Democrats’ Shutdown Strategy Might Actually Work Out

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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, Slate’s politics newsletter that has deemed an opening joke nonessential^[2] during the ongoing lapse in federal appropriations.

Indeed, the government has been shut down, and let’s hope they don’t reopen the stupid thing late Friday night and force us to rewrite half of this newsletter. Beyond our analysis of that, we have some weird ones: the NFL halftime show. Dick Durbin and the Pope. The controversy over Ike Eisenhower’s sword. This newsletter will get weirder until morale improves.

Let’s begin with a look at Democratic strategy.

Will he get away with it?

On first glance, Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, did not head into the government shutdown in a strong position. Years of watching shutdowns told us that the party that filibusters a plain-vanilla extension of funding in exchange for a policy demand—in this case, continuing certain COVID-era Obamacare subsidies—would take the public blame. On top of that, Democrats’ messages were mixed. The strong, constitutional reason to refuse to fund President Donald Trump’s executive branch without negotiation is that the White House repeatedly refused to spend congressionally appropriated funds. That’s where the energy^[3] for a confrontation came from. But Democrats instead focused on a health care dispute, because they poll well on the issue, even though a disagreement over that kind of policy isn’t typically grounds for a shutdown.

Democrats certainly—certainly—could come out of the shutdown as the losers. But that’s not what the preliminary shutdown polling shows. A Washington Post poll^[4] conducted on the first day of the shutdown found that “significantly more Americans blame President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats, though many say they are not sure.” That’s in line with what pre-shutdown polling expected.^[5] If this pattern holds, it could show that there are, after all, downsides to Trump’s push to incorporate the entirety of the federal government into his hands: If there’s a problem, there’s only one guy people know to blame.

Potential for backlash.

We don’t know where the line is anymore. Is it still possible, though, that the Trump official who gleefully cancels blue-state programs as overt political retribution during a shutdown is viewed … what’s the word … poorly? Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, author of Project 2025’s chapter about consolidating power in the executive branch, is not behaving subtly as he tries to achieve just that in the absence of congressional appropriations. He posted^[6] on Wednesday that he would freeze “roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects”—including Schumer’s baby, the Gateway Program^[7]—based on “unconstitutional DEI principles.” He then posted within hours that “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled” and listed the 16 specific blue states where the projects were. The layoffs would come next.

Vought believes that he is being unbelievably cute and clever in applying pressure to Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and other leading Democrats. But what if voters, instead of getting mad at the Democrats who represent them, determine that Vought and his boss are jerks for unnecessarily canceling their federal grants to amuse himself? What if Republicans in New Jersey find themselves upset with the Trump administration for nixing their transit funds, at a time when Republicans have a decent shot to win the governor’s mansion^[8] there? Could it be that swing-seat House Republicans in blue states are punished for Vought’s games? We don’t know anything. But is giddily revoking people’s livelihoods certain to reap political rewards?

Yes, sir, you are very cool, sir.

The defense secretary summoned senior military leaders from around the world this week to an auditorium in Quantico to make an urgent national security announcement:^[9] No more fatties. In his “warrior ethos” rally—which, again, took all the people who run the military out of their jobs and into one room—Hegseth spoke against troops having beards and how it was “completely unacceptable” to see “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.” (A brief reminder that Hegseth’s boss and the commander in chief of the armed forces is composed 100 percent of sodium jelly.) He said^[10] there would be “no more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate-change worship—we are done with that shit!” Then the president himself spoke and gave much of his usual rant but added that Democrat-run cities could serve as “training grounds” for the military and that the brass’s top target now was “the enemy from within.”

We are trying to imagine what it was like to be a general or admiral in that room and to have to sit through this. How do you feign respect for either of these guys, but especially Hegseth, who didn’t have to earn his position by winning a national election? Last week we wrote that “this meeting is either bad news, or it’s the biggest ‘could’ve been an email’ of the year.” We regret the or.

You sunk my Nazi battleship.

