Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing the biggest revolt from Democrats in years, but in a conversation with The Interview after his crucial vote supporting a Republican federal spending bill this past week, he tried to brush off questions about whether he should step aside. Democratic officials appeared stunned when Schumer did an about-face on the spending bill, arguing that the choice was the lesser of two evils. Schumer defended his decision in the second part of our wide-ranging interview, even as questions over his leadership by senior party officials continued.
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Schumer said that he made a “very, very difficult” decision to support the Republican bill in order to avert a government shutdown that, he said, President Trump and Elon Musk wanted. He called Trump and Musk “anti-government fanatics” and “nihilists.”
They want to shutter “agency after agency,” he said, which would create a situation far worse than the Republican bill. He continued:
Two days from now in a shutdown, they could say, well, food stamps for kids is not essential. It’s gone. All veterans offices in rural areas are gone. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They’re not essential. We’re cutting them back. So it’d be horrible. The damage they can do under a shutdown is much worse than any other damage that they could do.
Isn’t this just — Wait, let me just finish, Lulu. It can last forever. There is no off ramp. One of the Republican senators told us: We go to a shutdown, it’s going to be there for six months, nine months, a year. And by then, their goal of destroying the federal government would be gone. And finally, one final point here, and that is that right now under the C.R., you can go to court and contest an executive order to shut something down. Under a shutdown, the executive branch has sole power.
On 3/11, Jake Lahut Leah Feiger Vittoria Elliott reported at Wired:
As President Donald Trump has been trying to keep House Republicans in line over a continuing resolution to keep the government open through the fall, Elon Musk has expressed a desire for a government shutdown, four sources familiar with his position tell WIRED.
Sources also tell WIRED that Musk has wanted a government shutdown—an aim that runs contrary to the White House’s stated desire to avoid one—in part because it would potentially make it easier to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, essentially achieving a permanent shutdown. The sources, whom WIRED has granted anonymity, specifically asked to be described generically because information about Musk’s support for a shutdown is closely held.
“A shutdown has been his preference,” says one Republican familiar with the situation, referring to Musk. “I think he’s boxed in there by the president. I think it would be really hard for him to get around that.”
A second Republican who had heard about Musk’s desire for a government shutdown tells WIRED that the billionaire’s goal is for the continuing resolution—a spending bill to temporarily fund the government—to tank, if only to achieve a brief government shutdown.
“You know none of this is about saving money, right?” says a third Republican familiar with the behind-the-scenes push from Musk. “It’s all about destroying a liberal power base.”
