4 dynamics shaping the shutdown talks
By Michael Jones
Congress returned to Washington this week facing a volatile mix of crises at home and abroad. President Donald Trump has declared a national “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital with his sights set on other blue cities, including Chicago and Baltimore, all while escalating his immigration crackdowns.
Tariffs and trade wars are reshaping the economy even as questions loom over inflation, growth and the future of the Federal Reserve. The Epstein scandal, proposals to ban stock trading in Congress and Republican threats to rewrite Senate rules on the threshold to confirm presidential nominees have created new flashpoints of political accountability and the separation of powers, while oversight battles over RFK Jr.’s CDC leadership continue.
Abroad, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine remain unresolved and politically fraught. But looming over all of the above is the most immediate test: keeping the government open past September 30.
This deadline is more urgent than it looks.
With Congress out the week of Sept. 22 for Rosh Hashanah, lawmakers will have only a handful of legislative days to strike a deal to keep the lights on. Republicans have floated the idea that Democrats hold the key to avoiding a shutdown, but Democratic leaders argue the opposite: The responsibility falls squarely on Republicans to propose terms Democrats can realistically support with the GOP in control of the House, Senate and White House.
“Senate Democrats have shown firsthand that we are willing to work in a bipartisan way to keep our government open by advancing bipartisan appropriations bills,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to Senate Democrats on Tuesday. “However, the Trump administration is waging an all-out war against Congress’ Article I authority and the constitutional balance of power. Senate Republicans must decide: stand up for the legislative branch or enable Trump’s slide toward authoritarianism.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) struck a similar tone in a separate letter to House Democrats.
“House Democrats have repeatedly made clear that we are prepared to pass a bipartisan spending bill in advance of this deadline,” he wrote. “However, any agreement must meet the needs of the American people in terms of their health, safety, national security and economic well-being.”
I know that tracking the appropriations process is no small feat, but doing so makes it easier to separate signal from noise. That’s why I’ve pulled together a guide to the four dynamics driving the shutdown talks to keep handy as the Hill press corps chronicles every twist and turn in the race against the clock.
1. Trump’s pocket rescission
Last week, the Trump administration told Congress it plans to claw back $5 billion in foreign aid and development accounts. It’s a move called “pocket rescission” that proposes canceling money Congress has already approved, often by targeting unobligated funds at the end of a fiscal year that haven’t yet been spent so that they automatically expire. Team Trump says the maneuver will save money, but Democrats argue it undermines U.S. credibility abroad.
Meanwhile, congressional Republican leaders claim the request shouldn’t interfere with bipartisan funding talks, but Democrats see the pocket rescission as another example of Trump trampling Congress’s constitutional power of the purse.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said it’s proof Republicans are threatening to “go at it alone” on government funding and warned that it could not only spark a shutdown, but also deepen the healthcare crisis if Congress is unable to reach a deal to extend the affordable tax credits I wrote about last month.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has already called the mechanism illegal and may sue the administration.
“My expectation is that a court case will be brought against these so-called pocket rescissions, which undermine the national security interests of the American people,” Jeffries told reporters on Tuesday. “And ultimately, as has been the case over and over and over again throughout the Trump administration, the extremists will lose in federal court.”
2. The scars from the broken deals
Shutdown politics are as much about trust as the topline funding levels that form the basis of any agreement. This trust is in short supply after two high-profile breakdowns within the past year.
In December 2024, negotiators from both parties reached a bipartisan budget framework to fund the government into the new year, only for then-President-elect Trump and GOP leaders to walk away under pressure from Elon Musk and the online right. Then in March 2025, Republicans pushed through their own partisan continuing resolution, shutting Democrats out of the process and hardening divisions even further.
Those ruptures left deep scars. Democrats argue that they can’t take Republican promises at face value, while Republicans say Democrats were never serious about compromise in the first place. The September talks will be fraught with each side’s baggage as each new offer is weighed against the memory of past betrayals.
3. Jeffries and Schumer’s united front
The March funding showdown exposed cracks in Democratic leadership.
Jeffries and House Democrats almost unanimously opposed the GOP’s partisan spending bill, while Schumer and a handful of Senate Democrats voted to advance it to final passage. The move created a gulf between the two groups just when unity was needed most. But Schumer defended his decision as the responsible, albeit unpopular, path to keep the lights on, while Jeffries stood firmly with his caucus as the Democratic base demanded Schumer’s head.
This time, both leaders are emphasizing coordination.
“We are aligned on our shared priorities for September: where Republicans obstruct, we press forward; where they sow division, we answer with unity; where they threaten shutdown, we hold them accountable,” Schumer said.
Jeffries echoed that message, telling reporters, “I speak with Leader Schumer regularly, and we will continue to remain in close touch. We have all been very clear that we are willing to find bipartisan common ground in order to pass a spending bill to avoid a reckless Republican government shutdown.”
For Democrats, projecting unity at the top is their greatest leverage against a Republican-controlled government, and both leaders know their credibility is on the line.
4. Clashing endgames
Democrats want a short-term deal that buys time to negotiate a full-year appropriations agreement, which is their best shot at securing priorities on housing, health care and education while installing guardrails against deeper GOP cuts to domestic programs.
Jeffries laid out House Democrats’ non-negotiables on Monday: any bill must be bipartisan, a product of negotiation, and improve the American people’s health, safety, national security, and economic well-being.
House conservatives, by contrast, are pushing for a full-year continuing resolution that keeps funding levels flat and reflects their partisan agenda, effectively sidelining the regular appropriations process. Not all Republicans are on board: The top House GOP appropriator, Tom Cole, has signaled support for a short-term extension into Thanksgiving, and Speaker Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Thune have both said they’re prepared for bipartisan talks.
The White House, for its part, can live with a clean extension, having already secured more money for its military and immigration enforcement in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The question remains whether these competing visions will produce a bridge to compromise or cement a year of frozen spending under Republican terms.
