For months, as Donald Trump has used the levers of the US federal government to consolidate power, silence dissent and punish his political enemies, Democrats have been bombarded with a single demand: do something. Last week, they did.
In a rare display of unity, out-of-power Democrats embraced the risky politics of a government shutdown – their boldest effort yet to rein in a president whom many Americans and constitutional scholars now view as a threat to US democracy.
“It’s not a fight for fighting’s sake,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of the outside groups closely coordinating with Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. “This is a battle about Donald Trump’s attacks on the constitution and him seizing the power over all spending from Congress – and whether Congress is going to let him get away with that.”
Washington is bracing for what could be an extended government shutdown, which officially began at 12.01am on Wednesday. Last week, Senate Democrats repeatedly blocked a Republican funding measure to reopen the government, as the parties traded blame and each side insisted they would not bend to the other’s demands.
Democrats are pressing for an array of healthcare-centered priorities, including the extension of tax credits for Affordable Care Act plans set to expire at the end of the year. The White House and Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, have refused to include any healthcare concessions as part of a deal to reopen the government, though some GOP lawmakers are open to extending the ACA subsidies.
Democrats, with little leverage and deep skepticism that Republicans will honor any future deal, view the shutdown as their only option to force the issue.
But the Trump administration is working to make the closures as painful as possible for Democrats, who Republicans accuse of trying to “sabotage” the president’s agenda.
Trump has called the shutdown an “unprecedented opportunity” to dismantle federal programs and what he called “Democrat agencies”. In a sharp break from precedent, the Trump administration is readying plans to permanently layoffs of federal workers while it takes punitive action against Democratic-led states. Several government departments have posted partisan and potentially illegal messages saying their operations are curtailed due to “the Radical Left Democrat shutdown”. In the Senate, the majority leader John Thune has said he plans to hold more votes on a plan to reopen the government this week.
But Democrats say the stakes are too high – and the greater risk is capitulating to the president.
“Remember, right now, our healthcare system is broken. Right now, we’re the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people,” the senator Bernie Sanders said in a video with progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, explaining the Democrats’ opposition to the Republican funding bill. “And these guys want to make it even worse. We’re not going to let that happen.”
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Progressive activists who have been sharply critical of the party’s congressional leaders, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, are now praising them for continuing to “hold the line on healthcare”.
“What our members see is Democrats willing to stand up and fight,” said Joel Payne, a spokesperson for MoveOn, which is part of a coalition of progressive groups flooding Democrats with calls to hold fast in shutdown negotiations.
Payne said healthcare was Democrats’ “north star” – the party’s strongest issue with voters and one that has helped propel them to victory in the past. If Democrats are successful, he added, the showdown over healthcare could serve as a blueprint for safeguarding other rights under attack by the administration.
House Republicans did not need Democrats to pass their short-term spending bill last month, which would fund the government mostly at current levels through 21 November. But in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, they need Democratic support to clear the 60-vote threshold required to advance most legislation.
So far, only three members of the Senate Democratic caucus have broken ranks: John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus King, an independent of Maine.
In the House, Maine congressman Jared Golden, was only House Democrat to back the Republican funding bill when it passed the House last month. In a statement last week, Golden said the shutdown was the “result of hardball politics” driven by the demands of “far-left groups” eager to show their opposition to Trump.
Early polling suggests voters are more inclined to blame Trump and Republicans than Democrats for the federal shutdown. A Washington Post poll released on Thursday found that, by a 17-percentage-point margin, Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown. Independents overwhelmingly sided with Democrats, the survey found.
Yet there were signs public opinion could shift as more Americans face the ripple effects of government-wide closures. In several polls, a significant share of voters said they held both parties equally responsible or were unsure of whom to blame.
The call for Democrats to take a harder line against Trump has been building for months. Across the country, progressive activists, disaffected Republicans and voters outraged by the administration’s actions have packed town halls, marched in protests and launched campaigns of their own – sending a clear message to Democrats: step up, or step aside.
“Everybody wants a fighter,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice-president at the centrist thinktank Third Way that is often at odds with the party’s left flank.
Erickson said the focus on healthcare – an issue that unifies the party’s diverse coalition and falls squarely in the “Venn diagram of things voters care about” – was both good politics and good policy.
“The ACA subsidies are a real ask,” she said. “If Democrats got that, it would be a way to declare victory in this moment.”
Democrats feel confident going to battle over healthcare. A Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll showed that 78% of Americans support extending the credits, which disproportionately benefit Republican-held congressional districts.
Without action, insurance premiums for millions of Americans could double next year, according to an analysis by KFF. Democrats have also sought to reverse Medicaid cuts included in Trump’s marquee tax-and-immigration package, which the nonpartisan congressional budget office projects will leave 10 million more Americans uninsured over the next decade.
Republicans have countered by falsely claiming Democrats forced a shutdown to provide free health benefits to undocumented immigrants. The White House has taunted Democrats with a deepfake video of Schumer and Jeffries, wearing a sombrero and fake mustache that has been widely denounced as racist. Vance laughed off the criticism, calling the video “funny”.
Democrats like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, fired back with memes and taunts of their own. In one tweet, Newsom’s press team posted an AI generated image of Trump in a towering wig and an 18th-century gown: TRUMP “MARIE ANTOINETTE” SAYS, “NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!”
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Democrats are betting that the shutdown strategy can help shift momentum heading into next year’s midterm elections. By wielding their most powerful legislative tool, party leaders aim to rebuild trust with their disillusioned base – a group whose frustration has dragged Democratic approval ratings to decade lows and hurt fundraising.
Many Democrats argue that their best hope of restraining Trump is to regain the House in 2026, and that the most straightforward path to doing so is to focus on kitchen-table issues like healthcare.
Some Democratic strategists warn that by focusing primarily on healthcare, the party risks downplaying what many view as Trump’s authoritarian lurch – reducing it to just another policy showdown in Washington’s partisan budget battles.
Anat Shenker-Osorio, a Democratic strategist and communications researcher, believes a sharper message – such as “we will not fund fascism” or “no dollars for dictatorship” – would help cut through the noise and clarify the stakes.
“In order for people to fight this regime, they have to understand it as a regime hellbent on taking our freedoms,” she said.
As part of their demands, Democrats are also pushing for ways to curtail Trump’s ability to rescind funding already approved by Congress, as he has done with foreign aid programs and public broadcasting. An alternative short-term funding bill offered by Democrats included provisions that would make it harder for the president to undermine Congress’s funding power.
Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible and a leading voice on the left pushing Democrats to fight harder against what he calls the Trump “regime”, said he was encouraged to see the party’s leadership sharpen its tactics. Though Levin shares the view that the stakes are far bigger than a healthcare policy dispute, he believes Democrats’ demands, if met, could “constrain the regime in some meaningful ways”.
Indivisible is helping to coordinate a second wave of No Kings rallies across the country to protest what organizers described as Trump’s “authoritarian power grab”. The day of action, planned for 18 October, will be another opportunity to mobilize Americans and, Levin hopes, to celebrate Democrats for their resolve.
“I hope what we will not be doing is criticizing them for having surrendered again,” he said. “So the play is to win.”
