The Real Reason Dems Caved on Shutdown Will Make You Want to Scream

It turns out, the government shutdown ended because some senators want to be able to keep campaigning on Obamacare.

Seven Senate Democrats and one independent caved on the government shutdown Sunday, leaving their party empty-handed after a grueling 40-day deadlock with Republicans.

Those senators included  Dick Durbin, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, John Fetterman, and Tim Kaine, as well as independent Angus King. All eight lawmakers are either retiring or won’t face another election for several years, making the alleged behind-the-scenes rationale for the crumbling stalemate even more asinine.

More than a dozen House and Senate Democrats expressed anxiety that actually preserving premium subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits through their shutdown demands could strip them of a winning issue in the coming midterms, reported The New York Times. Their secondary anxiety involved the powerful Senate filibuster, fearing that conservatives might actually bow to Donald Trump’s demands to ax the disruptive legislative tool.

“The political logic of the shutdown fight was inverted: If Democrats got the tax credits extended—if they ‘won’—they would be solving a huge electoral problem for Republicans,” reported the Times. “If Republicans successfully allowed the tax credits to expire—if they ‘won’—they would be handing Democrats a cudgel with which to beat them in the elections.”

Without the premium tax credits, health insurance premiums for more than 20 million Americans are expected to double. 

The result, according to policy experts, will be a mass exodus from Obamacare plans altogether, leaving roughly four million Americans uninsured. The spike in uninsured Americans will spur a public health problem that has historically proved to make premiums more expensive for the insured as hospitals look to recoup the lost cash.

Low-income regions of the country, such as Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina, will be particularly hard hit as recipients decide whether they can afford the rising costs. That is, apparently, a potential electoral opportunity, according to congressional Democrats—regardless of how many people will be at risk for physical and financial ruin in the interim.

The message is as simple as it is disastrous: Democrats will do anything to stay in power, even if it means undermining the needs of their constituents.

Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, didn’t seem to think standing up to Donald Trump would work in the government shutdown standoff.

Speaking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday morning, King said that he supported Democrats’ shutdown strategy, the goals of which were, in his view, to stand up to Trump and resolve the issue of expiring health care subsidies. But he said the shutdown wasn’t accomplishing either goal, and there was “zero likelihood it was going to.”

“In terms of standing up to Donald Trump, the shutdown actually gave him more power,” King said, pointing out the president’s refusal to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program despite multiple court orders, as well as the fact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were among the few government employees still getting paid during the shutdown.

“Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work. It actually gave him more power,” King concluded.

King spearheaded the deal to give in to Republicans in exchange for a promise of a future vote on extending health care subsidies. This deal caused backlash from other Democrats in Congress and the party base. For some reason, King felt that holding the line against Trump and the GOP wasn’t working, despite Democrats’ landslide election wins last week and favorable poll numbers.

Did King really believe this, or were there other reasons why he caved? His son, Angus King III, is running for governor of Maine, and Senator King’s decision may have been a misguided attempt to help him. King is also not up for reelection until 2030, so perhaps he thought he could escape electoral consequences.

But he seems alone among Maine’s Democratic leaders. The two leading Democratic candidates running for Maine’s other Senate seat next year, Governor Janet Mills and oysterman Graham Platner, oppose the budget deal. While 2030 is a long way away, perhaps King, age 81, needs to reevaluate his career choices.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has found a way around answering every question with “I don’t know”—he’s just not going to answer any questions at all.

During a press briefing Monday, Johnson discussed the tentative deal struck by a group of errant Democrats to end the government shutdown, but he scurried off before taking any questions.

“There are probably lots of questions, but I’m gonna get a lot of my own questions answered later today, so, stay tuned for more,” Johnson said, before quickly departing the press gallery.

Johnson isn’t very good at taking questions in the first place. During the shutdown, the Donald Trump ally has forged a reputation for feigning ignorance in the face of tough questions about everything from Trump’s brutal crackdown on immigrants, to the president’s blatant corruption, to what’s going on in his own chamber.

The handful of Democratic (and one independent) senators who caved to support the Republicans’ continuing resolution Sunday claimed that they’d managed to secure a House vote on a bill ensuring the continuance of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Not only is such a measure unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled House, but Johnson wouldn’t even commit to the vote Monday as reporters shouted after the fleeing Republican with questions about his plans.

Johnson insisted as recently as last week that he wouldn’t promise Democrats a vote on anything. Meanwhile, Democrats slammed their colleagues for settling for the promise of a vote.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen revealed that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer knew the entire time about the plan for a few Democrats to capitulate to Republicans on the government shutdown.

Shaheen, one of the seven Democrats (and one independent) who dropped their demand for a guaranteed extension of Obamacare subsidies, spoke to Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade on Monday morning.

“Senator Chuck Schumer, your leader in the Senate, said ‘I cannot support a continuing resolution that fails to address health care, I am voting no.’ Did you do this outside leadership, and was there a big push for you not to join the others and break the 60 threshold?” Kilmeade asked.

“No, we kept leadership informed throughout,” Shaheen responded. “And I think it’s important to remember who’s responsible for why we got into this shutdown. We are here because we are concerned about the health care costs rising significantly on millions of Americans, and we didn’t have any indication before the shutdown started that our Republican colleagues were willing to address it.”

Aside from serving as further proof that the Democrats are failing to act as an opposition party in any meaningful way, Shaheen’s comments also reveal one of two possible scenarios. Either Schumer was scheming to end the shutdown behind the scenes, only pretending to be against it while pinning the blame on the eight people who aren’t up for reelection anytime soon, or he has no control over his party. Either way, it proves the need for Democrats to jettison the minority leader.

Ghislaine Maxwell is asking Donald Trump to commute her prison sentence.

The longtime girlfriend and criminal associate of pedophilic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is working on a “commutation application,” according to documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee via a whistleblower.

“Documents and information received over the last several days by this Committee … [indicate] that Ghislaine Maxwell is working on filing a ‘Commutation Application’ with your Administration—demonstrating either that Ms. Maxwell is herself requesting you release her from her 20-year prison sentence for her role as a coconspirator in Jeffrey Epstein’s international child sex trafficking ring, or that this child sex predator now holds such tremendous sway in the second Trump Administration that you and your [Justice Department] will follow her clemency recommendations,” Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wrote in a scathing memo dated Sunday.

Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison camp mere days after she met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July to help curate a new list of Epstein’s potential associates.

It was unclear at the time why the Trump administration would want to procure another list of Epstein’s associates, particularly when it already had (but refused to release) files pertaining to his investigation.

Since then, concerns have swelled among Republican lawmakers that Trump’s relationship with Epstein was even cozier than previously understood: A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department spilled last week that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported. In a convenient turn of events, Maxwell’s new list of Epstein associates does not include Trump’s name.

But the information exchange resulted in an extremely cushy transfer for Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas that lawmakers have described as “not suitable for a sex offender.”

Maxwell has since raved about her new digs, celebrating the difference between the two facilities as akin to having “dropped through Alice in Wonderlands [sic] looking glass,” according to emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. Maxwell’s attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now.

Trump was photographed with Maxwell several times over his long friendship with Epstein. She and Trump partied together, attended fashion shows together, and went “out on the town” together, according to a 1997 postcard.