This is day three of the government shutdown. There’s no deal in sight to end this crisis.
We sat down with Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Thursday afternoon. We’ll have more from that interview in a moment.
The state of play. The Senate will vote today for the fourth time on the GOP’s Nov. 21 stopgap funding bill, as well as the Democratic counteroffer. Both are expected to fail, and senators will head home for the weekend. Thune has said the Senate will try again Monday. Informal bipartisan talks on Obamacare subsidies are continuing.
Speaker Mike Johnson will also bring the House back on Monday. That’s going to dial up the temperature of the partisan showdown dramatically. The House hasn’t voted since Sept. 19, a shockingly long break considering what’s going on in Washington.
Plus, the threat by President Donald Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought to enact mass layoffs will add more fuel to the shutdown fire, especially after the administration canceled billions of dollars of federal funding for energy and infrastructure projects in blue states.
There’s one more point to consider: the impact of this crisis is both immediate and cumulative. Things get worse the longer the stalemate goes on. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers were furloughed immediately once the shutdown, a huge blow for them and their families. Reduced or discontinued public services – and how that affects the American public – will become more pronounced with each passing day.
What Thune told us. It’s almost as if Thune is trying to box out Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
In our interview, Thune wasn’t sure whether he’d meet with Schumer later today, which the South Dakota Republican previously indicated was possible. The reason? As we wrote in Thursday’s PM edition, Thune told us he believes the path out of the shutdown runs through rank-and-file Senate Democrats — not Schumer.
Yet this remains an exceedingly difficult situation. The vast majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus wants an Obamacare subsidy extension tied to any bill to reopen the government. Some want even more than that. Thune says he won’t give in on any of these demands. Democrats must vote to re-open the government first.
“Once you start conceding to demands on shutdowns, every time we get up against a deadline, you’re gonna have another shutdown,” Thune said.
For the Democrats who may be willing to accept less than an Obamacare deal to re-open the government — a specific commitment from Thune or a framework for negotiations in writing — that would mean bucking their own leadership and party base. Thune said he gets how hard that is. Already, three Senate Democrats have done so. At least five more would be needed to pass the GOP CR.
Yet for this group, Thune simply can’t guarantee that an Obamacare deal will materialize after the government opens. The issue splits Thune’s conference and has even less support among House Republicans. However, a lapse in the ACA subsidies — and the resulting premium hikes — would be felt by millions of Obamacare enrollees. That’s a major liability for the GOP heading into 2026.
Where Thune and Schumer agree, however, is that Trump’s direct involvement is necessary to spur an Obamacare deal. If Trump wants it, Republicans will fall in line, the thinking goes.
“If there’s a conversation that involves the White House, the president’s involved and he’s driving it, maybe there’s a path forward there,” Thune said. “But I just don’t think we can even get there until we open up the government.”
Speaking of the president… He’s nowhere to be found on the Obamacare discussions. Meanwhile, Trump and Vought are actively making it harder for Congress to get out of this mess.
Thune tried to argue that the White House’s withholding of funding for projects in blue states should be pushing Democrats to vote for the House-passed CR and end the shutdown quickly.
But Vought’s moves are having the opposite effect, hardening Democrats’ resolve to drag this out. These actions further upend the balance of power between the two branches and set a precedent for future administrations. Thune downplayed that risk and said Democrats knew exactly what they were getting into.
“If Trump believes he’s going to get Democrats’ attention with some of the decisions about how he and his team manage the shutdown, that’s now baked in. It’s a reality of where we are. To me, it’s why we shouldn’t do [shutdowns] in the first place,” Thune said. “Everybody knows Russ Vought. And so I think you’re playing with fire when you do this.”
The funding freezes could add yet another complicated dynamic into an already intractable divide: What if Democrats demand the reinstatement of those funds as a condition for voting to reopen the government?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declined to say Thursday whether that’s part of the equation. Thune suggested it may not even be possible to reverse those cancellations.
“Boy, I don’t know. That’s why I think they ought to vote to open [the government]. Because once it starts, it’s hard to roll back,” Thune said.
One more thing: We wondered whether Trump, during his private conversations with Thune, has suggested eliminating the filibuster to end the shutdown. He hasn’t, Thune said. But is Thune worried that if the shutdown drags on much longer, Trump could go there?
“Well, there’s always that possibility,” Thune said with an awkward laugh. “We put up with it, obviously, in his first term as president. I could see at some point that being a potential conversation. But that’s not good for anybody… We should avoid that at all costs.”
