From a federal employee. TPM Reader XX1, initials anonymized and portion of letter which notes government agency removed for obvious reasons …

I’m writing here to concur with your last couple blog posts on the shutdown.  You put into prose accurately what I’ve been trying to get across to so many local political allies who overthink irrelevant minutia.  They focus on the timing of the fight, on the details of the substance, etc.  None of that matters, as has been apparent to me all along.  This is, in fact, an arm-wrestling match, purely a battle over power.  The Democrats’ goal should be to extract a material concession that resonates to the broad masses as a “public good,” and they are doing that with ACA subsidies.  Successfully extracting  a concession is a material victory that slightly restores just a little bit of balance of power, and blocks Trump’s effort at totalitarian control. 

Early this afternoon, multiple federal departments and agencies sent out an email to employees blaming the impending shutdown on the Democrats. I didn’t see one from every department and agency. (I saw with my own eyes the versions at Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Justice and the National Science Foundation. TPM’s Emine Yücel separately saw one from the Department of Commerce.) I saw enough to see that they were going out government-wide. They were all identical. So, unsurprisingly, they were produced at the White House or possibly the General Services Administration. It was a top-down decision. “Unfortunately,” it says, “Democrats are blocking this Continuing Resolution in the Senate due to unrelated policy demands.” The website of the Department of Housing and Urban Development currently has a pop-up message claiming that the “radical left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people …” This is hardly surprising. Legalities mean nothing to the Trump administration. So following the Hatch Act would almost be quaint.

Meanwhile, as you’ve likely seen, at the much-anticipated convocation of general officers at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Hegseth encouraged generals and admirals who don’t agree with Trump administration policy to resign. In his speech, President Trump announced that he wants to make American cities the “training ground” for the U.S. military.

We’ve had a lot of you asking if you can buy tickets for one night of our anniversary event in early November. We know a two-night commitment is a lot. So as of this morning, we’ve put those individual tickets on sale too. If you’re a member there’s an email in your inbox with a link to buy tickets for either Thursday (the big show, live podcast, etc) or the party Friday night. Or you can just click the links here. We can’t wait to see you.

There’s now a flurry of statements from GOP congressional leadership essentially saying, Democrats need to do the right thing, act responsibly. The White House is claiming it’s about ACA for “illegals.” If anything this tends to confirm the folly of all these intricate and baroque arguments about how to win or argue or whatever else about a shutdown confrontation, whether you state explicit policy demands, or don’t state them or use subordinate clauses or the passive voice.

This is a brief update on the New York City mayoral election. There’s not a lot of good reason why this should be big news or a big story outside of the tristate area. But since politically obsessed people are pretty obsessed with it, I wanted to discuss a couple specific points about Mayor Eric Adams’ announcement that he’s leaving the race.

Going into 2026 and 2028 it’s time for — essential for — Democrats to make clear that the current Supreme Court will have to reformed (expanded in number, reformed in structure) to allow popular government to continue in the United States. This is not so much a litmus test (though it should be that too) as a precondition for any other promise to be credible.

We’ve noted this in the emails members have received, but since we’ve gotten a lot of questions about it: tickets for individual nights will go on sale this coming week. We know a lot of people can’t make it in for both nights (Thursday and Friday). So for those who just want to attend the show Thursday evening or the anniversary party Friday evening, those tickets will go on sale this coming week.

I also want to take a moment to thank everyone who came out to our event with STAT News Thursday night in Cambridge (Boston). I loved the venue and it was a chance for me to finally meet a lot of longtime readers from Boston and the greater New England region. A bunch of members from Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, etc. were there. (There may have been some from Maine. But no one told me they were from Maine.) The venue was really great, I thought, and I had a great mini-discussion with Rick Berke, co-founder and executive editor of STAT News. (That was the “content” for this event before we got on to the happy hour proper.) Let me thank especially Allegra Kirkland and Christine Frapech as well as the rest of our team for putting the Boston event together.

We’ll update you when tickets for each individual night of the anniversary celebration go on sale.

As I’ve written a few times, we can’t over-read any single move in the broad contest over big societal institutions obeying or resisting Trump administration diktats. But Sinclair Broadcasting just announced they’re ending their “preemption” of the Jimmy Kimmel show. Even their own statement seems to make clear that while they asked for concessions from ABC/Disney they didn’t get any.

As we hurtle toward an almost inevitable government shutdown, I want to note one part of the discussion I’ve seen among commentators. This is a bit in the weeds but I think it’s worth discussing. Some writers say that it’s actually a mistake for Democrats to make any policy demands in the budget standoff. So health care, pushing back on ICE, standing up for democracy … regardless of the specific demand, it’s a mistake. I noticed Bill Scher making this argument today in The Washington Monthly. I’ve seen TPM alum Brian Beutler in his Off Message substack newsletter. And these are only a couple of examples.

The argument goes like this.

These shutdown standoffs are technical budgetary questions. The side that is making policy demands is basically taking the budget hostage to extract extraneous policy concessions. Based on the evidence of the last 20-30 years of history, that side is the one who gets blamed for the shutdown because they’re “taking the budget hostage” or introducing extraneous demands even if those demands are good ones on the merits or even supported by the public. Beutler focuses on the “hostage taking” metaphor. Scher puts it this way:

Every past attempt to use government shutdowns to extract policy concessions has failed, even when the policy demands are politically popular, because shutdowns make people forget what you have to say. Public attention shifts to how shutdowns hurt average Americans and how one political party is willing to harm constituents to play political games. Once public opinion quickly turns, the shutdown agitators invariably realize the shutdown failed to provide negotiating leverage and eventually cave.

I have a growing sense of optimism about the political situation in the United States. But it’s not necessarily because I’m more confident about the outcomes, though I am that too. It is more that on a number of fronts the actual fight is coming into the open. Who knows who wins or gets the better of it. But the things the Trump opposition is actually talking about are getting put on the table. And they’re at the center of the table, with everyone watching. They’re fights to get attention and attention outside of the normal political space.

The Jimmy Kimmel Brouhaha is one example of this, which I discussed earlier this week. The impending budget fight is another. I’m also seeing more and more examples of Democrats telling corporations, laws firms and others that Trump won’t be in power forever, and that when that time comes they’ll need to answer for conspiring with President Trump against the American people. Minority Leader Jeffries made clear that when Democrats are in power they’ll hold people accountable for participating in Trump’s pay-to-play schemes.