The Budget Briar Patch

Republicans dare Democrats to shut things down

Mar 13, 2025

I write on the CR fight in The Spectator:

Call it the ultimate example of budgetary FAFO — or “F- around and find out”: Republicans are practically daring Democrats in the Senate to follow through on Chuck Schumer’s threat to vote against the six-month continuing resolution passed by the House Tuesday night on a near-party-line vote. With Senator Rand Paul joining his fellow libertarian-minded Kentuckyian Representative Thomas Massie in opposing the measure, Republicans likely need eight Democrats to cross over. And despite Schumer’s claim yesterday that Republicans won’t get those votes, everyone in the know in Washington believes the old man’s threat is fist-shaking at clouds. As Politico’s Rachael Bade reported, the mood from the White House is total confidence either way: “They’re 100 percent gonna swallow it,” one White House official told me. “They’re totally screwed.”

The dynamics of this CR are atypical, given that the recent experiences regarding shutdowns have pitted fiscal conservatives against big spending Democrats. This time around, you have the stalking green-eye shaded Mearcstapa threat of DoGE, ready to pounce in the event of a government shutdown that would necessarily require the furloughing of vast portions of the bureaucracy. For those who understand the potential of a Democrat-engineered, Republican-managed shutdown, you’d have to have an appetite for destruction to want it at this particular moment. And following the embarrassing display of chaotic behavior at Trump’s joint address to Congress, Democrats would be contributing to the impression that in the Trump 2.0 era they are flailing about to find the best path of resistance.

Here’s Mark Warner: “Morning update: NO on cloture. NO on the CR. We’re fighting this bad bill that cuts Americans a terrible deal with everything we’ve got.”

What this entire moment reveals is that Democrats truly haven’t figured out what path to take with confronting this president. They’ve already fallen into the trap of defending the most unpopular spending the federal government does — foreign aid and massive, bloated bureaucracies — and now they’re setting themselves up to provide a toothless, unserious opposition to what amounts largely to a typical DC can-kick. It’s the worst of both worlds: they’re wavering and ineffectual in opposing a president whose agenda is on tilt, speeding forward on a minute by minute basis.

The speed-demon approach to leadership leads to mistakes, but it also leads to getting a lot of things done too rapidly for the opposition to keep up. How long can Team Trump keep it up? At the moment, given the scattered nature of the Democrats, it looks like it’s going to go as long as they want.

RIP, BLM Plaza

Derek VanBuskirk in The Spectator.

So, rest in power, Black Lives Matter Plaza. Mayor Muriel Bowser has at last caved to Republican pressure and is overseeing the renovation of the stretch of Washington’s 16th Street NW leading up to the White House ahead of the US’s 250th anniversary next year.
Demolition of the plaza began Monday near Lafayette Square, where BLM protesters were cleared using tear gas in June 2020, and in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, where an arsonist started a fire in the basement during the protest. These events sparked Bowser’s decision to create a permanent plaza there in solidarity with their cause — protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis a week earlier — and in resistance to then-President Donald Trump.
A handful of DC locals paused as they passed by to watch workers deconstruct the approximately $7.8 million plaza. Many reached out to collect pieces of the upturned concrete, which still bore fragments of the 48-foot-tall, all-caps yellow letters spelling “BLACK LIVES MATTER” that had until recently spanned two blocks — as if they were remnants of the Berlin Wall.
Lonny Geller, a commuter, stopped on his bike to survey the scene. Having only been in the city for a few weeks, this was Geller’s first time crossing BLM Plaza. As a “blue-voting American,” Geller thought the renovation a waste of money, but felt partially reassured when he found out about the future plans for the plaza.
Last week, Bowser announced that after the six to eight weeks of renovations, the BLM Plaza would become part of DC’s America 250 mural project. The city’s “long-considered” plan is to prepare for the nation’s semiquincentennial anniversary next year by having local students and artists create murals across all eight wards.
That announcement came after receiving some serious pressure from House Republicans. Representative Andrew Clyde of introduced HR-1774 last week which threatened to withhold federal funding unless the mural was erased and the site was renamed “Liberty Plaza.” Although Republicans have previously pushed Bowser to take down the plaza, she has only now taken the request seriously, with the GOP in control of the House, Senate and White House.
One of the workers on the scene, Mike McNeill, indicated that he is not a fan of the change and blames Bowser for not fighting back. However, he said he has adopted an “it is what it is” mentality, as he sees no point in resisting “until we get [Trump] out of that chair.”

