President Trump, his top administrative lieutenants and his allies in Congress are taking every step possible to raise the pressure on Democrats, hoping they'll bend and then break in the government shutdown battle at the Capitol.
Since the shutdown began last Wednesday, Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at every step have signaled they are confident they have the upper hand in the public relations battle.
A big part of this is the divide in the Senate Democratic caucus on repeated votes over the House GOP's "clean" measure to keep the government funded through Nov. 21.
Two Democrats, Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), along with Sen. Angus King (Maine), an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, each time have voted with Republicans.
The senators will get another chance on Monday afternoon, when the Senate is back in Washinton and members will vote again on the House GOP bill, and a Senate Democratic alternative, to reopen the government.
The vast majority of Senate Democrats are voting "no" on the House GOP bill, but the defections have given Republicans hope and confidence that it is only a matter of time until more Democrats in the Senate buckle.
To push them along, Johnson is keeping the House GOP conference at home, opening himself to Democratic attacks along the way but signaling he has no interest in and is feeling no pressure to modify his chamber's spending bill.
Economic advisers to Trump, along with Johnson, in separate interviews on Sunday signaled promised layoffs of federal employees are coming. That's a big part of the effort to put the squeeze on Democrats.
Johnson and Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, on Sunday cast Trump as reluctant to go forward with layoffs, seeking to blame Democrats for what comes next.
The Speaker said layoffs would be "a regrettable situation that the president does not want," while Hassett said layoffs would start "if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere."
"But I think that everybody's still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week that we can get the Democrats to see that it's just common sense to avoid layoffs like that, to avoid the $15 billion a week that the Council of Economic Advisers says will harm GDP if we have a shutdown," Hassett added.
My colleague Al Weaver over the weekend profiled the Senate Democrats both sides are looking at closely.
The pressure campaign upped over the weekend by Johnson and Hassett is intended to make Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and others have second thoughts on Monday when they are again faced with the House GOP's "clean" funding bill.
Democrats say that bill is hardly clean. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in a video last week that some Democrats said was more effective than their leadership's shutdown messaging called it a "dirty" bill, arguing it would lead thousands to see their health care costs rise because it does nothing to prevent enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act from expiring at the end of the year.
Republicans argue the health care subsidies are an issue that can be dealt with later. Open the government first, they argue.
Will the GOP pressure campaign work?
Plenty of observers might question just how reluctant Hassett, Johnson, Trump and others in the administration are about making federal layoffs, given the cuts to federal workers that have already taken place in Trump's second term.
According to the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, the administration has cut 201,000 civil servants, through firings, forced relocations and a "deferred resignation" program, since Trump took office on Jan. 20. These figures are to date as of Sept. 23, according to the group.
Trump and a number of his top advisers at times have relished the chance to cut the workforce. Tech mogul Elon Musk, who headed the Department of Government Efficiency before leaving the government after falling out with Trump, showed up at the Conservative Political Action Conference with a chainsaw in February to highlight his efforts to cut waste and workers.
Just a few days ago, Trump posted a video that compared Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, a key figure in the shutdown, to the grim reaper because of the cuts to workers that were coming.
The tone of the video didn't suggest Trump held particular regret for the layoffs, either.
As a modified version of the classic Blue Oyster Cult tune plays in the background, Trump is shown in the video playing the cowbell (see Christopher Walken) and Vice President Vance the drums as Vought, an author of the conservative Project 2025, in grim reaper robes walks past apparently nervous government bureaucrats.
It also included a number of shots at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and many other Democrats, signaling they would be to blame if the reaper went to work. The whole thing was another example of the meme culture Trump has repeatedly engaged in, often in humorous ways, to score points and rally his base.
But it offered a different sort of backdrop when Johnson and Hassett stressed Sunday that the administration and GOP didn't really want to go through with mass firings.
"In a situation like this, where the Senate Democrats have decided to turn the keys to the kingdom over to the White House, they have to make tough decisions. Russ Vought runs the Office of Management and Budget. He has to now look at all of the federal government, recognizing that the funding streams have been turned off and determine what are essential programs, policies, and personnel," Johnson said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"That's not a job that he relishes," Johnson insisted. "But he's being required to do it by Chuck Schumer."
The budget director is best known as a critic of Washington's bureaucracy and bloat.
In a recent profile, The New York Times noted that in 2022, a shadow budget released by Vought offered a prescription to remove "the scourge of woke and weaponized bureaucracy aimed at the American people," including deep cuts to Medicaid, foreign aid, scientific research and other programs.
Plenty of Democrats would argue it doesn't matter if there's a shutdown or not. Vought and Trump will seek to make more cuts to the federal workforce, while Johnson, Thune and other Republicans in Congress look on supportively.
In fact, Democrats looking to bolster any colleagues getting nervous about the prolonged shutdown are making that argument, in public and likely in private.
The newsletter began with the point that the actions by GOP and Trump show off their confidence.
But in Democrats, they are running into an opposition that seems to feel equally confident when it comes to the shutdown.
Polls released last week generally showed more of the public blaming the GOP for a shutdown than Democrats, which could reflect the fact that Republicans hold the White House and both chambers of Congress. They are in control at the Capitol, and as such get a lot of the credit and blame for what happens.
Democrats also aren't feeling pressure from the lawmakers who represent federal workers yet, some of which are itching for a fight with Trump.
And the Democratic base is itching for a fight the most with Trump. Parts of the base will be significantly disappointed if Democrats open the government.
None of this makes it likely that the shutdown is going to end anytime soon.
If you could place a bet, the safe money on Monday would be on the Senate failing to end the shutdown. And with the House gone all week, it's entirely possible this shutdown is headed toward at least mid-October before it ends.
▪ The Washington Post: Government shutdowns have become normal. This one is not
▪ The New York Times: Both parties are resigned to deadlock as shutdown takes hold
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