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In It to Win It

(11,565 posts) Sun Sep 7, 2025, 12:22 PM Sep 7

Stop Acting Like This Is Normal - Ezra Klein @ NYT

In about three weeks, the government’s funding will run out. Democrats will face a choice: Join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.

Democrats faced a version of this choice back in March. DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, was chain-sawing its way through the government. Civil servants were being fired left and right. Government grants and payments were being choked off and reworked into tools of political power and punishment. Trump was signing executive orders demanding the investigation — I would say, the persecution — of his enemies. He had announced shocking tariffs on Mexico and Canada. We were in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. And Democrats seemed completely overwhelmed and outmatched.

I often heard people complain that Democrats lacked a message. What Democrats really lacked was power. They didn’t have the House or the Senate, but they did have one sliver of leverage: To fund the government, Senate Republicans needed Democratic votes. And not just one or two. They needed at least seven Democrats to reach that magic 60-vote threshold. House Democrats wanted a shutdown. But Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, didn’t. He voted for the funding bill and encouraged a crucial number of his colleagues to do the same. The bill passed.

To many Democrats, this seemed insane. Some began openly calling for Schumer to resign or face a primary challenge. This was Democrats’ first real opportunity to fight back against Trump, and they had folded. What were they good for?

when team no fight / centrist dems lose Ezra Klein â€¦.
— Leah Litman (@leahlitman.bsky.social) 2025-09-07T13:18:52.403Z

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Stop Acting Like This Is Normal - Ezra Klein @ NYT (Original Post) In It to Win It Sep 7 OP

Sure hope the Dems have a plan. poli-junkie Sep 7 #1

But the bill that passed back in March funding the government runs out at the end of this month. And so we're facing the Celerity Sep 7 #2

Is that directed at the NYTs ? JI7 Sep 7 #3

Touche senseandsensibility Sep 7 #5

Interesting to see his name attached to this newdeal2 Sep 7 #4

poli-junkie

(1,396 posts)

1. Sure hope the Dems have a plan.

Reply to In It to Win It (Original post)

Sun Sep 7, 2025, 02:37 PM

Sep 7

Celerity

(52,109 posts)

2. But the bill that passed back in March funding the government runs out at the end of this month. And so we're facing the

Reply to In It to Win It (Original post)

Sun Sep 7, 2025, 02:50 PM

Sep 7

question again: Should Senate Democrats partner with Senate Republicans to fund this government? I don’t see how they can.

Not a single argument Schumer made then is valid now. First, Trump is not losing in the Supreme Court, which has weighed in again and again on his behalf. Instead of reprimanding Trump for his executive order unilaterally erasing the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to all born here, it reprimanded the lower courts for imposing a national freeze on his order in the way they did. It has shown him extraordinary deference to the way he is exercising power. I recently asked Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, what powers the recent Supreme Court decisions seem to grant Trump that Barack Obama or Joe Biden just didn’t think they had when they were president.

Here’s what she said: “Refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. Remove heads of independent agencies protected by statute from summary firing. Fire civil servants without cause. Dismantle federal agencies. Call up the National Guard on the thinnest of pretexts. That’s a preliminary half-dozen powers.” Obama and Biden, she added, “didn’t think they had the power to disregard statutes passed by Congress and the text of the Constitution. They didn’t think they had the power to do things like treat the presidency as an office that permits its occupant to use the power of the state to reward friends and punish enemies and engage in self-dealing and enrichment.”

Schumer’s argument in March was that the courts were stopping Trump; let them do their work. What we can say in September is that no, John Roberts is not going to stop Donald Trump. Second, the scale of DOGE’s assault on the government has shrunk. Trump and Elon Musk went through a messy and public breakup. But the real reason it didn’t continue, I suspect, is that it’s Trump appointees running these agencies now. They don’t want their own agencies wrecked. They don’t want to be blamed for the failures that might result. They need staff. And either way, the Supreme Court has given Trump vast power to reshape the federal work force in the way he chooses. He doesn’t need a shutdown to do it.

Third, the markets have settled into whatever this new normal is, at least for now. Trump’s tariffs are unpopular, but what damage they have done to him politically they have already done or they will do over time, as price increases squeeze Americans. We are not in a recession. The economy is not in chaos. Democrats cannot stand back and hope the markets will do their work for them. But something else has changed, too. We are no longer in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. We are in the authoritarian consolidation stage of this presidency.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/opinion/trump-senate-democrats-shutdown.html