Front Burner - U.S. politics! Government shutdown, military pep talk

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

The U.S. government has shut down after Republicans and Democrats failed to pass a spending bill before the end of Tuesday. Government services will grind to a halt and hundreds of thousands of federal employees face unpaid leave. How long is it expected to last, and could it have been avoided? Plus, President Donald Trump and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth held a rare gathering of the country’s top military leaders, detailing their new vision for the US military. We break it all down with Alex Shephard, senior editor at The New Republic. We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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And whatever you're listening to us on right now, don't forget to click that follow button. Okay, here is today's episode. Okay, so we have got a U.S. politics wrap for you today. We'll deal with the U.S. government shutdown that started Wednesday, grinding a ton of government services to a halt. And Trump and his so-called Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, gathered the most powerful collection of military generals in the world for a sort of pep talk in Virginia.

Alex Shepard, senior editor of the New Republic, is going to go through all of this with me today. There's lots to cover, so let's get right into it. Alex, hey. Hey. Hey, it's good to be back. It's always great to talk to you. So by the time people listen to this, barring some unlikely deal, it will be day two of this shutdown. You and I are speaking around 2 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday. In a really practical sense, what does it mean to shut down the government? How long could this last? It basically means that, you know, the essential functions of the government can proceed so that, you know, usually means this sort of basic executive. branch utility. The president has broad discretion over what they can fund, but in short, it means that a lot of stuff doesn't happen. It doesn't get funded anymore. The military probably

will not be paid on time. Usually they get back pay after the shutdown. They stay on active duty, but it means that sort of large chunks of the federal government are sent home. Today, about 750,000 federal workers were furloughed. So that could be anybody who works, you know, on kind of IT or sort of tech preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services. It could be your local park ranger. So this happened essentially because the Democrats voted down a Republican bill to keep funding the government. We need to deal with this health care crisis now, not later. But the Republican bill fails to do that.

I urge my Republican colleagues instead to join with us, work in good faith to keep the government open, keep costs down. The Democrats' far-left base said jump. And Democrat leaders said how high? The Democrats are saying this was because the Republicans were refusing to negotiate with them over health care tax credits. The Republicans, people like Vice President J.D. Vance, are saying this was about giving illegal immigrants free health care. If you're an American citizens, you've been to a hospital in the last few years. You probably notice that wait times are especially large. And very often, somebody who's there in the emergency room waiting is an illegal alien.

very often a person who can't even speak English. Why do those people get health care benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens? The answer is a decision made by the Biden administration that the Trump administration working with congressional Republicans undid. We turned off that money spigot to health care funding for illegal aliens. The Democrats in their legislative text want to turn it back on. And just could you fact check all of this for me? Yeah.

So, I mean, basically what happened is that the Republicans control both. branches of Congress and the presidency, but they have narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate. So they need Democratic votes in the Senate to pass any continuing resolution to keep the federal government open. And, you know, they basically passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded the next couple of months. And that budget, right, followed the priorities, that continuing resolution, excuse me, followed the priorities that were passed in the one big beautiful bill act that was passed earlier this year. So that had, you know, cuts to Obamacare subsidies and Medicare and Medicaid, as well as a

host of other things, huge increases in funding for immigration enforcement. They didn't give Democrats any concessions on this. They just said, look, you want to keep the government open. So you have to vote for this bill. And Democrats said, well, we would like something for it. In this case, what they asked for was an extension of a vote. affordable care act or Obamacare subsidies that were set to expire at the end of the year. They asked for a reinstatement of some of the Medicare and Medicaid cuts that were in the

one big beautiful bill act. And they asked for a pledge, a binding sort of pledge that the executive branch would honor the appropriations that Congress grants it, which is something that they have not notably not done so far. That is, that's their messaging, too, for the most part, the messaging is revolter on Obamacare. Trump basically just said no. He said, this is ridiculous. It's too much. And the Republican messaging around it, as Van said, was that this bill is going to fund health care for undocumented immigrants, among other things. This was not true. there was all this infighting among the Democrats about whether or not they should have voted to shut it down. What changed this time around?

