A DOGE Shutdown Could Be Just What Republicans Want

It's a trap!

Feb 11, 2025

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Before we get into today’s topics, I wanted to call your attention to this paywalled conversation with Winston Marshall — we talked for about an hour on his podcast about the cabinet nominees, but then I wanted to keep talking and chat about the situation in the U.K. regarding the “groomer gangs” and the trans agenda. You can find it here at his Substack and (hopefully this link works) listen to it as your one free article. Subscribe to Win’s Substack, too — he’s smart, culturally savvy, has excellent guests and is a provocative interviewer.

Winston Marshall

"They called it a conspiracy – it wasn’t." Ben Domenech On R*pe Gangs & America's Taboo

Ben Domenech, Editor at Large of The Spectator World and co-founder of The Federalist recently came on The Winston Marshall Show to discuss President Trump’s so-called “Avengers” as they lined up for the senate hearings…

Listen now

6 months ago · Winston Marshall and Ben Domenech

Should Republicans Want a Shutdown?

Rachel Bade with a provocative argument.

Asked on “Meet the Press” Sunday if he was “prepared to shut down the government” when funding expires on March 14, Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said he was: “They are simply trying to dismantle the government,” he said. “I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we’re seeing.”
The logic is straightforward enough: Republicans, after all, will need Democratic votes to keep the government open, given the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and House conservatives’ aversion to supporting any funding bill. Why not play a little hardball, the thinking goes, and try to get Trump and Musk to back off?
But having covered more than a few of these shutdown fights, I can say confidently that this isn’t the leverage point Democrats and much of Washington seem to think it is. Not only is this a battle Democrats probably can’t win, it’s one that could play right into Trump and Musk’s hands.
To understand why, let’s unpack the practical and political ramifications of a DOGE-focused shutdown over Musk’s efforts.
On the first, there’s a real question about whether a Trump shutdown would look anything like the government shutdowns we’ve come to know over the past four decades.
The legal basis for the modern federal shutdown traces back to a 1980 memorandum penned for President Jimmy Carter by then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. It spelled out his interpretation of what a lapse in funding would mean for a federal agency: No spending whatsoever “except as necessary to bring about the orderly termination of an agency’s functions.” He later amended that to exempt functions connected to “the safety of human life or the protection of property.”
In other words, a government bureaucrat created the shutdown, and a government bureaucrat could destroy it. Trump’s new attorney general, Pam Bondi, might not even need to rescind Civiletti’s guidance: The White House Office of Management and Budget exercises huge influence in determining what activities are essential under the memo and which aren’t.
And if we know anything about Trump’s newly confirmed OMB director, Russ Vought, it’s that he has little regard for the niceties of bureaucratic precedent. It’s not hard to imagine him working with Trump and even Musk to designate a much broader swath of favored agencies to continue operating while other, disfavored corners of government are shut down and their workers sent home.
A DOGE shutdown, in other words, could hand carte blanche to Musk, Vought & Co. to remake the federal government in the very same ways that Democrats want to fight against. In some ways, it could be even easier, in fact — a veritable dream for them.
And then there’s the politics. On the Republican side, let’s just say there isn’t very strong evidence that the MAGA wing of the party really thinks the GOP would pay much of a political price for a shutdown. Trump, after all, led the charge for the longest government shutdown in history in late 2018. His polling took a temporary hit, but it quickly recovered.
It’s Democrats who would face real political complications in embracing a shutdown fight. And there are many.
For one, Democrats would be embracing a tactic they’ve long shunned: holding the government hostage until they get what they want. The party has never been comfortable with that, and there’s little reason to think Democratic leaders would feel confident about doing so now.
There’s also the challenging message of explaining to Americans that you’re shutting the government down in order to save the government. The argument might make sense here in Washington, but it’s pretty damn confusing for every other American. And Democrats know that, in a shutdown, the winning message wins the fight.
What’s more, don’t forget that Trump and Republicans occupy the political high ground at the moment. The unfortunate reality for Democrats is that after a three-week stretch where Trump and Musk essentially shut down U.S. foreign aid, staged a hostile takeover of the federal workforce and allowed a cadre of young tech bros to access sensitive Treasury Department payments information, Trump still has a whopping 53 percent approval rating.
In fact, the same CBS poll found that 68 percent of voters thought the Trump administration is doing the “right amount” or even “not enough” spending cuts; only 32 percent said “too much.” And despite beaucoup negative coverage about Musk and his potential conflicts of interests, a slim majority of Americans think Musk — yes, an unelected foreign-born billionaire — should have “a lot” or “some” influence on government operations and spending.

