Trump's first-term shutdowns ended in deals, but this time he appears less willing to stand down

WASHINGTON — In his first term, President Donald Trump navigated three government shutdowns, including a record-breaking 35-day closure, by leaning on Republican leaders and advisers who ultimately proved willing to strike a deal with Democrats.

This time, flanked by loyalists who support using the shutdown to further slash the federal workforce, and backed by a Republican-majority Congress that rarely pushes back on his demands, Trump is moving quickly to use the shutdown as an avenue to remake the government without congressional input. He has promised to lay off more government workers, vowed to shutter agencies at odds with his agenda and threatened to suspend previously approved federal funding for infrastructure projects in blue states, including $18 billion for New York’s Gateway Tunnel project and the Second Avenue Subway extension.

"What we've seen in the second term of the Trump presidency is that President Trump is taking a very aggressive approach to exercising his executive power," said Meena Bose, executive director of Hofstra University’s Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency. "Clearly the White House believes it has the upper hand in this conflict with Congress over passing the spending bill. ... We’re heading toward this showdown, and it doesn't appear as though, at this point in time, that the White House thinks it has any reason to stand down."

Trump and Republican leaders are looking to pass a short-term spending bill that would keep the government funded through November, but they need at least six Senate Democrats to vote in favor. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, already facing blowback from their party base over their response to Trump’s first nine months in office, are attempting to use the needed votes as leverage to secure a major concession — the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year that could raise health care premiums for millions of Americans if not renewed.

They face a monumental challenge brokering a deal with Trump, who has previously described shutdowns as a tool to further his agenda, said political analysts interviewed by Newsday.

"A lot of good can come from shutdowns. We can get rid of a lot of things we didn’t want," Trump told reporters Tuesday. His comments mirrored those he offered at a combative meeting with congressional leaders during a shutdown in December 2018, when he said he was "proud to shut down the government" in his quest to secure federal funding for construction of a border wall.

The border wall funding never materialized during that shutdown. After 35 days, the longest federal shutdown on record, lawmakers passed a short-term spending bill to reopen the government that did not include Trump’s desired funding. Trump, facing public outcry over staffing shortages at airports causing delays, backlash over federal workers going unpaid for a month and plummeting poll numbers, backed away from prolonging his fight.

Brief shutdowns

Trump grappled with two other government shutdowns in his first term.

The first lasted three days in January 2018, and stemmed from an impasse over Trump’s request for additional border security funding and Democrats' demands for Trump to safeguard the Obama-era program known as DACA that provided temporary legal status to certain young immigrants raised in the United States who were brought to the country as minors. Neither side outright received their demands, but Schumer struck a deal with then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to vote for a short-term spending bill to reopen the government if McConnell would schedule a future vote on DACA.

The second shutdown lasted mere hours in February 2018, and was led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who used a procedural move to protest and delay a vote on a short-term spending bill he argued was saddled with too much debt. The delay caused a momentary lapse in government funding that was resolved hours later when both parties voted in favor of the short-term spending bill.

"Shutdowns are a tricky business, because you just don’t know where it’s going to go," said political consultant Michael Dawidziak, of Bayport, a former campaign aide to President George H.W. Bush. "Are people going to blame Democrats? Are they going to blame Republicans? Are they going to blame them both?"

New advisers

Christopher Malone, a political science professor and associate provost at Farmingdale State College, said Trump had the advantage of using the time between his two terms to hire loyalists, including top budget official Russell Vought, and four years to develop shutdown response plans that would enable Trump to quickly make deep cuts to a federal government he has often described as "bloated."

Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has long been a proponent of downsizing the federal government, and as a co-author of the controversial Project 2025 conservative policy manual, he advocated using shutdowns as a mechanism to permanently fire workers.

Trump, a longtime critic of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, will be hard pressed to agree to extend subsidies that increased the number of Americans who purchased insurance through the ACA’s public exchanges during the pandemic, Malone said.

"There's a short list of things that Trump just wants revenge on, and Obamacare has been one of them," Malone said in a phone interview. "Why would he compromise on the very thing that Democrats are putting on the table? Now, if it looks like there's a cratering of support, to the point where he feels pain, that's the only way that he'd back down. But I just don’t see it."

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.