Opinion | Stop Acting Like This Is Normal – The New York Times

Opinion Ezra Klein

Stop Acting Like This Is Normal

By Ezra Klein, Opinion Columnist, Sept. 7, 2025

In a few weeks the government’s funding will run out. If Democrats vote for a new spending bill, they will be funding Trump’s autocratic takeover — and I don’t see how they can.

If Democrats Have a Better Plan, I’d Like to Hear It

In a few weeks the government’s funding will run out. If Democrats vote for a new spending bill, they will be funding Trump’s autocratic takeover — and I don’t see how they can.

In about three weeks, the government’s funding will run out. Democrats will face a choice: Join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.

Democrats faced a version of this choice back in March. DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, was chain-sawing its way through the government. Civil servants were being fired left and right. Government grants and payments were being choked off and reworked into tools of political power and punishment. Trump was signing executive orders demanding the investigation — I would say, the persecution — of his enemies. He had announced shocking tariffs on Mexico and Canada. We were in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. And Democrats seemed completely overwhelmed and outmatched.

I often heard people complain that Democrats lacked a message. What Democrats really lacked was power. They didn’t have the House or the Senate, but they did have one sliver of leverage: To fund the government, Senate Republicans needed Democratic votes. And not just one or two. They needed at least seven Democrats to reach that magic 60-vote threshold. House Democrats wanted a shutdown. But Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, didn’t. He voted for the funding bill and encouraged a crucial number of his colleagues to do the same. The bill passed.

To many Democrats, this seemed insane. Some began openly calling for Schumer to resign or face a primary challenge. This was Democrats’ first real opportunity to fight back against Trump, and they had folded. What were they good for?

During this period, I talked to Schumer, to House leadership, to members of Congress with different theories of what should be done. I didn’t think it was an easy call. The House’s argument — Hakeem Jeffries’s argument — was that a shutdown creates a crisis. A crisis creates attention. And attention gives Democrats the chance to make their case, to be heard by the American people.

The argument Schumer made was threefold. First, Trump was being stopped in the courts. There were dozens of cases playing out against him, and he was losing again and again and again. Shut down the government, and you might shut down the courts.

Second, DOGE was trying to gut the executive branch. When the government falls into a funding crisis, the executive gets more authority to decide where the money the government does have goes. In that chaos, DOGE could go further and faster.

After all, it’s Democrats who want the government to work. It was Trump and DOGE looking for every opportunity to dismantle it. A shutdown wasn’t leverage against Trump. It was leverage against the Democrats’ own priorities.

Editor’s Note: Article appears now behind a paywall; it was free earlier, this version.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | Stop Acting Like This Is Normal – The New York Times