Let The Shutdown Games Begin

Every lost paycheck, every shuttered service pushes families closer to ruin. This standoff ends only when voters unleash outrage that no lawmaker can afford to ignore.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Follow him on Substack for more by clicking here.

There’s a line I used to hear when working for Donald Trump: “The art of the deal is making them suffer until they break.” That’s not negotiating. That’s sadism with a pen and a contract. And what we’re watching in Washington today — the looming government shutdown, the finger-pointing, the chest-thumping — is Trump’s ethos spread across the entire political bloodstream. It’s not about compromise. It’s not about governance. It’s about inflicting enough pain until someone else folds. The problem is, when the government shuts down, it isn’t the politicians who suffer. It’s America.

So here we are again. Deadlock. The White House, led by Trump, is spouting bizarre and incendiary accusations — Democrats supposedly want “transgender operations for everybody” to keep the lights on, while House Democrats, led by Hakeem Jeffries, insist they won’t sign on to any bill that guts health care. A standoff with no give. A staring contest where the people holding power have every incentive not to blink, because to blink is to lose face. Meanwhile, the country prepares to bleed out.

The truth is, Republicans hold both chambers of Congress, but control isn’t the same as power. In the Senate, they still need Democratic votes to cross the 60-vote threshold and fund the government. That’s the paradox of this shutdown: Trump and his allies can pound the table, but without some measure of cooperation, nothing moves. Instead of seeking common ground, the White House prefers chaos, issuing absurd accusations and political smears while the machinery of government grinds closer to collapse.

So the real question is: what breaks the deadlock? What forces resolution when neither side wants to give an inch, when the president himself shrugs and says he doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he can point a finger and scream, “the radical left did this”?

The answer isn’t in Congress. It isn’t in the West Wing. It’s in the homes of the American people. When workers start missing paychecks, when veterans are turned away from offices, when health care subsidies vanish and families are hit with skyrocketing premiums; when the public begins to feel the pain in their wallets and at their kitchen tables, that’s when the pressure breaks the impasse. The key to resolution is outrage. Ordinary voters, furious at being pawns in this political hostage crisis, will demand relief from their representatives. They will force movement where Washington’s power players refuse to.

But let’s not sugarcoat it: this White House is actively trying to maximize the pain. Internal emails sent across agencies, from HUD to Labor to Social Security, carry partisan banners blaming Democrats for the shutdown. Bright red pop-ups on official government websites scream about the “radical left.” This isn’t routine messaging. It’s propaganda blasted from the taxpayer-funded loudspeakers of federal agencies. Experts are already sounding the alarm that it may violate the Hatch Act, but the real message is simpler: Trump isn’t managing a government, he’s weaponizing it against his enemies.

That’s the playbook. In 2013, when Obama faced a shutdown, he wrote to federal employees with respect, thanking them for their service, lamenting Congress’s failure to compromise. Trump, by contrast, issues what amounts to a campaign email dressed up as an official government communication. The ethics guardrails are gone. The institutions are politicized down to their logos. And federal workers know it; one told NPR flat out, “We just all accept that the Hatch Act is null and void. Nothing matters.” That resignation is the rot Trump wants. If nothing matters, he wins.

So again: how does this end? It ends when Americans, the ones who are furloughed, evicted, and cut off from care, demand it. Polls already show the public is more inclined to blame Republicans, and Trump’s unpopularity only deepens that hole. But what will really force movement isn’t a poll; it’s when lawmakers face lines of angry constituents outside their offices, demanding to know why their children can’t see a doctor or why they can’t pay their mortgage. That outrage, that desperation, will end the shutdown.

Still, there’s no victory parade waiting for Democrats. The “best case” is clawing back ACA subsidies, halting illegal budget impoundments, maybe securing a promise written in ink. That won’t fix the long-term damage. It won’t restore the hollowed-out agencies or reverse the politicization of government. But it’s better than capitulation. Because if Democrats cave now, Trump learns his lesson again: hostage-taking works.

And that’s what this is: a hostage situation. Your paycheck, your health care, your future are the hostages. Trump doesn’t see you as citizens to protect, but as pawns in his endless power game. The longer the shutdown drags, the more you bleed.

Make no mistake, the government won’t reopen because Trump finds his conscience. It will reopen because you, the public, force it. You will make the calls, send the emails, and crowd the town halls. You will show up furious and desperate, unwilling to be collateral damage in a political stunt. That’s when lawmakers will find their backbone, not out of principle, but out of fear of you. That’s right... FEAR OF YOU.

Because in Trump’s America, chaos holds the floor until the people rise up and rip it to pieces.

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