The federal government shutdown will formally end tomorrow, 42 days after it began. On the fortieth day, Senate Democrats caved, letting the Trump regime continue its fascist misrule unimpeded. Here are how the negotiations went:

Schumer’s Shutdown Cave, In Fifteen Seconds

Schumer’s Shutdown Cave, The Saga

Our story begins in 1788. The U.S. Constitution requires that Congress authorize the activity of the federal government through appropriations legislation, which from the start of the republic has mostly been done on an annual basis. Since the 1980s, if such legislation runs out, the executive branch limits its operations, in what is known colloquially as a government shutdown.¹

Trump assumed the presidency with two known deadlines for appropriations legislation—March 14th, the expiration of Biden’s lame-duck continuing resolution, and October 1st, the fixed deadline for annual appropriations bills.

As such legislation can be blocked by a filibuster by 40 senators, and Trump’s Republicans have only a 53-47 majority, such legislation has been one of the very few points of direct Democratic Party leverage over the Trump regime. The only options are mutual concession, unilateral capitulation, or Senate Republicans using the nuclear option to kill the filibuster.

Tens of millions of Americans, outraged by Trump’s fascist demolition of our Constitutional republic, have expected the Senate Democrats under the leadership of Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to use that leverage to rein Trump in—at a minimum to restore Congress’s power of the purse from the Russell Vought-DOGE depredations against the letter and intent of the law, such as rescissions, mass layoffs, grant terminations, agency eliminations, slush funds, tariffs, and financial shakedowns.

However, as the March deadline approached, Schumer immediately folded, after repeatedly lying in public that he would never do so. He and his leadership team—particularly his whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Durbin’s successor Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii)—steamrolled the top Democratic appropriator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and gathered up ten votes to give Trump a blank check to run his regime as he saw fit until October.

The public outrage at Schumer’s betrayal—after House Democrats had maintained unity of message and voting under Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to oppose Trump and risk a government “shutdown”—was intense. Everyone in the Democratic Party coalition, other than senators and financiers, erupted in anger, knowing it would be months before Democrats in Congress could stand in Trump’s way again.

In an interview that should have ended his career, Schumer told Chris Hayes why he folded, saying that he believed Trump is immovable and his job is to lay back and let Trump dismantle the Constitutional order until Trump’s poll numbers go down and “the people rise up.” Or maybe John Roberts would stop Trump. Schumer failed to mention the preferences of his primary constituency, Wall Street.

Soon, Trump’s Congressional lackeys took party-line action to kill climate regulations in May, pass a $9.4 billion rescissions package in June, and then the $4 trillion One Big Brutal Bill Act in July, while the Supreme Court backed Trump’s wantonly illegal reshaping of the federal government and destruction of Constitutional protections and safeguards.

As the fiscal year’s end approached, Congressional Democrats learned their lesson, of a sort.

In September, Schumer and Jeffries worked with their members, progressive advocates, policy wonks, and corporate lobbyists and their allies to decide on a strategy for the appropriations fight. They agreed to shift to the goalposts to ignore all of Trump’s fascism—except for his decision to let Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, one of the last standing components of the Inflation Reduction Act, expire this year. The plan was formally announced on September 11th, a day after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sold it to the progressive base as their shutdown deal red-line.

Many members of the Democratic coalition backed the fight for extending the healthcare subsidies because, as healthcare analyst Charles Gaba has painstakingly documented, tens of millions of Americans would find their healthcare costs skyrocket without them. Healthcare industry lobbyists backed it because $355 billion in corporate subsidies is a lot of money. Even vulnerable Republican House incumbents expressed interest in a one-year deal because it’s not a great look to deliberately kill off your constituents in an election year. Note: all of these groups actually want the subsidies to be extended. But Schumer, who does not believe in actually opposing Trump with his power as Senate Minority Leader, had no intention of winning: he merely wanted to give Democrats an issue to campaign on against Republicans.

Not everyone was satisfied, of course, with Democrats ignoring all of Trump’s “lawless actions and usurped spending powers” and choosing not to try to “arrest the slide to authoritarianism.” After Democratic leadership made it clear they would only fight for the ACA subsidies, they released as their official starting offer a government funding proposal that would have undone Trump’s illegal rescissions, impoundments, and installed an inspector general over Trump’s authoritarian vizier Russ Vought—a sop to the anti-authoritarian caucus within the Senate Democrats, such as Sens. Chris Murphy (Conn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Cory Booker (N.J.), Patty Murray (Wash.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), many of whom harbor presidential aspirations.³

This micro-ohm of resistance was too much for Schumer, however. On September 25th, retiring capitulator Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), part of Schumer’s leadership team, announced she would vote for a Trump-enabling bill “if leaders promise a vote on extending Affordable Care Act subsidies later this year,” which was the purely symbolic victory Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was willing to offer the Democrats.

As the October 1st deadline approached, on September 29th, Schumer’s whip—that is, his second-in-command—Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced support for the pinky promise deal, indicating to insiders where the Democratic caucus under Schumer’s leadership would eventually land.⁵

That said, there was recognition that the American people, including many Democratic members of the House and Senate, expected better than a pinky promise. So the shutdown began, and the Senate Democratic caucus—other than John Fetterman (Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), and Angus King (Maine)—stood firm through the month of October.

