It’s Day Two of the government shutdown. It’s difficult to see real movement toward a resolution to the standoff anytime soon.
The Senate isn’t voting today in observance of Yom Kippur. Senators will vote again Friday on both the House-passed Nov. 21 stopgap funding bill and the Democratic counter-proposal. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer may meet Friday, their first one-on-one sitdown during this standoff.
This is new: If Democrats block the GOP’s stopgap funding measure again on Friday, Thune will send senators home for the weekend and then force another vote Monday. That means no Saturday votes as originally planned.
There are some informal bipartisan talks centering around Democrats’ chief demand: an extension of the Obamacare enhanced premium tax credits. We took you inside that big bipartisan Senate floor huddle in Wednesday’s Midday edition.
But they’re just that — talks. Party leaders aren’t directly involved. There’s no Senate “gang” to break the deadlock. And the fundamentals of the showdown haven’t changed.
Democrats say they can’t trust Republicans and the White House to clinch a bipartisan deal on Obamacare subsidies without a forcing mechanism. Republicans maintain that negotiations can’t take place until the government is reopened. Even then, getting Hill Republicans on board with an Obamacare deal would be a major challenge, with conservatives opposing any extension. Which brings us back to square one — Democrats’ desire for a guarantee that Thune simply can’t give them.
Additionally, President Donald Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought’s aggressive moves targeting infrastructure and energy projects in blue states are backfiring. Democrats are digging in deeper. If the White House goes ahead with mass layoffs of federal employees, that could drive wobbly Senate Democrats away from the GOP CR and toward Schumer.
Inside Schumer’s thinking. Republicans say Schumer is simply playing to the far left to fend off a primary challenge from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2028.
It’s difficult to imagine that Schumer isn’t at least thinking about that, given the long arc of progressives’ anger at him for folding during the March funding fight. But in reality, Schumer’s top priority is the 2026 midterms — and shoring up his standing for the Democratic Caucus leadership elections that will follow soon after.
“I obviously ended up in a different place than leadership in March, but I understood it was a very tough call. I don’t think it’s a tough call this time,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said.
For now, Schumer is reflecting the will of his caucus. While Democrats aren’t necessarily happy with a shutdown, they’re reasonably satisfied with where things stand — at least publicly. Schumer’s shutdown strategy has the backing of progressives, moderates, vulnerable in-cycle Democrats and even those senators representing states with a large population of federal workers.
“Schumer and Thune are talking about what would it take to re-open government, what are Democrats’ concerns about health care costs,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), known as a bipartisan dealmaker. “This is not going to be easy to solve. But our caucus is united, and Schumer is leading well in this moment.”
“It’s not just that there’s a plan, it’s that if we care about our constituents, then let’s show them that,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said when asked about Schumer’s endgame.
Dangers ahead. Yet Wednesday’s massive Senate floor huddle could be a sign some Democrats are already looking for a way out of the shutdown mess. There are Democrats who fear Schumer doesn’t have a real plan for ending the standoff, citing his unsuccessful bid to eliminate the legislative filibuster in 2022 and his March funding strategy as examples of previous missteps.
And there are real concerns about how a shutdown harms average Americans. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), one of three Democrats now backing the GOP CR, made clear this week that she didn’t want any part of that.
“That just shows you how ridiculous the arguments are on both sides that they’re willing to harm Americans,” Cortez Masto told reporters.
But as of now, Cortez Masto is an outlier and there were no new Democratic defections.
There are several risks for Schumer the longer this drags on. The first is that he suffers a March-like shellacking from the Democratic base if he folds with nothing to show for it — especially if the shutdown lasts a while and progressives are primed to believe Schumer is in it for the long haul.
GOP leaders also are very comfortable with the argument they’re making — Democrats must vote to reopen the government before anything else can be discussed. However, it’s difficult to see Thune agreeing to something significant enough that Democratic leaders could latch onto to justify voting for a CR.
Even if Schumer is able to point to some sort of victory — whether on Obamacare subsidies or something else — there’s a significant faction of the Democratic Caucus that opposes funding “Trump’s government” at all. It’s the same problem Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had with conservatives during his tenure as GOP leader.
Take Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), for example. Ossoff is the most vulnerable in-cycle Democrat but is fully behind Schumer’s strategy. Ossoff sidestepped questions about Schumer, instead pivoting to Trump.
“The president needs to be in the room right now with congressional leaders,” Ossoff told us. “They have the White House, they have the Senate, they have the House. This is a question of presidential leadership.”
Also: In a sign of the pressure Schumer is facing from the base, the progressive group MoveOn is mobilizing a large-scale call campaign to urge Senate Democrats to continue opposing the GOP CR.
