<![CDATA[Chuck Schumer]]><![CDATA[Democrat Party]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]><![CDATA[Government Shutdown]]><![CDATA[John Thune]]><![CDATA[Republican Party]]><![CDATA[Senate]]>Featured

Senate Democrats Wave the White Flag On The Shutdown They Deny Causing – HotAir

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November 10, 2025
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Senate Democrats Wave the White Flag On The Shutdown They Deny Causing – HotAir

For 40 days and 40 nights, Noah, his family, and two binary cisgender members of every species on Earth rode out everything God threw at the world in a big boat. But then, the waters receded. 

For 40 days and 40 nights, Chuck Schumer and 45 of the 48 members of the Senate Democratic Conference rode out a government shutdown they caused in a failed attempt to drown the country in another trillion and a half dollars in Obamacare subsidies debt.  

Federal workers going unpaid for over a month, furloughed, and in thousands of cases, fired in Reduction In Force notices didn’t make the Democrats cave. Military servicemen and women going unpaid for a month didn’t faze them a bit. The shutdown continued. Poor people being cut off from SNAP benefits, women and children not being able to get WIC assistance didn’t cause Democrats to give up on this insane, Quixotic political stunt. Unions like the Air Traffic Controllers Association and Teamsters, which number over two million people combined, and their threats of no assistance in future Democratic elections and possibly withholding campaign funding entirely if they don’t end this shutdown made some Democrats weak in the knees, but they still didn’t bend. 

All-but-cancelling air travel a week and a half before Thanksgiving? That was too big a cross for eight Senate Democrats to bear. Last night, in the first of a series of votes to be taken this week in the Senate before the package returns to the House, the magic 60-vote cloture was obtained by Senate Leader John Thune, clearing the first of a couple hurdles. 

Legislation in the upper chamber either passes by unanimous consent, or it has to receive 60 votes to move onto the bill on the Senate floor. Once that opening threshold vote passes, amendments are offered and floor debate continues for a couple days. Then, another cloture vote is filed to close off debate on the bill and move to a final vote. The same 60 that voted last night will repeat that vote to move to final passage. And in the end, it’ll only take 51 to pass it outright and send it to the House. So what changed? 

On Halloween, Politico had signaled that a tentative deal had been reached with at least 10-12 Senate Democrats to end the Schumer shutdown. The measure included voting for the continuing resolution at the desk, which expires in another week or so. Added to that is an extension C.R. funding the country into January. There is also three full appropriations bills that would be passed with the C.R. – funding Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, and Congressional staffing and operating expenses. The other carrot offered by Senator Thune was a promise to vote on Obamacare subsidy extensions. No guarantees on the outcome of that vote, but Democrats could have a vote. 

No deal, Chuck Schumer and the other 45 Democrats said. After the New Jersey and Virginia off-year elections, there was a ton of internal pushback at those dozen or so Democrats who wanted to end the shutdown. They were winning, they thought, until reality, and thousands of flight delays all over the country, made it impossible to keep this going any longer. The truth of the matter is that virtually every member of the House and Senate have to fly commercially, and this was already beginning to affect their ability to move around the country, too. One of the final nails in the coffin of the shutdown? Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on CNN with Jake Tapper. 





Now you might be cynical and think that Secretary Duffy is applying pressure to restrict the number of planes allowed to fly in a partisan or political manner. But Duffy dealt the killer blow – math. 

Comrade Mamdani might not realize that people aren’t really going to work very long for no compensation, but eight Senate Democrats understood and yielded. Who were the eight? 

Joining John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Angus King from Maine, all three having voted every one of the 15 times to reopen government with the Republicans, were: 

Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire

Jacky Rosen of Nevada

Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois

Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire

Tim Kaine of Virginia. 

Here’s what to take away from the eight who voted to end the shutdown. Shaheen and Durbin are retiring in 2026. They’re immune to pressure from threats to primary them next time. Everyone else is not up for reelection until either 2028 or 2030. None of them are too worried the fever swamp having long memories. And as for Kaine, part of the deal was that the laid off federal workers would be offered their jobs back, allowing him to save face with Northern Virginia voters, which include thousands of federal employees. If there was any concession by Republicans in this deal, this was it. And it’s really not a big concession, because several of those fired federal workers aren’t coming back anyway.

Airport nightmare stories are becoming ubiquitous on national and local media. It’s a story that affects everyone, and with Thanksgiving being 17 days away and no solution in sight, a handful of Democrats finally learned a very painful lesson. When you walk confidently into a box canyon, thinking you’ll figure something out once you’re stuck, eventually, you have to turn around and walk out, even if it’s with a little less pep in your step, the same way you entered. 





Texas Senator John Cornyn provided the last-minute drama late into the evening Sunday night, desperately navigating his way back to D.C. from Austin. Cornyn had planned on joining Hugh Hewitt’s show on Thursday, but had a flight cancelled and he had to scramble. He had the same trouble getting back to the nation’s capital Sunday, even though everyone on both sides knew how he’d vote. But the Senate had to hold it open until his car made the trek from Dulles International Airport to the Senate chamber. Now that the Senate is on final approach to do their work, Speaker Mike Johnson has put out the call to House minions to assemble. They are expecting to hold votes beginning Wednesday, and will pounce on the Senate package when it arrives. 