So there's a few things. I think one is just that I think that Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in particular, really misread the mood of the country in March. I think he said, you know, it's not really time for a shutdown. If we were going to pull the plug on the government effectively, then we would look bad. It's, you know, we're talking about mid-March at this point. So the Trump administration had not yet had a hundred days. of the second term. I think that they were worried that doing that then would make the party look obstinate and like the sort of party of no coming right after an election where voters had really rejected what they were kind of selling in part because one thing you would hear again and

again on the trail is like, I don't know what Democrats are for. So I think they were very worried about that then. You know, I think the other thing was that Schumer was and Democrats were really worried that if they, you know, shut down the government, then it would just create this snowballing effect. You have to remember in mid-March, we're in the middle of all the doge cuts, right? So then they were just like, you know, running a sift through the federal government. And there was a real worry that a shutdown then would just kind of take those cuts and turn them up to 11, for lack of a better term. The shutdown would have been 10 times worse than the CR. Why? Because under a shutdown,

the executive branch, in this case, Donald Trump, Musk, Elon Musk, Doge, would have complete power. Once the government shut down of what could be open and what couldn't, you know, they get to determine what is essential. And they could just decimate the whole federal government, and that's what they wanted to do. That was a sound thinking, but what's shifted now is, I think,

one, the public mood is really shifted. Two, and I think this is a really big thing, is that the mood of the Democratic base hasn't really shifted, really shifted, but Schumer is much more attuned to it, the Democratic leader. That was in March before they had done these horrible things to health care, before they had introduced these recisions, which would allow them to ignore the budget process. So I think that there's a sense that, you know, the voters in the party want that want Democrats to take a stand against this administration, and they haven't been seeing it in much

of areas, and they're very, very mad about that. But also, there's a sense that the public opinion on this administration shifted around April. Trump has been basically, you know, 11, 12 points underwater with the general public since the late spring, and that this is a time when Democrats can take a stand against this administration with minimal risk to the midterm, their prospects in the midterm elections. I know you just said you think it's minimal risk, but look, what is the risk? Yeah. So, I mean, I think the risk is maybe being undersold to some extent. government shutdowns are unpopular. People like the government to work the way that it's supposed to work, even if when you ask them if it's working, they usually say it's not. And if you are the party that's blamed for government shutdown, you know, you tend to take a pretty big hit. We've seen that again and again since the sort of first wave of, you know, Gingrich-led shutdowns in the 90s. Because Congress has failed to pass the straightforward legislation necessary to keep the government running without imposing.

sharp hikes in Medicare premiums, and deep cuts in education and the environment. To particularly the sort of Republican Tea Party shutdowns of the 2010s. You've all heard me say this going back over the last two or three years. Our goal here wasn't to shut down the government. Our goal here was to bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare. You know, the party that's deemed responsible for the shutdown usually takes a pretty big hit in the polls. And Democrats right now, their long-term prognosis in terms of winning back, you know, at least one chamber of Congress is still pretty good. But that obscures the fact that this party has really hidden in Deer in terms of its overall popularity.

People really don't like the Democrats. And that is driven by sort of reliable Democratic voters. So Democrats are mad at their ad party leaders like Schumer and they want them to take a stand here now, too. So I think that the calculus is pretty complicated because you want to please. your kind of die-hard voters that have been, you know, frankly, like, pretty pissed off for a long time without harming your long-term chances. Too many students are packed into overcrowded classrooms in Ontario schools, and it's hurting their ability to learn.

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We've got a plan. You all know Russell Vote. He's become very popular recently because he can trim the budget to a level that you couldn't do any other way. Russ about the head of the Office of Management and Budget, the sort of architect, the Project 2025 has said again and again that he's, you know, a student of government shutdowns and he knows how to use them to inflict kind of maximum damage on the federal government infrastructure that he has pledged to destroy. How else are you going to get moderates to vote for

spending cuts if they're not up against the fact that they need to pass these things to get out of a shutdown themselves? Let it be said, there are all manner of authorities to be able to keep this administration's policy agenda moving forward. And that includes reducing the size and scope of the federal government. And we will be looking for the opportunities to do that. And I think that There is a lot of confidence there. I think Trump, you know, met with Democratic leaders earlier this week and just, you know, by all accounts, was infuriated that they would even ask for anything. We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like. He even floated the idea of cutting benefits without saying which ones.

