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Why the Shutdown Is About to Get Even Worse
As the federal government shutdown extends into its 27th day with no resolution in sight, no active talks between Democratic and Republican leaders, and President Donald Trump focused on his White House ballroom project while heading off to Asia, millions of Americans are bracing for mounting hardship.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson kicked off the week with a press conference during which he blamed Democrats for the shutdown:
“Democrats are required to open the government. They keep saying, ‘Republicans are in charge of government.’ We aren’t!” Johnson alleged, despite Republicans having majorities in the House and Senate, and a Republican President in the White House.
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As of Saturday, about 40 million Americans on food stamps will see their benefits disappear. Also blaming Democrats, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced as of November 1 the “well has run dry” and it will not release any SNAP payments. This comes despite its own internal memo stating “congressional intent” and, some say, the law, requires billions in available emergency funds are to be used during a shutdown. Some experts and critics say this is another of the Republicans’ moves to try to pin the shutdown on Democrats and make them pay in public perception and in their pocketbooks.
According to Politico, the SNAP stoppage is just one of a half-dozen ways the shutdown is going to get even worse: “Popular programs that provide nutrition assistance, early childhood education and air service to rural communities are now among those about to run out of money.”
The USDA has told states if they pay out SNAP benefits the federal government will not reimburse them after the shutdown lifts.
Federal workers will not receive their paychecks the week, the first full paycheck loss of the shutdown. This means that air travelers likely will see longer security lines, and longer times on the runway as fewer TSA agents and air traffic controllers — working without pay — are expected to be on the job.
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Among the thousands of federal workers who will not be receiving their paychecks on Friday are House congressional staffers, although their bosses, by law, will be paid. Speaker Mike Johnson has ordered GOP members of Congress to stay in their home districts. The following week, unless the government reopens, Senate staffers also will not be paid.
With Republicans refusing to negotiate with Democrats on reinstating the Affordable Care Act subsidies, millions of Americans will learn on November 1 just how much their Obamacare premiums will rise. Some estimates are in the double digits, but many say those increases could be double or triple current rates.
At least tens of thousands of children enrolled in Head Start and other early childhood education programs — more than 130 programs — will see a loss of federal funding.
“Loss of federal funding means some teachers won’t get paid and some centers will close,” Politico noted.
Despite the $130 million “gift” reportedly from a Trump “friend” to help pay the troops, members of the U.S. military risk not being paid on Friday without Congress reopening the government — or President Donald Trump reallocating funds from elsewhere in the government, as he did earlier this month. Some experts say those moves are unlawful.
“Trump does plan to continue using other funding to cover military paychecks during the shutdown, according to two White House officials granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly,” Politico also reported.
All of this of course has an impact on the economy. When people don’t get paid they often stop spending. Some experts, including the White House, say the economy could be on the hook for a loss of about $15 billion in GDP losses each week.
Critics are blasting the President and Republicans.
“Donald Trump is literally dancing in Asia while 40 million people lose access to food. Disgusting,” remarked California Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday.
“I guess cutting billions from SNAP in his Big Ugly Bill wasn’t enough for Trump. Now, he’s choosing —yes, this is a choice — to not give families the critical food assistance they need to feed their families,” commented U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) on Sunday.
“The Trump Admin found $20 billion to bail out Argentina but refuses to tap into a $6 billion reserve fund to provide vital food assistance to 42 million Americans. They’re using food and hunger as leverage as they hold the government hostage. Sickening,” wrote U.S Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) on Monday.
Mike Johnson: "Democrats are required to open the government. They keep saying, 'Republicans are in charge of government.' We aren't!" pic.twitter.com/UK8FxoZUyR
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2025
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Image via Reuters
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A MAGA “civil war” is playing out across the right-wing ecosystem, sapping attention from the ideas that once powered the base and held GOP leaders to power. Now, the movement appears more consumed by infighting than achieving political goals.
MAGA is being drained of “its political muscle, leaving it defenseless as the Trump administration revisits policies previously opposed by the base,” according to Axios. The strength of MAGA “lies in its ability to rally influencers, politicians and activists behind a hard-charging conservative agenda.” But that “superpower is faltering amid a cascade of bitter personal feuds.”
The National Pulse’s editor-in-chief Raheem J. Kassam told Axios, “There’s no focus on anything philosophical or even ideological right now.”
