Things are not looking food for a government funding deal considering what has unfolded during the last 12 hours, and now there is only 12 hours to go.
The government runs out of money at midnight. Congress is stuck. And instead of building a bridge to a deal, Donald Trump poured gasoline on the moment with a racist, AI doctored video of Democratic leaders that he blasted out on Truth Social after meeting with them at the White House. According to CNN, the clip depicted Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero and Chuck Schumer speaking in a fake voice pushing anti immigrant tropes, a deepfake designed to inflame, not negotiate CNN.
This is the politics of humiliation masquerading as governance. And it clarifies the stakes of tonight’s deadline: not just whether parks close or TSA lines get longer, but whether we still expect leaders to keep public institutions functioning without turning minorities into punchlines and federal workers into pawns.
How We Got Here
At issue is a stopgap bill, your standard continuing resolution, to keep the lights on while the parties hash out full year appropriations. Republicans want a short extension that punts decisions into November. Democrats are insisting on locking in Affordable Care Act subsidies that stabilize premiums for millions and reversing GOP cuts to Medicaid. That’s not hostage taking; it’s using leverage where leverage exists to protect health coverage. If Congress will not do its most basic job, fund the government, what exactly is the counter leverage for preserving healthcare affordability?
Vice President JD Vance has framed the impasse as Democrats “refusing to do the right thing.” The reality is blunter: Republicans control the White House and both chambers, yet still cannot steer a consensus through the Senate without Democratic votes. That is the design feature of a system that demands compromise, not a bug to be fixed with threats and culture war theatrics.
What Shuts Down, What Doesn’t
If the clock strikes midnight without a bill:
- Essential workers such as air traffic controllers, TSA officers, Border Patrol, federal prison staff, and others in public safety keep working, but without pay until funding resumes.
- Non essential staff across agencies are furloughed, pausing regulatory, research, grant making, and a wide array of public services.
- National parks and museums scale back or close; trash piles up; facilities lock; local economies take a hit.
- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid continue paying benefits, but front line service tasks slow and backlogs build.
- Economic data releases and routine inspections stall, degrading decision making in both public and private sectors.
Shutdowns don’t save money; they waste it. You pay people later for work they did without pay today, lose fee revenue and productivity, and impose uncertainty taxes on families and businesses. It is government by performative suffering.
The Deepfake Presidency
Trump’s AI video is more than juvenile trolling. It is a tell. It says the administration’s theory of power is to delegitimize opponents, demonize immigrants, and degrade the information space until accountability blurs. If you can make a senator’s mouth move to a script of bigotry, you can also make public responsibility feel optional. Deepfakes in a fiscal crisis aren’t just offensive; they are strategically corrosive. They normalize unreality, and make a functional bargain feel like capitulation to “them,” whoever the villain of the hour is.
It’s no accident the same camp threatening mass furloughs is floating mass firings of “non essential” workers. That is not fiscal prudence; it is a long project to hollow out the administrative state such as health, environment, labor, and justice so it cannot check executive whim or corporate excess. The shutdown is not just leverage; it is a stress test of how far that project can go.
Health Care Is The Focal Point, For A Reason
Democrats’ red line on ACA subsidies is not a boutique demand. Letting them lapse spikes premiums and destabilizes markets in red and blue states alike. Republicans say “pass a clean CR and we will debate healthcare later.” Voters have seen that movie. “Later” too often becomes “never,” while families absorb higher deductibles and co pays that feel like stealth tax hikes.
There is a bigger lesson here. Our budget fights are increasingly about the operating system of the modern state: who gets healthcare, who counts as fully American, who is worthy of public investment. Shutdown brinkmanship turns those questions into hostage exchanges, and then blames the hostages for screaming.
The Economic And Democratic Costs
Markets can shrug off a short shutdown. Households cannot. Federal workers missing checks cut spending near bases, labs, parks, and courthouses. Contractors such as janitors, cafeteria workers, and guards often don’t get back pay at all. Small delays compound: lab grants slipped a week, inspections paused a month, court dockets jammed for a quarter. We will add it all to the invisible GDP we decided not to produce.
The democratic harm is worse. Governing becomes a ritual of mutually assured dysfunction. Norms degrade: instead of bargaining in good faith, leaders posture for their feeds. Instead of persuading the middle, they punish the other side’s base. The endgame isn’t a budget; it’s a clip.
A Deal Worth Making
There is an obvious trade: a clean CR that includes ACA subsidy protections and unwinds Medicaid cuts, paired with time boxed talks on longer term spending, plus a guarantee that essential workers are paid on time. No poison pill riders. No performative cruelty. Just the dull heroism of doing the job.
But that requires something scarce in Washington: an agreement that voters prefer functioning institutions to viral dunks. If the administration wants to prove it can negotiate, it can start by logging off, disavowing racist deepfakes, and instructing its allies to cut the hostage taking rhetoric.
The Midnight Test
By midnight, we will know who wanted a government and who wanted a spectacle. The shutdown is the symptom; the disease is contempt, for institutions, for reality, for each other. You cannot run a democracy on contempt. You can, however, shut one down.