The government shutdown, already the second-longest in history, with no end in sight, is quickly becoming a way for President Donald Trump to exercise new command over the government.
It wasn’t always this way. In fact, it all started with an attempt to tighten Washington’s observance of federal law.
The modern phenomena of the U.S. government closing down services began in 1980 with a series of legal opinions from Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, who was serving under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Civiletti reached into the Antideficiency Act of 1870 to argue that the law was “plain and unambiguous” in restricting the government from spending money once authority from Congress expires.
In this shutdown, however, the Republican president has used the funding lapse to punish Democrats, tried to lay off thousands of federal workers and seized on the vacuum left by Congress to reconfigure the federal budget for his priorities.
“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump posted on his social media platform at the outset of the shutdown.
Yep. They did nothing to vet him at all in 2015-2016, although any one of them in the media even paying the least bit of attention could have told America just what a shitstain Taco was.
They fell down on the job even further in 2021-2024, helping spread the BidenSoOld shit, along with, “Democrats are just sooo unpopular” stuff…yeah, and I guess constantly beating that drum isn’t going to influence people to start believing it and acting accordingly. Not to mention how they’d treat almost anyone talking about Project 2025 or speaking frankly about Taco’s J6 Day of Terror and parallel coup attempt as just being hysterical or whatever.
The corporate media is as much to blame for this as anyone.