U.S. government shutdown since Oct 1, 2025

The shutdown is about whether Democrats will be an opposing party or will capitulate to fascism.

Read: Trump Digs In On Anti-Trans Provisions In Shutdown Fight Message: The provisions are becoming a key sticking point in the ongoing fight to keep the government open. Erin Reed, Sep 23, 2025

"Nationally, the government is hurtling toward a shutdown, with Republicans demanding dozens of anti-LGBTQ+ riders—from bathroom bans on military bases to a sweeping federal funding ban on transgender care that could gut access nationwide. The fight hit a breaking point two days ago when Trump canceled negotiations with Democrats, citing in part their refusal to enshrine anti-trans discrimination into law. Where that standoff ends is uncertain." as Erin Reed (Sept 26, 2025)

Read: Republicans Start Shutdown Payback As White House Blocks Blue State Funds The Trump administration announced a hold on a New York infrastructure project and threatened more layoffs for federal workers. Arthur Delaney and Igor Bobic, HuffPost, Oct 1, 2025

“.. This is the risk of shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought,” the Senate majority leader said .. @politico.com www.politico.com/live-updates...

[image or embed]

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) October 2, 2025 at 10:05 AM

MIKE LEE: Russ Vought has been dreaming about this moment since puberty MIKE JOHNSON: Russ Vought does not enjoy this responsibility

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 2, 2025 at 10:07 AM

Bonica used to have to analyze data to show this kind of pattern, but now they just come out and say it

[image or embed]

— Jake Grumbach (@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social) October 2, 2025 at 2:18 PM

Read: Legal Experts Call Trump’s Response To The Shutdown ‘Extremely Alarming’ Federal workers must walk a free speech tightrope while the Trump administration openly flouts the rules. Brandi Buchman, HuffPost, Oct 2, 2025

Will Bunch reminds us in the Philadelphia Inquirer ("Why we can’t allow Trump to ban that other f-word," October 5, 2025):

"Too many lawmakers, and journalists, refuse to understand the fascist moment because their salary depends on not understanding it. But I’ve been struck this weekend by how one prominent political figure is actually getting it — properly framing the current government shutdown as more than a squabble over healthcare but a fight for democracy.

“Listen, I don’t think we’re asking for too much in that we are telling the president that if you want us to sign onto a budget, it can’t be a budget that funds the destruction of our democracy,“ Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told the New Republic’s essential Greg Sargent last week. ”I would be a sucker to agree to a budget that literally funds an operation to hunt me and my allies down — to imprison us, harass us, intimidate us.""

Image caption: Christians in the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Oct. 29, 2019. Official White House photo by Joyce Boghosian.

Margaret Sullivan, in American Crisis, Oct 5, 2025, says that "the larger story" is that "Democrats are determined to prevent huge increases in Americans’ health care costs by standing firm." And, while "the mainstream press is largely playing its usual “both-sides at fault” game...Americans nevertheless do understand the reality." Unfortunately:

"“Partisan bickering” was a favorite phrase in news alerts. Headlines featured how Democrats and Republicans “trade blame” and we heard a lot about “dueling measures.”

Here’s one from CBS News on Sunday that was typical enough: “Johnson, Schumer accuse each other of not being serious about negotiations as shutdown stretches into another week.”

These words are factual, but they fail to get the bigger picture across. They are accurate but not truthful in a larger sense."

What we're witnessing is U.S. fascism

In a post last week on Democracy Americana, Thomas Zimmer reminds us that, on September 25, Trump

"released a presidential memo – an instrument quite similar to a presidential executive order – on “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” It was entirely geared towards laying the groundwork for the type of comprehensive crackdown on the “Left” the Trumpists had been demanding since the murder of Charlie Kirk: The memo instructed the entire machinery of the federal government to employ an incredibly expansive definition of “domestic terrorism” to go after any organization or individual associated with leftist “anti-fascism.”"

This memo

"open[s] the door for virtually anyone in the United States – certainly anyone who is critical of Trump – to be harassed by the state as a domestic terrorist. If you believe that sounds hyperbolic, please read the memo yourself. ...my first reaction is that it is a breathtakingly authoritarian document. The only purpose it serves is to create a flexible instrument that could be used against anyone the regime deems an enemy. It employs a definition of “domestic terrorism” that is entirely directed against the bizarre phantasma of “the Left” as it exists in the feverish mind of someone like Stephen Miller – even going so far as to explicitly declare all “activities under the umbrella of self-described ‘anti-fascism’” as likely to be terroristic. Meanwhile, the memo widens the definition so much – including “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder” – that it becomes difficult to identify what act of resistance or disobedience the state couldn’t persecute as “domestic terrorism.”"

Will Bunch reminds us today in the Philadelphia Inquirer ("Why we can’t allow Trump to ban that other f-word," October 5, 2025):

"The president, Vice President JD Vance, and their minions have seized on the actions of a few young, lone-wolf assassins to issue blanket condemnations seeking to vilify and, in essence, ban free speech that accurately describes America’s downward spiral into autocracy."

It matters.

"This isn’t some arcane dispute over language. The Trump regime is desperate to control the words of America’s political conversation because they want to normalize what they are doing right now, which is pursuing a rapid race to demolish democratic norms and institutions. Vance’s goal in his North Carolina speech is really to lump the most outrageous comments online with the bulk of legitimate dissent about the outrages that are happening right now from Chicago to the Caribbean."

They can try.

"It’s horrific that militarized cops are firing projectiles at working journalists, or that a reporter covering ICE raids in Atlanta can be arrested and deported to El Salvador. But they haven’t worked their way down to schlubby white boomer columnists — not yet — so I’m going to use the might of this keyboard until they take it away.

Words still not only matter, but have incredible power. What we are witnessing is American fascism. I am an anti-fascist."