It's Trump's shutdown. Congress made it worse

FALL THE federal government shutdowns that I've covered over three decades, the current one, now in its third week, is the weirdest by far.

- JACKIE CALMES COLUMNIST

PRESIDENT TRUMP and budget director Russell Vought capitalize on Congress' dysfunction to do more harm to more Americans.

Most other times, by this point the battling sides — Democrats versus Republicans, White House versus Congress — have reached some split-the-baby resolution, pressured by an American public disgusted by shuttered federal offices, lapsed or shoestring services, threatened benefits and the general show of their representatives’ political dysfunction.

But this time, the 21st shutdown in the past half-century, all sides have dug in. No serious negotiations are underway. Heck, the Republican House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, sent lawmakers home a month ago, to await Democrats’ surrender. Yet Democrats, buoyed by polls showing more Americans blame Republicans for the standoff, show little sign of caving from their demand that President Trump and Republicans agree to extend Obamacare subsidies and restore deep Medicaid cuts as part of any bill funding the government.

This time, Republicans who normally would be cowed by the polls are more cowed by Trump and are taking their cues from him. And he seems to be delighting — along with his designated “Grim Reaper,” budget director and “Project 2025” architect Russell Vought — in using the shutdown as an excuse to fire more federal workers and shutter more agencies, rather than seek to end the chaos. Trump appears to relish the prospect of breaking the modern record for the longest shutdown, five weeks, which he set in his first term when he unsuccessfully held out to get billions for a border wall that he'd said Mexico would pay for. He promised a new hit list by Friday — of “the most egregious, socialist, semi-communist, probably not full communist” programs that Democrats support. Huh?