In early August, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics after it produced a monthly jobs report he didn’t like. Normal stuff that happens in a normal country with a healthy government. He then appointed to fill the vacancy a fellow named E.J. Antoni, a Heritage Foundation partisan who got his Ph.D. in 2020. Most economists under the sun^[11] criticized^[12] the move to fill a nonpartisan government job to compile and release data with, by all accounts, a baffling ding-dong. But we’re not sure anyone really doubted that Trump would ultimately get his way with a Senate Republican confirmation.

Yet sometimes miracles happen, and Senates don’t entirely abdicate their constitutional advice and consent roles. A lot has come up about Antoni since his nomination. He was found to have been outside the Capitol on Jan. 6,^[13] something that’s still deemed to have been “bad” by a small but critical sect within the Senate Republican conference. He was unusually obsessed with a Nazi battleship.^[14] He wrote a number of unfortunate^[15] tweets over the years under the name “phdofbombsaway”—and they don’t even offer doctoral degrees in that subject. The White House withdrew his nomination^[16] to BLS this week. And that’s good. Even with all of this kicked-up dirt around tweets, Nazi battleship admiration, and Jan. 6 curiosity, however, we still maintain that the original issue—picking a questionably credentialed ideologue to produce good jobs numbers for Donald Trump—was the most concerning.

Only four more months of inane fighting about this.

The NFL announced this week that the 2026 Super Bowl halftime performer would be Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny, one of the most popular musicians in the world. Some voices on the right, who already control the government but are more interested in seizing control of the culture, are upset^[17] that this doesn’t jibe with the nativist cultural shifts ushered in by Trump’s election. Bad Bunny, who mostly sings in Spanish,^[18] has been critical of both Trump and ICE^[19] in the past, and didn’t perform in the U.S. on his latest tour due to concerns^[20] of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at his concerts.

In the past, this “controversy” would have begun and ended with some complaining on the internet. But the Trump administration won’t be able to resist involving itself. In an interview this week, Corey Lewandowski, special adviser (is that what we’re calling it these days?^[21]) to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, warned that ICE could be policing^[22] the Super Bowl, and then added his own entertainment preferences. “There are plenty of great bands and entertainment people who could be playing at that show that would be bringing people together and not separating them,” he said.^[23] We wish we were saying this as a joke, but we expect Trump to apply pressure on the NFL to change the performer.

Anyone can win the papacy, but not everyone gets in the Surge.

Retiring Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin was all set to receive a lifetime achievement award in November from Catholic Cardinal Blase Cupich, related to his work on immigration. Given Durbin’s support for abortion rights, this caused a whole stink, with more conservative American Catholics protesting Cupich’s decision. Durbin declined the award this week given all the hoopla.^[24][25]

What would Durbin’s fellow Illinoisan, Bob “Chicago Pope” Prevost, say about all this? A reporter was able to get his thoughts outside the cozy confines of Castel Gandalfo.^[26] While the pope wasn’t “terribly familiar” with the case, he encouraged looking at people’s overall body of work and acknowledged human complexity. “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life,” he said. “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in favor of the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States’—I don’t know if that’s pro-life.” Obviously, this lib talk has irritated American conservative Catholics, and we can safely say this is the most out-on-a-limb a pope has gone on Tricky Dick Durbin’s behalf.

Sure, let’s end with the sword thing.

Each and every day in this administration, we are learning about people we should not be learning about. On Thursday we learned about Todd Arrington. Arrington was—was!—the director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Kansas, having been appointed^[31] to the job by the national archivist last year. How lovely. But as CBS News reported,^[32] Arrington resigned this week “after a tug-of-war with the Trump administration over gift selection and a sword for King Charles III.” If there’s one thing Chuck Windsor doesn’t need any more of, it’s swords, but let’s set that aside.

Per CBS, Arrington had rebuffed State Department officials who wanted to gift an original Eisenhower sword to the king, instead offering to help them find a replica. Eventually, West Point donated an Eisenhower knockoff for King Charles to throw in a closet somewhere and never see again. The White House denies any involvement in the ouster, though, “one administration official said Arrington was believed to have spoken critically about the president and the administration.” What if something so simple as selection of a gift for a state visit didn’t end in the resignation of a presidential library director? What if we live in hell? What if, what if. Have a good weekend!^[33]