, Vance said at Wednesday’s briefing, been “a lot of different spins” as to why the Democrats have taken this position now, rather than in March when Schumer and a minority of Democrats voted to extend fundjng until September.
“One answer is that they want to give healthcare benefits to illegal aliens. That is true. They gave us legislative text that would have undone us cutting off healthcare benefits for illegal aliens. That is one of the things that they ask for.”
Several Democrats have flatly accused their Republican counterparts of “lying” in this interpretation and are adamant that they cannot, in good conscience, approve a Bill that will drive the healthcare premiums up by 100%, resulting in an estimated 15 million citizens no longer being able to afford healthcare.
In other words, they claim they are doing the right thing and protecting Americans, irrespective of party allegiance. It could be argued that the politically savvy, if cynical, action would have been to allow the funding Bill to pass and for those premiums to land in the post boxes of millions of ordinary Americans.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that 19 million of the likely 24 million affected consumers live in states that voted for president Trump last year. Vance is dismissive of the Democratic claims that nothing in the constitution allows for undocumented people to receive medical aid, arguing that with the pandemic, they had turned on a “money spigot to healthcare funding for illegal aliens” and that “with the magic wand of amnesty came access to healthcare benefits”.
But Vance also forwarded another theory that has been advocated widely by prominent Republicans on all major networks since Wednesday: that Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader of the Senate who is leading this stand-off, is fighting for his political future.
“But the reality is and let’s be honest about the politics ... Chuck Schumer is terrified that he is going to get a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The reason why the American government is shut down is listening to the far-left radicals in his own party, is because he is terrified of a primary challenge.”
It’s no secret that one of the intrigues of the future of the Democrats revolves around the path of Ocasio-Cortez, its irrepressible star of the left. The New Yorker is 35 years old now: for her legion of supporters who wish for her a Senate seat or a tilt at the Oval Office, the question has always been: how soon is now?
But the Republican theory raises another question. Would so many Democratic senators vote to shut down the government, imperilling not just the upcoming pay packets but the actual jobs of “thousands” of federal workers, solely to help the 74-year-old Schumer fend off a challenge to his seat?
On Wednesday, Bernie Sanders posted a video taken outside the Capitol in which he jokingly pretended to run into Ocasio-Cortez while taking in the gorgeous autumn air. The pair posted a short video debunking the claims of political motivation. The duo has been one of the few sparks of life for the party since the election, drawing mass crowds on their ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tours.
The Republicans are as mystified as everyone else as to how the Democrats will regroup ahead of the 2028 election. Hitching its star to Ocasio-Cortez is one obvious route; aligning behind an established governor, with California’s Gavin Newsom having stolen a march on the other usual suspects, the other.
But for now, Ocasio-Cortez, with Sanders, was keen to stress the implications of passing the funding Bill in its current wording. Sanders quoted Yale and University of Pennsylvania studies suggesting that the combination of doubled health insurance premiums and 15 million losing health benefits will equate to 50,000 deaths annually. “So, Republicans want us to rubberstamp that. And we’re saying no,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
For now, Schumer’s gamble has had the curious effect of returning the spotlight to the Capitol for the first time since Trump took office simply because the chambers are not in session and the government machinery has ground to a halt.
He has vowed that his caucus will not yield on this. His Republican counterpart, John Thune, is holding a daily vote in the hope of attracting five breakaway Democrats needed to pass the Republican Bill. Meanwhile, thousands of federal workers are wondering if their careers are about to be struck out. The White House is insistent that any lay-offs will be compatible with its war on “wasted, fraud and abuse” and an inflated federal payroll.
Republicans insist that in private conversations, several Democrat senators are wavering about the wisdom of this stand.
“In 2013 we had a shutdown in very different circumstances,” Ted Cruz said on Tuesday night as he stood waiting for the elevator in the corridor outside the Senate chamber after a last-ditch vote had, inevitably, failed.
“This time even the media that agree with Chuck Schumer can’t dispute that it’s the Democrats who are causing the shutdown. Then eventually they will agree and the government will reopen.”
But as the shutdown enters its first weekend, another question is hanging over the silent Capitol – and a vast number of government staff.
What if they don’t?
