What's New In Government Shutdown? Where Can I See Government Shutdown? Is Government Shutdown OK On Keto Diet?

Myth debunked: You don't have to wait an hour after Government Shutdown to go swimming. But the pool is closed.

This Kitten Not In Service. Photo by Sepideh Massahi on Unsplash

We’re in Day Four of the third Trump shutdown, so let’s check in on the important things the president of the United States is doing to get government back to work for the American People! He spent much of Thursday evening in intense negotiations with … uh … OK, he actually spent the night shitposting. (We are writing this Friday afternoon, so we bet he does/did it again Friday night too!)

But just look how he filled his pants his fake Twitter with crappy memes and AI slop, for the American People! The great leader whose administration warned us following Charlie Kirk’s murder that angry words could get people killed offered this smart take on how Democrats are literally in league with Satan, but only because we probably made him do it (by being evil Satanic haters).

We do at least appreciate the way this meme offers no leadership, no hope, and only one message: Democrats are hate-filled evil Satans.

Trump followed that up with a fan-made AI slop video depicting budget director Russell Vought as the Grim Reaper, in a song parody of “Don’t Fear The Reaper” that had great imagery of an animated AI Trump banging a cowbell out of sync with the actual beat.

We liked the AI-slop detail where the office full of useless Washington bureaucrats, all fearing Vought’s vengeance, have their computer monitors facing the wrong way. We bet Professor Prettypaws could identify with that, if he ever escapes exile in Cat d’Antibes (where he’s shedding his Côat dAzur).

But Trump has also been busy using the shutdown as an excuse for fucking up the government, or at least his acolytes have — we haven’t had a live sighting of Trump for a couple days, so maybe he’s dead again, we are just asking questions. Like the question of does he have to go to Walter Reed for a few days at the end of every month to get all his bodily fluids replaced, maybe? He’ll show up eventually, we’re sure. We’re not getting our hopes up or gonna start playing Swan Lake endlessly.

Karoline Leavitt: Nobody Enjoys Cutting Jobs. OK, The President Does, But That’s OK

ABC News reporter Mary Bruce asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about the contrast between the White House’s claim that at this difficult time, it’s trying to avoid massive layoffs, and, well, the fun Grim Reaper stuff Trump clearly enjoys shitposting.

“The president has described this as an unprecedented opportunity to lay off additional workers. He's posted a video likening it to the grim reaper. Which is it? Is this an opportunity to fire more workers or an unfortunate consequence?” Bruce asked.

Leavitt claimed that “both can be true at the same time.”

“We don't like laying people off. Nobody takes joy and if you think that, that's very sad you view the White House and our staff as wanting to put people out of work. Nobody wants to do that, but sometimes in government, you have to make the tough decisions,” she added.

Yeah, shame on you for thinking Trump enjoys acting like a sociopath who gets his jollies from firing useless bureaucrats. He’s just trying to keep the nation’s spirits up. You should see what he’ll be posting about throwing reporters in jail. It’ll be fuckin’ hilarious, but he’ll only do it out of a sense of duty to the, um, truth, yeah, that’s it.

Tough Luck About Those Infrastructure Projects, Cities!

As they promised, Trump and Vought are merrily using the shutdown as an excuse to withhold congressionally allocated funding to cities with Democratic elected leaders, in complete violation of the Constitution and the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which Vought decided in Project 2025 is unconstitutional. Usually people wait for the Supreme Court to decide that, but Vought is in a hurry because even after the heady days of DOGE firing all the don’t-let-nuclear-stockpile-decay people, there’s still so much government left to dismantle.

Friday, Vought and the Department of Transportation announced that funding would be frozen for two mass transit projects in Chicago, because the Chicago Transit Authority — the transit authority, not the band of the same name — had supposedly engaged in “unconstitutional practices” by doing a DEI, which Trump declared illegal, remember? $2.1 billion appropriated by Congress for the infrastructure programs, the “CTA Red Line Extension” and “CTA Red and Purple Modernization Project,” will be put on hold until Vought determines whether the transit projects might conceivably help Black people.

