Shutdown: Sometimes I Think It’s a Sin

Like a big old abscess, the shutdown is coming to a head.

First, the whole situation around SNAP is massively confused. A little after the 9:30 PM yesterday deadline Trump gave them, it appeared that the grossly corrupt Supreme Court blocked a lower court ruling that would have required that SNAP benefits be paid in full. It turns out that was an administrative ruling by Judge Jackson for some reason I don’t understand. Earlier yesterday, I got a breaking news alert that SNAP would be paid in full per the USDA. I also saw a clip of Josh Shapiro claiming that Pennsylvania had drawn down the full amount of their SNAP appropriation from the feds, so who knows if people are going to get paid. The confusion is part of the Republican stragedy here, but I don’t know how it could be any more obvious that Trump is A-OK with people starving.

Second, Sean Duffy announced that the FAA is requiring the airlines to cancel flights because there aren’t enough unpaid Air Traffic Controllers around, so at least 1,000 flights have been cancelled. I think these bozos believe that, polling and recent election notwithstanding, folks are going to blame Democrats for missing their flight home to grandma’s for Thanksgiving. I doubt that’s the case. (They will probably, at worst, have a “pox on all of their houses” attitude.) These flight cancellations will put even more pressure on Congress to do something. As Kay noted a while back, even billionaires need to use ATC when they fly in their private jets.

Finally, Chuck Schumer tried his best today to end the shutdown by offering to do a clean CR if ACA tax breaks were extended for a year. This was immediately rejected by Republicans, even though it was probably the very least that Schumer could ask for. The one-year timing would make it a big issue before the 2026 election. On Bluesky, there was an eruption of anger over Schumer making the offer, where it was characterized as him caving. Senate Gabe, a former Senate staffer, made the point that since the government was shut down over the ACA tax breaks, it’s not like the Democrats had made other demands like ending recission or stopping ICE.

I guess I’ll give Schumer a tiny break here: if he was able to get something, anything from Republicans to end the shutdown, it would be at least a tiny win. The issue is that Republicans are incapable of striking any bargain because Trump doesn’t want them to. He’s decided that he can rule like a king and can’t brook any type of compromise with Democrats. We’re also pushing two months of the House being out of session to avoid releasing the Epstein files, and it’s unclear if amnesiac Mike Johnson ever wants the House to be in session again. He might have forgotten that it’s his job.

In non-shutdown news, late yesterday a Trump-appointed federal judge permanently enjoined the Trump administration from sending National Guard to Portland. This will probably be overturned at some point by the Supremes but it’s still another piece of bad news for Trump.

One of the more amusing parts of the whole drama is watching Trump bang the table to have the Senate roll back the filibuster to pass a clean CR. They’re pretty much ignoring him because they know that the filibuster is their friend. As someone who would directly be harmed if the ACA tax credits aren’t re-instated, the Republicans voting out the filibuster to pass a clean CR would be fine by me, because the Democrats will have to do it if they are really going to prevent another lawless Trump-like government. And I don’t think they will.