When Will Government Reopen?
What the shutdown could mean for you. Plus: Journalist hospitalized after ICE attack. Vance calls racist meme "funny." Inspectors general defunded.
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Today JD Vance appeared in the White House briefing room to blame Democrats for the government shutdown. He repeated the false claim that Democrats shut down government to get healthcare for undocumented immigrants (we fact-check that below).
Then he was asked about the racist AI video President Trump posted earlier this week — the one showing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries muted, wearing an animated sombrero and mustache. Vance called it “funny.” When asked to respond to Jeffries’ charge that it was racist, Vance said, “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”
JD Vance calling this funny is calculated. Of course he knows what he’s doing. This is part of an ongoing strategy by this administration: deny history, dismiss harm, and exhaust anyone who tries to hold them accountable.
California Governor Gavin Newsom — who is taking on the Trump social media challenge and often winning — responded with his own memes. They show JD Vance and Speaker Johnson in ridiculous glasses and high pitched voices. Turns out you can clap back without attacking a person’s identity!
The pattern is clear: constant provocation designed to exhaust opposition. When a high-ranking Black official is turned into a racist caricature and the Vice President claims not to understand the problem, the goal isn’t persuasion — it’s normalization. Whether that succeeds depends on whether people continue to notice and name what’s happening.
In any case, they’re clearly trying to distract. Democrats refuse to give up their demands and Republicans refuse to negotiate. So to answer the question we posed in the headline: there is no clear path out of this government shutdown.
Here Are Your Headlines:
Gone Dark: The government shut down today, after lawmakers failed to pass a funding bill. If you’re wondering how this may affect you: hundreds of thousands of federal workers just lost their paychecks, airport travel may slow down, national parks might close, and with no resolution your health insurance premiums could double next year. Now the Trump administration is threatening to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers and make permanent cuts to government agencies. The shutdown will certainly last through Friday but with no path to negotiations – and based on past shutdowns – this could last weeks.
What This Means: The shutdown will have far-reaching effects. One federal worker in the prison system told the BBC, “Holding onto our pay until they come up with a compromise is toying with millions of lives.” Here are some of the main impacts.
Workers: Government workers who have been deemed essential have to report to work without pay. This includes air traffic controllers and TSA staff (many of whom often stay home during shutdowns, causing travel disruptions). A coalition of aviation groups warned “many of the employees who support [air traffic controllers] are furloughed, and the programs that the FAA uses to review and address safety events are suspended.” The Trump administration is using its policy priorities to decide what closes and what operates. For example, the Bureau of Land Management has reportedly deemed workers overseeing oil and natural gas drilling permits and coal mining operations as essential, meaning they will continue working. Without pay.
Permanent: A leaked government memo from Project 2025 alum and head of the OMB Russel Vought directed agencies to fire employees in programs “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
Health: RFK Jr’s HHS is furloughing 41% of its workforce, including two-thirds of the CDC and three-quarters of the NIH. That means no coordination with local health departments on prevention of opioid overdoses, HIV, and diabetes; no analysis of infectious disease transmission; and no basic research.
Parks: National Parks should stay open, though a majority of staff are furloughed; the agency warns parks could close “if visitor access becomes a safety, health, or resource protection issue.” In other words: Please behave.
Student Loans: 87% of the Education Department’s workforce is furloughed, but don’t worry — student loan payments are still due.
IRS: Thanks to special funding passed by Democrats in 2022, the IRS can continue as normal, at least for the next few days. What happens beyond that is unclear.
Environment: Almost 90% of EPA staff are furloughed, essentially freezing research, pollution enforcement, permitting, and other crucial activities. At least, that’s the agency’s shutdown plan; in reality, staff have apparently been told to “work on activities which currently have funds available,” which a union president criticized as highly confusing. “This administration should stop playing games with federal workers,” he said.
How Convenient: The BLS, which came under fire from Trump for daring to release two successive monthly reports outlining worrying weaknesses in the economy, has suspended “data collection, processing and dissemination” — two days before the next jobs report was to be released.
The Negotiation: Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other Republicans insist Democrats shut down the government in an attempt to provide free healthcare for undocumented immigrants. That’s false. Here’s what is actually happening. Democrats want to do two things: They want to reverse some of the GOP’s cuts to Medicaid, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says will cause almost 12 million Americans to lose health insurance. And they want to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire in December. As we detailed on Monday, about 22 million Americans get these subsidies. According to KFF, if the subsidies expire, premiums will more than double on average and 4 million people would lose coverage.
Example: Someone making $35,000 a year — a little less than the median income — currently pays about $1,000 annually in ACA health insurance. Without the subsidies, they’ll pay over $2,600 per year.