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“It’s all just a cacophony of grifters tussling over audience and ego,” Kassam said. “So, corporate America gets to wield power with the admin virtually unencumbered by scrutiny from the base.”
Serving up a series of examples, Axios reported that on issues such as artificial intelligence, marijuana, Venezuela, and redistricting — all of which “would have triggered significant MAGA backlash” earlier — there has been “mostly crickets.”
Trump reportedly will loosen federal regulations on marijuana soon — an act that once would have attracted MAGA influencers to scream about “pothead culture,” Axios noted. This time, however, the news “barely made a ripple on right-wing social media.”
The “America First” president seizing a tanker loaded with Venezuelan oil and refusing to rule out boots on the ground to overthrow the Maduro regime “barely pinged on MAGA’s radar.”
MAGA influencer CJ Pearson told Axios that “the movement is wholly consumed right now on personality clashes. That is a recipe for electoral doom, and it’s unfortunate to see the unity that we saw after Charlie [Kirk]’s death dissipate so quickly.”
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Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, demanding records related to the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.
Trump “has increasingly pressured his administration to find widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, despite those claims having been debunked and dismissed in dozens of cases by the courts,” The Washington Post reported.
The lawsuit calls for Fulton County to hand over to DOJ “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.”
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Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, according to the Post. “indirectly and without evidence accused Georgia officials of ‘vote dilution'” in a statement.
“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Dhillon said.
“At this Department of Justice,” Dhillon added, “we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
Trump in a recorded telephone call told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
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Two years later, a Georgia grand jury indicted Trump on racketeering charges. The case ultimately was recently dismissed after setbacks and that Trump, having since become a sitting president, could not be indicted.
Democracy Docket, which covers voting rights, elections, and the courts, called the move “a major escalation in the Trump administration’s dangerous effort to revive President Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims that the election was stolen.”
The news site also reported that Kristin Nabers, the state director for All Voting is Local, said in a statement: “This administration’s unending obsession with the 2020 election results in Georgia uses outright lies to compensate for the fact that they lost.”
“With this terrible overstep of power, the DOJ is now weaponizing laws meant to protect voters for their political vendetta,” Nabers added.
Larry Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics called it “More insane nonsense.”
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Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s “signature” weave — where he goes off-script and off-topic — is not working for Americans when it comes to affordability.
That’s according to CBS News correspondent John Dickerson, writing at The Atlantic.
His weave was “on display” this week during a speech that the White House promoted as focused remarks on the economy, but his comments included, Dickerson noted, “the topics of tariffs, U.S. Steel, fracking, wind turbines, electric-vehicle mandates, immigration, crime, gender policies, Obamacare, the Fed, his election victories, rare-earth negotiations, a D.C. terror attack, and ‘the lips that don’t stop’ of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.”
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The problem, he noted is, “now that the engine of the U.S. economy is smoking, the American people are looking for a technician, not an improv comic.”
Trump is hitting “a wall of resentment,” according to Dickerson, who pointed to a Politico poll which, he noted, found that “nearly half of voters—including 37 percent of Trump’s own 2024 coalition—said that the cost of living is the ‘worst they can ever remember.'”
There’s more.
“Only 31 percent of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, a new AP/NORC poll found, down from 40 percent in March,” he reported. “It’s the lowest economic approval that AP/NORC has registered in either of Trump’s two terms. In a recent CBS News/YouGov survey, a majority of respondents said that his policies are driving up food and grocery prices.”
During times of crisis other presidents have worked to get results:
“Franklin D. Roosevelt passed 15 major bills in 100 days. Ronald Reagan, in the teeth of double-digit unemployment, pushed for sweeping tax cuts week after week. Bill Clinton built an economic ‘war room’ before he even took office, and his team introduced what has now become a political cliché: focusing ‘like a laser beam’ on the economy. Barack Obama instituted a morning economic briefing that put the issue on par with national security. Each practiced the same principle: If you can’t solve the problem fast, at least get caught trying.”
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He say that now, Trump is trying. “Kind of.”
Despite talking about “affordability” during his Pennsylvania speech, he also knocked it.
“The president’s most focused message on affordability is that affordability concerns are a hoax. He used that word, or an equivalent, several times on Tuesday, as he has in Oval Office remarks, in a Cabinet meeting, and on social media.”
The “unavoidable truth, no matter how hard you weave,” Dickerson wrote, is that “his argument is weak because he has to overcome people’s lived experience.”
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Image via Reuters
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