We can do things medically and other ways. including benefits. And I think that they're generally feeling fairly confident, but they probably shouldn't be. I think voters, most of the early polling suggests that voters, I think rightly, blame the Trump administration and Republicans for shutting down the government. And I think that they sort of understand, they bought the Democratic message, which is that their asks to keep the government open are actually quite reasonable. And that it's Trump that's sort of refusing to do the thing that, you know, the American federal

system is designed to do, which is to have compromised to get things like the continued functioning of the federal government. The Democratic asks, right, they're sort of sweeping, but really when you talk to Democrats, it's clear that they would cave if they were just given Affordable Care Act subsidies. So, like, that's a fairly standard ask. It's not enormous. And if Trump wanted to, he could get on the phone right now and in two hours, he would have enough votes. to go along with that. I think the fact that he is refusing to do that is sort of the central point of this shutdown, but it's also what I think means that it could last a very long time and that you have an off-ramp that Trump is refusing. But while he's refusing to do it,

he's putting out like these, you know, racist videos with Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero. Not even black people want to vote for us anymore. Even Latinos hate us. So we need new voters. And if we give all these illegal aliens free health care, we might. be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us they can't even speak english democratic leaders are getting matter and matter mr president the next time you have something to say about me don't cop out through a racist and fake AI video when i'm back in the oval office say it to my face they're just digging in and i think at the same time i think you you know, Trump and voter looking at this like, well, we can just do this forever and we don't

care. You know, every sign right now is just pointing to this being, you know, a very, very, very long shutdown. Can you tell me more about this guy, Russ Vaught, and these statements that he's made about, you know, inflicting maximum damage? Like, what is he talking about there? Yeah. So, I mean, this is why Schumer ultimately, I think, blinked back in March, is that Russ Vaude is somebody who has, he's a long time kind of, you know, Heritage Foundation disciple. He, you know, was the person who essentially wrote Project 2025. He's a conservative activist. He believes that the federal government should be shrunk, that it's way too big right now, that the existing federal bureaucracy is full of liberals who will not enact conservative

priorities. He successfully sort of sold Donald Trump, who, you know, I think was largely skeptical of the conservative movement and his victory in 2016 wasn't part of rejection of that movement, but he sold him on these priorities in part by saying, like, your first term was a failure because the government bureaucrats that are in place are going to stymie you at every turn. And so I will get rid of those people. And he, I think, was pretty frustrated by the Doja assault because it did not have the sort of. of precision of what he attended in. I think he was worried that it wouldn't last. So they've been sort of threatening to, you know, unleash the dogs of war in the event of a shutdown. And you

saw this already today. I think that this is a sort of sign of how things are going to play out that vote, you know, announced that he was cutting, you know, I think it's $18 billion in allocated funding to New York and New Jersey to essentially, you know, fund transit projects. Okay, I want to pivot with you a bit here and talk about this. I don't even know what this was. An unusual gathering of military leaders we saw this week. Trump's Defense Secretary or so-called Secretary of War, former Fox News host, Pete Hegsef. had summoned all of these commanders and generals and admirals from around the world to

Quantico, Virginia. And I know there were all of these rumors, right, about what could happen there. Would he make them swear loyalty to the president, not the Constitution? Would a bunch of them get fired? Would he reveal some new strategy? Would they declare war on Venezuela? And just what actually ended up happening at this gathering? He gave a TED talk. None of the above, yeah. None of the above. Yeah, he did a, he cosplayed the opening scene of the movie Patton. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.

I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the war department. It's, you know, when you were listening to people speculate about what this is going to be, it was always pretty hysterical. But, you know, I think what you saw was, you know, something that really neatly encapsulated Pete Heggseth's time at the Department of Defense. And it was one in which he was promising large-scale change, much of it that is imposed by top military brass. So he's insisting. for instance, that, you know, he wants to bring back things like hazing, right? He kept talking about sort of male standards of fitness, the idea essentially being that the, you know, U.S. military has become feminized. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat,

those physical standards must be high and gender neutral. If women can make it excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That it is, you know, spending too much time catering to, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion programs and feminism and transgenderism. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. They were told females and males are the same thing.

Or that males who think they're females is totally normal. And not enough time, you know, building the war fighters of the, future. It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. If the Secretary of War can do regular hard PT, so can every member of our joint force. Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country in the world. It's a bad look. But it was a talk that I think had much, much more in common with the kind of stuff you'd see on Fox News, which is frankly not really

relevant to the current Department of Defense or the larger mission of the American military overseas and not a lot of stuff that you hear when you talk to people who are actually responsible for, say, America's counterterrorism strategy. So I think that part of it was a sign of Hexas's weakness, right, that he's really trying to show that he's in charge of a Pentagon that I think is really, to say it's skeptical of him is, I think, probably overgenerous. I think in general, I think he's seen as kind of a clown by a lot of people. But I think the other part of this, right, is that like Trump followed him up and gave this speech that was arguably even more a sort of raspy rambling speech that was even more bizarre and out of, out of the ordinary.

I call it the N-word. There are two N-words and you can't use either of. And Canada called me a couple of weeks ago. They want to be part of it, to which I said, well, why don't you just join our country? You become 51, become the 51st state, and you get it for free. I hope you all agree. If anybody disagrees, could I please have your hand? Who disappears at Raisin Cain is no good? Just raise your hand.