Schumer’s shutdown negotiation team was led by Jeanne “Pinky Promise” Shaheen. Others in the Origami Caucus included his whip Durbin, Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.).² Ossoff is running for re-election; Shaheen, Peters, and Durbin are retiring. As Robert Kuttner has reported, “they were acting with the express approval” of Schumer “and were reporting to him daily.” None of the leading anti-authoritarian Democratic senators were picked by Schumer to negotiate.

The surprising resistance of the Senate Democrats to Trump buoyed the millions of federal workers who had been under the DOGE onslaught since January, the millions of Americans who protested Trump’s tyranny in nationwide No Kings rallies, and the over 15 million Democratic voters in Tuesday’s dramatic elections, capped by more than one million of Schumer’s neighbors voting for Zohran Mamdani to be mayor of New York City. Political pundits left, right, center, and annoying took the Democratic tsunami as a resounding endorsement of the strategy to withstand Trump.

But that was the end.

On election day, at a private Senate Democratic lunch, the caucus debated whether it was time to cave. On Thursday afternoon, at the private Senate Democratic caucus, Schumer and his capitulation team put down the hammer, telling the caucus that it was time to fold. Members could make their final floor speeches but he had at least ten senators who were ready to be among the eight needed to vote for a continuing resolution that gave Democrats nothing on their one demand. The senators emerged from the caucus “unified” (without admitting what they had unified around). On Friday, as his whip Durbin met with the other pinky-promise senators, Schumer made his classic fake-out “final offer” speech, publicly offering a deal with a one-year extension of the ACA subsidies.

Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) got the message and held the Senate in session over the weekend until the final details were hammered out.

At the 5 pm Democratic caucus on Sunday, the eight who voted to cave were picked by Schumer to take the heat for the rest of the caucus, which either actively backed caving, or meekly went along.⁶ The deed was done that night, after Republicans had a relaxing dinner of Andy’s Pizza and Halloween candy.

In summary, the lessons that Schumer learned from the March debacle include:

• Move the goalposts away from stopping Trump’s fascism

• Don’t let your plan to capitulate leak before you’re ready

• Do a better job timing the cave to Trump so it happens on Sunday night, not during the day when senators can be lobbied

• Do a better job picking senators who are retiring or not up in '26 to vote aye

• Make sure you don't have to vote aye

As he never intended to win anything from Republicans, Schumer achieved everything he sought.

And people say Chuck is bad at politics.

1  It’s not a shutdown, really. Until Trump, however, the limitations on government operations were handled bureaucratically, agency by agency, with the statutory purpose of not exceeding Congressional intent. Under Trump, the White House blatantly managed the government operations on an openly dictatorial and partisan basis, illegally closing down programs and payroll Trump didn’t like and illegally financing programs and payroll he did like. So this time it was, as critics warned it would be, more of a continuation of the ongoing shutdown of our democratic government that began on January 20th than anything else.

2  In the wake of the election, Welch argued against caving. The pro-folding Origami Caucus mostly overlaps with the Senate Democrats who voted for the anti-immigrant Laken Riley Act at the start of Trump’s term. Sen. Ralph Warnock (Ga.) and Chris Coons (Del.) also coordinated with the folders, including meetings last Monday and Friday.

3  Warren would normally be on this list, but like AOC had pre-emptively conceded ground to Trump on this go-around. She wasn’t prepare to cave on healthcare, though. Similarly, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) has presented himself as an anti-Trump progressive, but his primary goal is to succeed Schumer as Democratic leader, as he demonstrated in the March capitulation.

4  Which weirdly convinced Heather Cox Richardson, usually an astute observer.

5  American Federal Government Employees (AFGE) union president Everett Kelley knew Schumer would eventually fold without getting any concessions, which is why AFGE’s position on shutdowns switched from telling Demcorats to fight the authoritarian regime’s DOGEing of federal unions in the spring to telling them to fold immediately in the fall. With AFGE for cover, Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) was willing to be among the public capitulators, as the deal included the language AFGE wanted affirming that Trump’s illegal shutdown layoffs were illegal.

6  In the aftermath, the corporate Congressional press flacked the official story that somehow Schumer lost control of his whip and the other senators who voted to end the shutdown. Punchbowl’s Andrew Desiderio and John Bresnahan provided cover for Schumer, writing that “Eight Senate Democrats broke with the party” and “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s faced tremendous criticism from both the left and the right during the impasse, was a no.” Politico’s Jordain Carney wrote that Tim Kaine was “breaking with much of his caucus to advance the deal.” The Washington Post’s Theodoric Meyer, Riley Beggin, and Mariana Alfaro backed the kayfabe, “But the deal split the party. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) … came out against it.” The New York Times’s Michael Gold claimed “a small but critical group of Democrats broke from their party,” nonsense repeated by Enjoli Liston.

Despite angry protestations about the deal, no senator has questioned Schumer’s leadership. Senate Democrats are unified under Chuck.