San Francisco Judge Orders Forced Rehiring

Politico.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered federal agencies to rehire tens of thousands of probationary employees who were fired amid President Donald Trump’s turbulent effort to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup described the mass firings as a “sham” strategy by the government’s central human resources office to sidestep legal requirements for reducing the federal workforce.
Alsup, a San Francisco-based appointee of President Bill Clinton, ordered the Defense, Treasury, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs departments to “immediately” offer all fired probationary employees their jobs back. The Office of Personnel Management, the judge said, had made an “unlawful” decision to terminate them.
The order is one of the most far-reaching rejections of the Trump administration’s effort to slash the bureaucracy and is almost certain to be appealed.
Alsup also lashed out at the Justice Department over its handling of the case, saying he believes that Trump administration lawyers were hiding the facts about who directed the mass firings.
“You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined. You’re afraid to do so because you know cross examination would reveal the truth,” the judge said to a DOJ attorney during a hearing Thursday. “I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth. … I’m tired of seeing you stonewall on trying to get at the truth.”
Alsup also said the administration attempted to circumvent federal laws on reducing the workforce by attributing the firings to “performance” when that was not in fact the case. The judge called the move “a gimmick.”

The Return of James K. Polk

WSJ: The Painting That Explains Trump’s Foreign Policy

President Trump called Speaker Mike Johnson with a proposed deal last month: I’ll give you one of the White House’s portraits of Thomas Jefferson if you give me the one of James Polk hanging in the U.S. Capitol.
Johnson agreed, and a painting of the 11th president, who oversaw the largest expansion of U.S. territory in history, was moved across Washington and now hangs in the Oval Office, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump told others in the White House that he admired Polk, a champion of “manifest destiny” who through annexation and war acquired the Oregon Territory, Texas, California and much of the American Southwest. “He got a lot of land,” Trump said to White House visitors soon after the painting—featuring a steely-eyed Polk against a dark red background—was hung in late February.
The portrait of James K. Polk was painted in 1911 by Rebecca Polk, a distant relative, based on images made during his lifetime. Photo: Rebecca Polk/Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives
One of the most striking features of Trump’s second term has been his thirst for expanding American territory. Since taking office, he has said that Canada is fleecing Americans on trade and should be made the 51st state; that the U.S. should retake control of the Panama Canal to ward off Chinese influence; and that the war in Gaza should be ended by the U.S. taking over the territory and rebuilding it. Trump has also talked about acquiring Greenland from Denmark.
The actual inhabitants of all these places have loudly rejected Trump’s claims, but he has persisted in making them, even as they threaten to derail other American priorities on trade and security. Expanding U.S. territory is part of the vision of a new “Golden Age” Trump has promised for his second term, which he says will restore American dominance abroad and usher in a new period of prosperity at home.
The predecessor who now inspires Trump in vivid oil paint served only one term, dying shortly after he left office in 1849. But in four years Polk nearly doubled the territory of the U.S. On the northern border, Polk’s supporters rallied around the expansionist slogan “54°40’ or Fight,” demanding the U.S. take over the entire Pacific Northwest up to that latitude, then the southern boundary of Russian Alaska, even if it meant going to war with Britain. Instead, in 1846 Polk negotiated a treaty that established the U.S.’s northern border at the 49th parallel.
In the Southwest, Polk annexed Texas and fought the Mexican-American War, which ended in Mexico ceding more than 500,000 square miles to the U.S., including all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming, in exchange for $15 million.
It was “one of the largest land grabs in world history,” said historian Hampton Sides, who wrote about Polk in his book “Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West.” “He wanted it all, and he got it all in one term, which was kind of extraordinary if you think about it.”