Initially, it was feared that whatever package Thune and the Senate Republicans came up with to get Democrats on board would never pass the House. That’s because any package that included even a scintilla of extension of Obamacare subsidies would be a non-starter in the House. To Thune’s credit, the final deal in the Senate did not make that promise. He only promised, once the government reopened, Democrats could have their vote. Speaker Johnson made no such offer. 

So after 40 days of this circus, what did Democrats get? Well, in short, they got what Michael Corleone offered them in Godfather II on Day One – nothing. 

New York Republican Mike Lawler, who has been terrific doing media messaging during this entire shutdown farce, is also a member of the House’s Problem Solvers Caucus. He offered this tweet Sunday night after the Senate vote was all but assured. 





In an additional act of brilliance, Leader Thune allowed four people to speak before the cloture vote Sunday night. Besides his closing remarks and Senator Schumer’s, Thune allowed Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, who is the most centrist member of the chamber, to sell the package. 

And then he allowed Bernie Sanders to rant. 

Thune’s emerging strategy to House Republicans queasy about having to pass what the Senate is going to give them, is to present them fresh Bernie Sanders dumping all over it. And if Sanders is against it, how can you not be for it as a Republican? 

When the dust settles, nothing good for the country will have come out of the shutdown, from my perspective. The threat to make the shutdown hurt by laying off federal workers by the tens of thousands was never fully deployed by the White House. And the four-to-five thousand that did get their pink slips are getting a do-over offer. But the damage to the economy is very real, and will last for a while before all the ripples work through the system caused by Schumer’s stunt. And maybe after all, that was the whole point of the shutdown – to crater the economy in 2025 like COVID did in 2020, hamstringing another Trump presidential term and then blaming Republicans for the economic collapse that followed. 

But now that they’ve caved, there is a silver lining. And trust me, it’s a glorious one – the civil war in the Democratic party has already broken out. And I’m here for every single part of it. 

This Democrat seems to think he’s going to replace the retiring Joni Ernst as a Democrat…in Iowa. But still, running to join the Senate Democrats while simultaneously taking on the leader of the conference? Priceless. 





Your highest likelihood of a 2028 presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, Gavin Newsom. 

House Democrat Brendan Boyle seems a little less than thankful this close to Thanksgiving. 

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, has now broken ranks with Senate Democrats and vows to keep up the fight. 

Here’s the dirty, little secret. His caucus will divide on this vote, too. A lot will be defiant, to be certain, but more than a handful, most of whom have to fly during the holidays, too, know this is the best offer they’re going to get, and they’re going to get creamed if something really bad happens because of this stunt. 

Another dark horse who is thinking of running for president one day for the Democrats? California Congressman Ro Khanna, who likes to pride himself on being a proud liberal who’s not afraid to talk to the other side of the aisle. 

Ruh Ro. 

Symone Sanders, former Joe Biden staffer from the Obama-Biden administration, is not very happy. 

‘Yes, Symone. Let the hate flow through you. Then your journey to the dark side will be complete.’ – Ambassador Sheev Palpatine.

It’s going to be increasingly difficult for Democrats and their allies in media to refer to this 40-day debacle as a Republican shutdown when the Democrats are wailing aloud, wondering why they shut everything down in the first place. 

And speaking of our friends in media, how did the ol’ set of MS-Whatever-The-Heck-They’re-Calling-Themselves-This-Month do with the cave that every non-crazy leftist knew had to inevitably happen? About as you’d expect.





They’re apoplectic that they got nothing out of the deal. Nothing. All this pain that YOU (Schumer and the Senate Democrats) caused for 40 days. That doesn’t sound like even the media arm of the Democratic Party believes it was a Republican shutdown. 

Over on BlueSky, the X for the fever swamp on the left, the meltdown is beyond spectacular. 

A personal favorite of mine is Harry Sisson, who somehow is regarded to be an influencer of people on the left. 

And I make you this solemn promise. I, too, will help Harry and the fever swamp remember in 2028 and 2030 who bent the knee so they can primary them and create pickup opportunities for Republicans. If I were to ask Grok to show me somone talking about political electoral strategy without actually knowing the first thing about political electoral strategy, this would have to be the post that would come up first. 

Last week, to be certain, was the first true rough patch for conservative Republicans. But this week, things are looking up. The government is on track to reopen, John Thune and Mike Johnson have navigated their roles of leadership nearly flawlessly through this crisis, and President Trump has been stunningly consistent in not ceding an inch to the ransom demands of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. 

The Republican base will have a bounce in their gait after winning the battle of wills over this Schumer shutdown, whereas the fever swamp on the left? They look and sound a lot like this, which is right where we want them.


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