A Crisis of Their Own Making

Thanks for reading By the Ballot! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribed

The party of “small government” has proven once again that what they really want is a weaker America. They started the year with a billionaire and a chainsaw — cutting so-called “government waste,” which somehow meant gutting foreign aid, education, health and human services, Social Security, veterans’ affairs, and environmental protection.

Then came the “Big Beautiful Bill” — slashing Medicaid for millions, cutting food assistance for impoverished families, pouring money into Trump’s border wall, and handing out massive tax cuts to millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.

Here in Virginia, where the federal government is the single largest employer, the impacts have been devastating. Tens of thousands lost their jobs. Families lost healthcare and food support. Veterans and military families saw their benefits stripped away. Every hiccup in federal funding hits Virginians first and hardest.

And yet, Republicans still weren’t done.

Manufactured Chaos, Bad Faith “Negotiations”

For weeks, Democratic leadership tried—albeit weakly—to bring Trump and Republicans to the table.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:

SCHUMER: I hope and pray that that Trump will sit down with us and negotiate

BASH: And if he doesn’t, I’m just confirming that you’ll vote no. Is that correct?

SCHUMER: We are hoping that he will negotiate with us

BASH: And if he doesn’t?

SCHUMER: We must get a better bill than what they have.

At the eleventh hour, Schumer and Jeffries were summoned to the White House along with Thune and Johnson.

The President grinned for the cameras, reveling in the chaos he caused.

Now, for those following along, you might remember that Republicans currently control the House, the Senate, AND the White House. But that doesn’t stop these con artists from fabricating the most insane story of all time:

Hours later, JD Vance stepped outside to declare:

“Democrats want a $1.5 TRILLION spending package that funded free health care for illegals. We told them that was absurd — and now they’re willing to shut down the government over it.”

A total fabrication. No evidence. Just lies. And it showed what was clear all along: Republicans never intended to negotiate in good faith. Their CR wasn’t a compromise — it was designed to rip healthcare from millions regardless of immigration status.

Speaker Mike Johnson piled on with crocodile tears about WIC and FEMA losing funding. Let’s be crystal fucking clear: you don’t get to gut vital programs for nine months and then blame Democrats for holding up your sham bill. That’s not negotiating — it’s hostage-taking.

Meanwhile, Trump gleefully posted an AI video of Schumer calling Democrats “woke pieces of shit,” later replayed in the White House briefing room in a clear display of maturity. This is not governing. It’s trolling with the full weight of the federal government behind it.

Shutdown as a Weapon

The next day, Republicans refused to recognize Democrats in the House seeking a vote to avoid a shutdown. With most GOP members out of town, they immediately gaveled the chamber into recess.

By Wednesday, contractors across D.C. received stop-work orders — but with a twist: these notices explicitly blamed Senate Democrats for the shutdown—a blatant Hatch Act violation, unprecedented in federal contracting.

At HUD, the agency homepage featured the following message:

“The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.”

Government propaganda straight out of a tinpot regime.

As former Biden official Rob Flaherty noted, Democrats weren’t even allowed to use the word “MAGA” under the Hatch Act. Republicans simply don’t care. They want less government, and the shutdown serves that goal.

I was thinking about this earlier. One of my all-time favorite movies is The Big Short. And in one scene, Steve Carell’s character, Mark Baum, has gone down to Florida, and he and his employees have just finished listening to two mortgage brokers discuss how they are essentially making fraudulent loans that are—unbeknownst to them—contributing to the impending mortgage crisis in a cocky and confident manner. And then he pulls his two guys aside and says:

Mark Baum: “I don’t get it. Why are they confessing?”

Danny Moses: “They’re not confessing.”

Porter Collins: “They’re bragging.”

That’s how this administration feels. This administration brags about the damage, much like the mortgage brokers in The Big Short who exposed fraud without realizing it.

That’s the GOP now. Rubbing our faces in their abuse of power because the pain only falls on us, not them.

An Authoritarian Playbook

Trump has spared no opportunity in his second term to shutter agencies, slim down the federal workforce, and reconfigure the budget with aggressive tactics that stretch the law to its breaking point. And now, with a cabinet full of sycophants and true believers instead of the cautious political operatives who occasionally checked him in 2016, he’s pushing far beyond even the extremes of his first term.

This isn’t governing. This is punishment. OMB Director and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought openly bragged about using the shutdown to fire—not furlough—thousands of federal workers. Trump himself said a shutdown was a “good” opportunity to gut agencies he didn’t like and slash benefits that didn’t serve him politically. And JD Vance tried to wrap it in Orwellian doublespeak, claiming massive firings were needed to “preserve essential services.”

We all know what “essential services” means in their lexicon: ICE raids, border walls, and militarized crackdowns. Not food assistance. Not healthcare. Not housing.

The mask is off. Trump and his allies are openly signaling that they will use every tool of the federal government to punish their political enemies and enrich their friends. They aren’t even hiding it—they’re bragging about it. Just like the mortgage brokers in The Big Short who smirked through admitting their fraud, this administration rubs our noses in it, gleefully daring anyone to stop them.

This is the authoritarian playbook, page by page:

• Take the power away from those who check you.

• Punish your political enemies with the force of the federal government.

• Spin a narrative that blames your opponents for the chaos you created.

The result? Millions suffer, not the men in power. And unless Democrats stop treating this like “politics as usual” and start naming it for what it is—an authoritarian assault on democracy—we’re just letting them run the same play over and over again.

The GOP Owns This

Let’s not get this twisted. Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They had every single lever of power in their hands — and they still managed to shut the government down. That’s not dysfunction; that’s sabotage.

Some Democrats are already wringing their hands, falling into the trap of self-blame. But let’s be honest: the real reason Democrats rejected Trump’s continuing resolution is because it would have meant 24 million Americans losing healthcare. The uninsured population would explode. Families would go bankrupt just to stay alive. How could standing against that possibly be “the problem”?

Republicans knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted pain. They wanted punishment. And they tried to spin it so that Democrats would take the blame. But here’s the tell: the NRCC is spending only four figures—literally just a few thousand dollars—on ads to push that message. Town council candidates spend more. If they thought this was a winning issue, they’d be blanketing the airwaves. They aren’t, because they know they own it.

Meanwhile, Trump and his cronies are openly bragging about the damage, turning stop-work orders into propaganda sheets blaming Democrats, using HUD’s homepage as a campaign billboard, and blasting out AI-generated lies about “funding illegals” on government channels. It’s not politics as usual. It’s an authoritarian flex.

So enough letters. Enough pearl-clutching. Enough pretending this is a negotiation gone wrong. This is a crisis of their own making. Republicans own every bit of this shutdown, and the longer Democrats act like it’s a shared burden, the more they play right into Trump’s hands.

We don’t need a minority party. We need an opposition party. And we needed it yesterday.

Thanks for reading By the Ballot! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribed

By the Ballot is an opinion series published on Substack. All views expressed are solely those of the author and should not be interpreted as reporting or objective journalism or attributed to any other individual or organization. I am not a journalist or reporter, nor do I claim to be one. This publication represents personal commentary, analysis, and opinion only.