The “Illegal Immigrant” Claim: That’s false. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally funded health benefits, including Medicaid and Medicare, nor do they receive Obamacare subsidies. That’s law. That wouldn’t change. Democrats have proposed two changes that Trump, Vance, et al. mischaracterize. First, Democrats are trying to restore health care funding for legal immigrants considered “lawfully present.” These people are here legally and include refugees, asylees, and DACA recipients. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will cause 1.4 million of these legal immigrants to become uninsured. Second, Democrats want to reinstate Medicaid funding used to reimburse hospitals for providing emergency room care to undocumented immigrants who present with a medical crisis, usually childbirth. Hospitals are required by law to provide this care. In 2023, it amounted to 0.4% of total Medicaid spending. In addition, the GOP claims that Democrats propose removing language that explicitly prevents Medicaid from reimbursing for those costs. Democrats are demanding negotiation on all these points; so far the GOP is refusing to negotiate.
In Your Face: Check out federal government websites and there’s a good chance you’ll see a banner warning visitors Democrats shut down the government. Multiple government agencies sent identical emails to staff blaming Democrats for the shut down. Legal experts say this is a violation of the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from political activity on the job. But Trump fired the head of the agency that enforces the Hatch Act and relaxed enforcement of certain rules under the Act.
Fill The Swamp: The Trump administration just defunded the office that supports government watchdogs — you know, the inspectors general who investigate waste, fraud and abuse. This will shut down the websites of at least 29 inspectors general — including links which the public uses to report officials stealing money and the like. This comes after Trump (likely illegally) fired 17 inspectors general in January, and has since removed more.
Seeing Green: And how’s Trump doing personally? Forbes reports his net worth doubled in the past year. He’s richer than ever. It’s almost as if eliminating oversight while holding the most powerful office in the world is extremely profitable. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?!
This Could’ve Been an Email: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced several hundred US generals and admirals stationed around the world to gather in Virginia — to hear him complain about “gender delusions,” “fat troops,” and “dudes in dresses.” He insisted military standards will be gender neutral (they have been, by law, since 1994), warned the department is reviewing its definitions of bullying to allow “drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in” and “put their hands on recruits,” and urged troops to ignore “stupid rules of engagement” that might tie “the hands of our warfighters to intimate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.” Both he and Trump said anyone who didn’t like this could leave, or be fired. The response? Stony silence. And, from some veterans, anger. “Here’s this guy,” one former senior official said of Hegseth, “the youngest in the room, the most inexperienced guy in the room, with the least amount of combat time in the room… lecturing them?”
Violent By Design: Trump told this gathering of top generals to treat American cities as “training grounds” to “straighten out” the “enemy from within … one by one.” Then he gave the gathered war fighters explicit permission to escalate force: “I say they spit, we hit.” This isn’t just rhetoric. While Trump directs the military to treat US cities as combat zones, domestic law enforcement is doing that already. We’re seeing instances of ICE agents using terrifying force against the public.
Crackdown: Masked ICE agents were filmed grabbing and pushing multiple reporters in NYC immigration court Tuesday; one journalist hit his head on the ground, was taken out of the building on a stretcher and hospitalized. A DHS official claimed the agents were “swarmed by agitators and members of the press” and asked “the media and politicians to stop fanning the flames of division and stop demonizing of law enforcement [sic].” The head of New York Immigration Coalition argued “ICE has shown a blatant disregard for human dignity and safety.” Gov. Kathy Hochul shared the video and said the “abuse of law-abiding immigrants and reporters telling their stories must end. What the hell are we doing here?”
No Accountability: The ICE agent relieved from duty after being filmed shoving a distraught woman to the ground in a courthouse has reportedly been allowed to return to duty. ICE agents in Broadview, Illinois pelted protesters with tear gas to break up a crowd and in one instance shot at a man with so many rubber bullets his back was riddled with bloody sores. This kind of permissiveness might be contagious. Here’s video of Las Vegas police who seem to forcefully target a anti-immigration protester for a rude comment.
Seeking Justice: A 79-year-old US citizen in LA who was knocked to the ground multiple times by masked ICE agents during an immigration raid has filed a claim for $50 million against the federal government, arguing federal agents “unlawfully assaulted and battered” him.
No Going Back: The family of a California farmworker killed after falling 30 feet during an immigration raid have filed wrongful death claims, arguing agents’ use of “excessive force” — rubber bullets, tear gas, stun guns — caused the man to fall and die. DHS claimed the man was “not being pursued by law enforcement” when he “climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell.”
Let Her Cook: The Supreme Court refused to allow Trump to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook — at least until January, while her lawsuit makes its way through lower courts.
Foiled: Germany arrested three men Tuesday who are alleged to be members of Hamas planning to carry out a terror attack. Authorities discovered “various weapons … and a significant amount of ammunition,” which the federal prosecutor’s office today warned “were intended for use by Hamas in assassination attacks on Israeli or Jewish institutions in Germany.” Hamas denied this.
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