I write fluidly across different venues. Here, on social media, in emails with readers … and I sometimes lose track of where I’ve said what. So I wanted to agree with something TPM Reader XX1 says in this email I flagged. I’m skeptical the White House will follow through on their threats to carry out a new wholesale round of firings, as Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought is threatening. I’m not saying they won’t. They totally might. So this isn’t something I’m relying on or telling you to rely on. I’m just skeptical for two reasons. The first is that this White House doesn’t need a shut down to fire people. Despite the law-breaking it entails, they’ve made clear that, with the Supreme Court’s assistance, they can fire as many people as they want. If they thought it helped them to fire more people, they’d be doing that already; the shutdown provides zero new legal power to fire anyone.

“Want” is the key word here.

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.