"What is our leverage here?" a furious Sen. Fetterman asked fellow Democrats this week.

“Shutdown fight leaves Democrats with no good options,” observed Al Weaver and Mike Lillis for The Hill on September 27, 2025. “Faced with President Trump’s refusal to negotiate, they can either cave after weeks of tough talk and support the Republicans’ spending bill, or they can hold firm against it and watch the government shut down.”

President Trump’s meeting with Democratic Party lawmakers ahead of the shutdown deadline didn’t go at all well.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer failed to negotiate acceptable terms. Even President Trump’s threats to permanently furlough federal workers impacted by the shutdown failed to motivate progressive legislators to vote with Republicans to keep the government open.

Other warnings went unheeded as well. For reasons, Democrats wanted a shutdown. As of midnight last night, they got it.

And while the purveyors of progressive media give advice from the cheap seats:

“Democrats should argue that Trump has turned the GOP into the CCP.” — Jos Joseph. The Hill. September 30, 2025. 

“It has been the liberal playbook to yell fascism at everything and anything that is affiliated with President Trump. But let’s be honest, Trump has done quite a few things economically, militarily and civilly that seem to come out of the playbook of the Chinese Communist Party.

Of course, the Democrats need to understand that there are a lot of left-wing people that have warmed up to socialism or worse and might feel that likening Trump to Xi might not work. My advice is those alleged Democrats who have warmed up to far-left ideologies are going to vote for Jill Stein anyway in 2028, so you can stop caring about appeasing or not offending them.”

Conservative media outlets have different ideas about who benefits most from, or who is hurt worse by, a government shutdown.

“The Government Shutdown Stakes for the GOP,” explained the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “Will the party extend pandemic ObamaCare subsidies that enrich health insurers?”

“Democrats are warning of higher premiums if the GOP doesn’t extend turbocharged ObamaCare subsidies that expire at the end of the year. GOP leaders are already hinting that they are open to negotiating, and some are floating ideas that would give Democrats much of what they want.

Mr. Johnson is correct that the subsidies are bad policy, though it would help if Republicans told the public the reasons. The super-charged subsidies first passed in 2021 for a Covid-19 emergency that ended long ago. Democrats juiced the subsidies for everyone, while also opening up the spigot to those earning above 400% of the poverty line.

Democrats set a 2025 expiration date to make the Inflation Reduction Act look less expensive over a 10-year budget window but fully expecting that Congress would extend the subsidies again. No Republican voted for that bill, but now some are too frightened to let the super-subsidies expire.”

Or are they?

Republicans on Capitol Hill are showing every sign of being fully on board with the White House. The White House is also showing no signs of caving. And why should Republicans compromise?

“Democrats’ shutdown strategy hinges on a risky bet,” admitted Eric Levitz for Vox yesterday. “The Trump administration will use a government shutdown to gut the Democratic Party’s favorite federal agencies.”

But, as Levitz argued for Vox, President Trump might be bluffing when he says things like this:

“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

Unfortunately for Democrats, Donald Trump is holding far more cards than they. Even more unfortunately, Trump isn’t the only one who knows it.

“Fetterman urges Democrats to ‘win elections’ before making shutdown demands,” crowed Samatha-Jo Roth for the conservative news outlet, the Washington Examiner, this week.

“I refuse to shut our government down, and that’s not going to change,” a furious Sen. Fetterman told reporters on Capitol Hill this week. “It would plunge our nation into chaos and leave millions and millions of lives upended.”

“I’m not really worried about the politics,” Sen. Fetterman went on. “It’s just like — this is our core responsibility. Republicans or Democrats. Just keep government open. If they did that in 2013, that was deeply wrong. And it’s wrong anytime they shut the government down. I’d be very critical about it. So that’s — here we are. And if it’s our party, that’s why I refuse to do it.”

“The president has a lot of levers he could pull,” Sen. Fetterman warned. “This is one we could pull but why would we pull that lever? Because that allows him to pull a lot more levers. I think that would be ideal for Project 2025.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill might soon wish they’d listen to Fetterman. For now, Trump seems to be holding all the cards.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)