Four ways this shutdown could end
- Published
Welcome to the shutdown, 2025 edition. On Tuesday evening, the US Senate was unable to pass a spending bill that would have kept the US government funded, and for the first time in nearly seven years, federal operations have been drastically curtailed.
At some point, this shutdown – like all the ones before it - will end. It may take days; it may take weeks, but eventually, as public pressure and political pain grows, one side or the other will yield.
Here are four scenarios for how that might play out.
Democrats quickly break ranks
Senate Democrats shot down a Republican spending bill that would have kept the government operating until November, but that vote may have contained the seeds of their defeat.
While forty four Democrats (and Republican iconoclast Rand Paul) voted no, two Democrats and one Democrat-allied independent sided with the Republican majority.
Independent Angus King of Maine is always a bit of a wildcard. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has been charting his own path for nearly a year. But Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, while not a liberal firebrand, is not your typical political maverick.
She is, however, up for re-election next year in a state that Donald Trump carried in 2024 and which has been slowly trending Republican for years.
In her statement explaining her vote, she expressed concern about the economic toll government closure would have on Nevada. She might also be worried about the toll it could take on her political prospects as an incumbent on the ballot when voters turn angry.
She's not the only member of her party from a battleground state who will be on the ballot in 2026, either. Democrats in Georgia, Virginia and Colorado could also start feeling the heat.
And while incumbents from Minnesota, Michigan and New Hampshire have chosen to retire rather than run for re-election, they might worry that a shutdown puts Democratic control of their seats at risk, too.
Republican Senate leader John Thune says that he is already hearing from some Democrats who are uneasy with the way the shutdown is playing out. He's planning a series of funding votes in the coming days to keep the pressure on.
There were no new defections during the vote on Wednesday, but if five more Democrats break ranks, the shutdown will end – whether the rest of the Democratic Party wants it to or not.
Watch: What could happen during the US government shutdown?
Democrats back down
Even if the Democrats stay (relatively) united, the pressure on them to abandon the fight is likely to increase as the shutdown drags on.
Government employees are a key constituency in the party, and they will be the ones feeling the pain most immediately from delayed paycheques and the possibility that the Trump administration will use the shutdown to further slash programmes and turn their furloughs into permanent unemployment.
The American public as a whole will also start feeling the bite through curtailed government services and economic disruption.
Typically the party that triggers a shutdown and is making the policy demands – in this case, the Democrats - is the one that accrues the public's blame. If that's how this plays out, the party may conclude that they've made as much of a point as they can and cut their losses.
Even without tangible gains, they may even be able to take comfort in the fact that they have put a spotlight on the expiring health insurance subsidies and Republican-approved government healthcare cuts for the poor that will be kicking in for tens of millions of Americans in the coming months.
When that blame game starts, such thinking goes, they could be better positioned to reap the political benefits.
The Democratic base that has been demanding their party dig in and fight the Trump administration won't be fully satisfied, but it's the kind of off-ramp the party leadership might be able to live with.
Republicans make concessions
At the moment, Republicans feel like they are in a position of strength - and are contemplating new ways to increase the pain felt by Democrats. But it is possible that they could be miscalculating, and they end up the ones who back away from the void.
They've been behind most of the government shutdowns in the past, and the public could hold them responsible this time, too. Maybe it's out of habit or maybe because, in their zeal to slash government services and worker rolls, Republicans overplay their hand.
In this scenario, the Republicans provide some kind of sufficient guarantee to Democrats that they will help to extend the health-insurance subsidies.
It's not an entirely unthinkable scenario, given that Republicans are currently divided over whether those subsidies – which help their own low-income voters as well as Democrats – should be continued. That would be a concession that could, in the end, boost their own electoral prospects and defuse an obvious line of Democratic attack in next year's midterm elections.
Republicans have said they won't negotiate with political hostage-takers, but it is possible to see ground for compromise underneath the overheated rhetoric and acrimony.
The shutdown stretches on (and both sides lose)
At the moment, of course, overheated rhetoric and acrimony is pretty much all there is. Trump is sharing derisive, obscenity-laced AI generated videos of his opponents. Democrats have responded with Trump-Epstein photos and promises that they are in this fight for the long haul.
The last government shutdown stretched on for a record-setting 35 days, ending only after US air travel was on the verge of massive disruption. And that was only a partial shutdown, as some government funding had been approved. This time around, the consequences could be more severe.
If this stretches on long enough, it may not matter who "wins" by forcing the other side to fold. There will be more than enough blame to go around.
In such a "pox on both houses" scenario, incumbents from both parties suffer the consequences at the ballot box next year and the public becomes even more dissatisfied with the state of the affairs. That then sets the stage for the next wave of politicians promising to bring a wrecking ball to the status quo.
Rinse and repeat.