I don't see any hands raised. All right. Actually, I love my signature. I really do. Everyone loves my signature. But it was clear that Trump loved that speech. So I think that, you know, Hegseth, like anyone else with a high-level position in this administration, understands that you can actually kind of piss off the 600 or so generals that you're talking to

as long as the commander-in-chief likes what you're doing. And that does seem to be the case. Two things I wanted to pull out from both of their speeches. I mean, did hear Heg-Seth talk about how, quote, We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. I'm assuming he's talking about international law there.

That was a bit alarming. And then also Trump kind of in between that, you know, incoherent, all the incoherent rambling stuff and all of his predictable gripes about the wokeness of the military and how much it sucked under Biden. And he did talk about dangerous cities as training ground. Under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don't have uniforms. But we are under invasion from within.

We're stopping it very quickly. And of course, in recent weeks, he has ordered National Guard soldiers to L.A., Washington, Chicago, and Portland, according to him, to assist with immigration efforts in combat crime. And so was this an attempt to try to get the military's top brass on board with using them for internal purposes, like on American soil? Yeah, I think that unquestionably, yes. I think there's still a lot of skepticism about that in the military. And I think that, you know, Hegsteth has been very open for many years about his belief that the military should be used domestically, that many of the country's greatest enemies are within. And, you know, I think that was one of the more troubling

aspects of that. I think, you know, the counterpoint there is just that I think Trump saying that he thinks that the military should be used, you know, against American citizens. It's like a straight up sort of Mussolini-ish quote. I think it shouldn't be, you shouldn't be excused away. But, you know, in practice, right, these deployments have been rather small. Like, I think the idea of what Trump and Hexeth said both sort of called to mind, right? Like having Black Hawk helicopters, you know, flying through Portland or having Army Rangers like sort of going door to door. But in practice, what we're seeing are these relatively small, relatively ineffectual

deployments of military. And I think, you know, you saw in L.A. and in D.C. that the National Guard has been stretched pretty thin just by these two deployments. And that's not to excuse any of it. I think I've been in D.C. during the National Guard deployment. And I think it's, it is, the footprint is much larger than you would think. And they're doing things like, you know, traffic checkpoints, things that I've, you know, seen in war zones before, but not in American cities.

I think the larger question is still what they can actually accomplish there. Now, I think on the question of international law, I think that's very alarming. And you're already seeing it now. You saw it in Trump's first term as well. And you're seeing it certainly with these strikes on Venezuelan fishing ships that may or may not be smuggling fentanyl or whatever they're saying there. But this is an administration that thinks that essentially that any international court has no jurisdiction over it, that it can't enforce any of these laws. So they just don't care about them at all. And I think this is an extension

of Trump's sort of larger claim, right? There's always been this sort of ridiculous notion that Trump is like a dove. But he's always said that the U.S. failed in Iraq and Afghanistan because it didn't use enough force. And I think that, especially as this administration kind of slowly blunders its way into yet another regime change war this time in Venezuela, that should be very, very alarming. How did the people in the room react, all these kind of four-star generals and very important military officials? Yeah.

If you have not, if your listeners have not watched these clips, they're very interesting to watch, especially if you're used to seeing Trump talking to, you know, let's say between eight and 20,000 of his most ardent fans, they've reacted with almost completely stony silence. So there are all of these kind of Jeb Bush-esque, like, please clap moments. I've never walked into a room so silent before. This is very, don't laugh. Don't laugh. Don't laugh.

You're not allowed to do that. You know, I just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future. There are lots of lines in Hexed speech in particular that are designed for a kind of pep rally, which I think is what he sort of thought of this as.

And, you know, he'll say these kind of ridiculous things. And then you'll just hear, you know, a few maybe scattered claps and some coughing. To our enemies, F-A-F-O. if necessary our troops can translate that for you and that's it and with trump too he's used to i think speaking in this way where people are kind of wrapped and are in an almost you know ecstatic state and you know he commented multiple times about how quiet the room was but i mean military discipline and i think the uh the sense of the military as a branch that sort of outside of politics You know, especially, you know, when you talk to people inside the military, certainly when you talk to retired military officials, it's a really important thing.

And I think what we're seeing with Trump and Hegset is a very concentrated and concerted attempt to break that, but one that is being greeted with at best skepticism and at most outright derision and hostility. Okay, Alex, thank you so much. As always, great to chat with you. Thank you so much. All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.