The move follows Vought’s first attack on transportation funding on Tuesday, when he announced that $18 billion for transit projects in New York and New Jersey would be withheld for similarly alleged “unconstitutional” diversity programs. That halted work on the Gateway Tunnel, which would ease commuting into New York by building a new train tunnel under the Hudson River, and also stopped an extension of the Second Avenue Subway line in New York City.

Hey, remember when it was a little scandalous that then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie shut down lanes on the George Washington bridge to punish the mayor of Ft. Lee for not endorsing his reelection campaign? Christie only had traffic cones at his disposal, not actual billions of dollars to make sure roads and rail weren’t built.

Oh yes, and on Wednesday, the administration canceled nearly $8 billion in energy projects that Vought called “Green New Scam funding,” and surprise, surprise, the cuts were all located in states that voted for Kamala Harris, haw haw haw, that is very normal and not just assholish for the sake of being an asshole.

‘Democrat Agencies’? Which Ones Are Those?

Also on Thursday, Trump gleefully announced (archive link) that he would have Vought do some budget violence to “Democrat Agencies,” whatever those are, and like maybe three people in America were shocked to see Trump acknowledge that he’d lied last year when he disavowed any links between his campaign and Project 2025. Who could have guessed?

As it turns out, CNN went full Sweet Summer Child, and actually pretended to ask whether Trump had not really understood what Project 2025 was when he disavowed it (archive link).

Was he telling the truth before?

Did he just not understand that thing that he said earlier?

Is he just trolling all of us?

The answer could be some combination of all three, especially in the case of Thursday’s post, and the “unprecedented opportunity” Trump says he now has to hack away at federal agencies during the government shutdown.

Somehow, “Trump is a habitual liar, and that social media post simply confirms what everyone has known for months” does not appear in the piece. Wow.

As I say, Trump didn’t actually specify what these “Democrat Agencies” were, and as far as I can tell, no entire government offices have been wiped out.

Then again, maybe Trump has only just heard about Murc’s Law, and thinks that only the Left has agencies.

Americans Know Trump And Republicans Did This

We’ll close with a little poll porn for you: A Washington Post poll taken Tuesday, the first day of the shutdown, found that 47 percent of US adults blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown, while 30 percent blame Democrats.

A pretty high 23 percent said they were unsure, either because it’s early days in the shutdown or because they really were pretty high. If the shutdown drags on, as seems likely, that percentage is likely to decrease as people get grumpy about government services not being available.

Also fun: Independents were far more likely to blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown than to blame Democrats (50 percent to 22 percent). As you’d expect, there was a partisan divide in who blamed whom, but Democrats were far more likely to blame Republicans (87 percent) than Republicans to blame Democrats (67 percent). That reflects a slightly larger proportion of Rs than Ds blaming their own party (8 percent vs just 2 percent), but also a much higher “not sure” response among Republicans.

Chart by Washington Post

On extending the expiring subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, the top issue that Democrats are pushing for in the shutdown (we should be demanding more, goddamn it), people are actually very much in favor of healthcare not being more fucking expensive, big surprise. Seventy-one percent of Americans overall agreed they want to see the subsidies extended, with just 29 percent say they should be ended. Ninety-five percent of Democrats and 80 percent of independents want the ACA subsidies to be extended. Republicans, of course were awful, with just 38 percent in favor and 62 percent saying the subsidies should end, and probably a lot of them would support child labor, too, we are just guessing.

And finally, you really should go read this New Republic interview with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who pushed for a more aggressive Democratic stance going into the shutdown, and goddamnit, he’s right, the end.

Update: I knew I forgot something! There’s also this NPR story about how in the end, it may not be any negotiations or demands or even basic decency (ha!) that ends the shutdown. Once it starts causing long delays and missed flights due to Air Traffic Controllers reaching their stress limits working without pay, that might inconvenience so many congresscritters and their donors that they’ll find a surprise solution to the shutdown, as happened in the last shutdown, in 2019.

And now, a bonus feel-good post of Kristi Noem not being allowed to use the restroom in an Illinois police station Friday, neener neener. No, it has nothing to do with this post, and that’s just fine.

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Shutdown! Breakdown! Takedown!

So Are Words Violence, Or Are Words *Not* Violence?

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[ABC News / Politico / WaPo / TNR / Update: NPR]

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