Students Show No Bounceback From Covid

Learning loss.

American students are half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement levels in math and reading, according to a report released on Tuesday.
No state showed improvements in both math and reading from 2019 to 2024, researchers found. High-income districts are four times more likely to have recovered.
The Education Recovery Scorecard combines results from the recently released Nation's Report Card assessment, as well as state test scores.
The slide in test scores "masks a pernicious inequality: scores have declined far more in America's middle- and low-income communities than its wealthy ones," Sean Reardon, director of Stanford's Educational Opportunity Project, said in a statement.
By the numbers: 17% of students between third and eighth grade are in districts with average math achievement above 2019.
11% are in districts that have recovered in reading, and 6% are in districts that have recovered in both reading and math. More than 100 districts performed above pre-pandemic levels in both math and reading.
Zoom out: Chronic absenteeism, which worsened during the pandemic, has started to show improvements, per the report. But it slowed academic recovery, especially in high-poverty districts.

Why Hamilton Would Love DOGE

Allysia Finley.

“Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 70. “A feeble Executive” leads to “a feeble execution” and “a bad government.” The Biden presidency proved the latter point.
By energy, however, Hamilton meant more than physical and mental vigor. He meant the power to act decisively, including to impose consequences for poor performance or misconduct. A weak executive, Hamilton worried, would paralyze the federal government, defuse political responsibility, undermine national security, and endanger liberty. This is why President Trump’s housecleaning, chaotic as it may be, is essential.
Democrats are howling about Mr. Trump’s removal of civil-service protections for senior career employees, buyouts for federal workers and firing of officials at independent agencies. But he’s simply restoring energy in the executive, which has been weakened by federal employee unions and civil-service protections.
It’s increasingly rare that anyone working in federal government is held accountable. “If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot,” Mr. Biden promised on taking office. Yet Mr. Biden was loath to fire his appointees no matter their blunders. He even let Martin Gruenberg remain as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. despite an independent audit last year that documented his personal outbursts and profanity against colleagues.

False Diagnoses and Assisted Dying

Peter Sefton-Williams with a harrowing tale.

If a mistake is made, and a person opts for assisted dying based on incorrect information, that mistake cannot later be rectified. Supporters of the Bill talk about the rigorous safeguards that would surround the decision-making process. But, as with the legal protections surrounding capital punishment, these can fail. It’s also deeply troubling to learn this morning that one of the key safeguards in the Assisted Dying Bill – that cases have to be signed off by the High Court – may no longer apply.
For me, this is no theoretical debate. In January 2024, I was diagnosed with suspected Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Three months later, this diagnosis was confirmed. I was suffering badly from fasciculations (or twitching and cramping) in my hands and arms, and I had noticeable weakness and muscle wastage in my right hand.
The first doctor who diagnosed my condition did so after a barrage of tests and said that, although he had written “suspected” in my report, he wanted me to know that there was no doubt about the diagnosis. He explained there was no single, definitive test for MND, so he would send me to a senior specialist at a London teaching hospital for a second opinion. He also told me there was no cure and that death usually came between eighteen months and four years after diagnosis, but that the end could come much more quickly. Finally, he advised me not to make any plans beyond six months.
The senior specialist to whom I was referred examined me at the start of April and confirmed the diagnosis. He told me that, while I could live for a further five years, he had known cases where people had died within two months of diagnosis. Both doctors also warned that the degree of muscle wastage in my hand suggested I had already lived with the condition for some considerable time.
Upon first being diagnosed, I was struck by fear and panic. I knew broadly how the end would come with MND. Muscle strength gradually fades until speech, movement, swallowing and breathing become increasingly difficult. Although I have many good friends and a supportive family, I am single and live alone. I felt I was in an impossible position and would not be able to cope with such a decline. And so, on the day after my initial diagnosis, I filled in the forms to join the Swiss assisted suicide clinic, Dignitas. I also considered other ways of terminating my life, perhaps by throwing myself off a cliff.