Two days ago, Chuck Schumer threatened Donald Trump with a good time. Now, the White House threatens to make the good time permanent. Literally.
The deadline for a government shutdown is fast approaching, and Schumer tried to play hardball this week. He and Hakeem Jeffries demanded a meeting with Trump to negotiate, which Trump initially accepted, but canceled after the pair demanded a massive list of concessions before the meeting took place. Schumer then told the press that Trump was “chicken” and that any shutdown would be his fault — even though the House had already passed the clean CR that Schumer had demanded when Joe Biden was president-ish.
Of course, even with the spin, that stlll leaves Trump in charge of any shutdown. As I explained on Tuesday, that would give any aspiring swamp-draining president plenty of opportunity to hammer Democrats’ constituencies, but even I may have underestimated Trump’s ambition. The Wall Street Journal reports today that they will use any shutdown as an opportunity for permanent mass firings, not just furloughs:
The White House’s budget office directed federal agencies to draw up plans to permanently reduce their workforces if there is a government shutdown next week, raising the specter of mass firings on top of the customary furloughs during a lapse in funding.
The new memo sent by Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought sharply raises the stakes for funding talks and increases the pressure on Senate Democrats, who are demanding that Republicans restore hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare spending as a condition of their support for keeping the government funded.
“Sharply raises the stakes”? You better believe it, Chuck. Vought makes clear, too, that the cuts will get targeted in accordance with Trump’s priorities:
The OMB memo instructs agencies to design reduction-in-force plans for employees who work for programs that have no current funding and have no outside funding source, and that are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.” This would be in addition to any temporary furloughs that happen during a government shutdown.
The memo from Vought says that any cuts made after the funding deadline would be permanent.
Nice box canyon ahead of you, Chuck.
In fact, Politico notes that some Democrats are beginning to wonder what their feckless leader thinks he’s doing. They also note that Schumer made the exact opposite argument just six months ago:
The memo appears to vindicate warnings issued by some Democrats — most prominently Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — during the last shutdown standoff in March. Schumer at the time moved to allow a GOP-written spending bill to pass, arguing that a shutdown would be a “gift” allowing Trump and his deputies “to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now.”
Schumer says he has since revised that view, saying this month that the administration’s attacks on federal agencies “will get worse with or without [a shutdown], because Trump is lawless.”
Ahem. That’s why Congress passes budgets — to ensure that Congress controls spending and operations. If Schumer wants Trump to obey the “law,” then the “law” has to exist in the first place. If the budget expires, then there is no statutory requirement to keep agencies and bureaus in operation. Schumer had it right in March, and he’s playing into Trump’s hands now. The only way to force Trump to operate is to pass the CR while the final budget gets negotiated.
Also, as an aside: Trump is not “lawless.” He pushes the envelope with his firings and cuts, but he adheres to court decisions when challenged on those moves. And as it turns out, in most cases, Trump has already operated within the law in exercising executive authority.
Jeffries is taking another tack. He’s using this standoff to appeal to federal workers in Northern Virginia, but that has the potential to backfire too:
🚨Attention Virginia
Donald Trump and MAGA extremists are plotting mass firings of federal workers starting October 1.
Their goal is to ruin your life and punish hardworking families already struggling with Trump Tariffs and inflation.
Remember in November.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeemjeffries) September 25, 2025
If Trump fires them five weeks before the election, the federal workers in NoVA may well blame Trump … but they weren’t likely to vote for Winsome Sears in the first place. On the other hand, if they lose their jobs because Schumer and Jeffries doubled down on a pair of deuces while Trump holds a straight flush, they’re not likely to blame Trump for that outcome — especially when a clean CR would have allowed them to keep their jobs. They will ask why Democrat leadership allowed themselves to get outplayed at the cost of their livelihoods, and that won’t make them all that inclined to vote for Abigail Spanberger either. In fact, they might be too busy planning to move to cheaper areas to remember to vote at all.
And who knows? Maybe Democrats in Congress will start asking questions about box canyons, Light Brigades, Gallipoli, and other leadership disasters. Nice gavel ya got there, Chuck and Hakeem …
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