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So the shutdown has now begun. The blame game is being played by both sides. The news will be full of which government services have been halted, and which are still running (by employees who are not getting paid). And nobody knows when it is going to end, as both sides seem fairly dug in, at this point.
Eric Adams, the current mayor of New York City, ended his Democrat-turned-independent re-election campaign this weekend. This has scrambled the race somewhat, but only at the margins. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, has such a big lead over the two remaining major candidates that even if one of them dropped out Mamdani would still be the frontrunner, possibly by double digits.
The United States of America now seems to have officially become a banana republic. That's really the only conclusion one can draw, after the events of the past week (and the past eight months, for good measure).
Donald Trump, true to form, just rolled out a surprise new federal policy -- which then caused immediate chaos for those affected by it. There was no warning and it took effect almost before the ink was dry, which created the immediacy. The White House then had to go through several iterations of what exactly it all was going to mean before that immediate chaos subsided somewhat. But the long-term effects of Trump's new H-1B visa policy could end up being rather significant. This could wind up being good news, but it could also wind up being no more than chaotic and counterproductive to Trump's own goals.
We are now one week away from a government shutdown. At this point, the safe bet would be that one is going to happen. And as always in such situations, the blame game has already begun in earnest. While the center ring of the circus that passes for politics these days was today undoubtedly Donald Trump making a complete fool of himself on the world stage during his address to the United Nations' General Assembly, the shutdown sideshow seems to deserve more attention than parsing Trump's idiocy (which, if I had gone that route, would have prominently featured the phrase "tilting at windmills," just for the record).
[Program Note: Once again, we are pre-empting the entire format of this column due to the seriousness of the situation America now finds itself in. Most weeks, we strive to rise above the firehose of distractions from Donald Trump and his administration, to focus instead on things which truly matter -- which, this week, include Trump once again rolling over for Vladimir Putin while he invades another NATO country's airspace, as well as Trump blowing up boats in international waters just because he feels like it. But this week the distraction truly was what really mattered. Because this week we had a direct assault on the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press in a way not seen since Joe McCarthy trod the halls of the U.S. Capitol. So we had to write an extended rant instead of our usual column, just to warn everyone in advance.]
Our subtitle this week is meant to honor the passing of Rick Davies, one of the founding members of the musical group Supertramp, who passed away less than two weeks ago. In one of their biggest hits ("The Logical Song"), one lyric seems to sum up where we now stand as a nation:
I should say, by way of a preface, that it is a very dark day in America, as those in power actively shred the Bill of Rights right before the nation's eyes. But I decided to wait until tomorrow to talk about all of that, to give myself another day to let it all sink in. So today I am choosing instead to write something positive, because I think we could all use some good news right about now.
The state of New Mexico just announced that, beginning in November, it will become the first state in the nation to offer universal free child care to all parents. Here's the basic story:
Will they do it? Will congressional Democrats actually force a shutdown of the federal government at the end of this month? While plenty of other political stories are currently swirling around, this is the big question that wonks who still pay attention to Congress are asking right now. So far, it seems like Democrats actually are preparing for a shutdown strategy, mostly because they got so much pushback from their own rank-and-file voters when they refused to do so earlier this year. So let's take a look at what's in play, heading into the next few weeks.
While the biggest story in the political world right now is the manhunt underway for the Utah assassin, there doesn't seem to be much more to say about it yet, so I decided instead to highlight two other stories today, on two of this week's developments in Congress. It's not exactly a "three-dot Thursday" column, since it only has two completely unrelated stories, but it's at least something else to pay attention to as we all wait for developments from Utah.
You may not have noticed it, what with all the other distractions in Washington, but we're fast approaching the possibility of another government shutdown. The federal fiscal year begins in October, and there is no budget in place yet. The two parties in Congress aren't even talking to each other yet about what to do about it, and they don't have a whole lot of time to get something passed. For Democrats, the question is whether they should shut the government down in what essentially would be an act of political protest, or whether they should just bargain for a few of their issues and accept pretty much everything else Republicans want to do.