Letters from an American - March 14, 2025

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

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March 14, 2025. Today, the Senate passed a stopgap measure from the House of Representatives to fund the government for six months through September 30. The measure is necessary because the Republican-dominated House has been unable to pass the appropriations bills necessary to fund the government in 2025. Congress has kept the government open by agreeing to pass a series of Continuing Resolutions, or CRs, that fund the government at the levels of the previous budget. The most recent continuing resolution to keep the government funded expires at midnight tonight. The Republicans in the House passed a new measure to replace it on Tuesday and then left town forcing the Senate either to pass it or to kill

it and leave the government unfunded. The new measure is not a so-called clean CR that simply extends previous funding. Instead, the Republican majority passed it without input from Democrats and with a number of poison pills added. The measure increases defense spending by about $6 billion from the previous year, cuts about $13 billion from non-defense spending, and cuts $20 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service. It forces Washington, D.C. to cut $1 billion from its budget, protects President Donald

Trump's ability to raise or lower tariffs as he wishes, and gives him considerable leeway in deciding where money goes. House Democrats stood virtually united against the measure. Only Jared Golden of Maine voted yes, and initially Republican defectors on the far right who opposed levels of funding that add to the deficit appeared likely to kill it. But Trump signed on to the bill and urged Republicans to support it. In the end, on the Republican side, only Representative Thomas Massey, a Republican of Kentucky,

voted against it. Like the House, the Senate is dominated by Republicans who hold 53 seats, but the institution of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes of the Senate to end it, gave Democrats room to stop the measure from coming to a vote. Whether they should do so or not became a heated fight over the past three days. To vote on the measure itself, Republicans needed 60 votes to end the potential for a filibuster. To get to 60 votes, Republicans would need some Democrats to

agree to move on to a vote that would require a simple majority. The struggle within the Democratic Party over how to proceed says a lot about the larger political struggle in the United States. House Democrats took a strong stand against enabling the Trump Republicans, calling for Democratic senators to maintain the filibuster and try to force the Republicans to negotiate for a one-month continuing resolution that would give Congress time to negotiate a bipartisan bill to fund the government. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, said he would support advancing the

spending bill. He argued that permitting the Republicans to shut down the government would not only hurt people, it would also give Trump and his sidekick, billionaire Elon Musk, full control over government spending, he said, because under a shutdown the administration gets to determine which functions of the government are essential and which are not. In an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday, Schumer noted that Musk has said he was looking forward to a government shutdown. Jake Lahaht,

Leah Feiger, and Victoria Elliott reported in Wired on Tuesday that Musk wanted a government shutdown because it would make it easier to get rid of hundreds of thousands of government workers. During a shutdown the executive branch determines which workers are essential and which are not and as Josh Marshall of Talking Points memo highlights Trump has issued an executive order calling for the government to stabilize at the skeleton crew that a government shutdown would call essential. Yesterday was the government imposed deadline for agencies to submit plans to slash their budgets with a second wave of mass layoffs.

So at least part of a plan is already in place. Schumer said that Trump and the Republicans were forcing Democrats into a choice between a bad bill and a shutdown that would hand even more power to Trump. The Republican bill is a terrible option, he wrote. It is deeply partisan. It doesn't address this country's needs. But Trump and Elon Musk want a shutdown. We should not give them one.

The risk of allowing the president to take even more power via a government shutdown is a much worse path. There appeared to be evidence this morning that Trump and Musk wanted a shutdown when before the vote had taken place Trump publicly congratulated Schumer for voting to fund the government, seemingly goading him into voting against it. Really good and smart move by Senator Schumer, he posted. But as Schumer and a few of his colleagues contemplated allowing the Republicans to pass their funding measure, a number of Democrats called on them to resist the Trump administration

and its congressional enablers. House Democrats urged their Senate colleagues to take a stand against the destruction Trump and Musk are wreaking and to maintain a filibuster. At the forefront, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat of New York, mobilized her large following to stop Schumer and those like him from deciding to completely roll over and give up on protecting the Constitution.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat of California, the former speaker of the House, backed Ocasio-Cortez issuing a statement calling the choice between a shutdown and the proposed bill a false choice. She called instead for fighting the Republican bill and praised the House Democrats who had voted against the measure. Democratic senators should listen to the women, she wrote, who have called for a short-term extension and a negotiated bipartisan agreement. America has experienced a Trump shutdown before, but this damaging

legislation only makes matters worse. Democrats must not buy into this false choice. We must fight back for a better way. Listen to the women, for the people. In the end, Schumer voted to move the measure forward. Joining him were Democratic Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of In the end, Schumer voted to move the measure forward. Joining him were Democratic senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Brian Schatz of Hawaii,

Dick Durbin of Illinois, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Gary Peters of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire, an independent Angus King of Maine. One Republican, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted against moving the measure forward. Once freed from the filibuster, Senate Republicans passed the bill by a vote of 54 to 46, with New

Hampshire's Shaheen and Maine's King joining the Republican majority and Republican Rand Paul voting against. And so the government will not shut down tonight. But today's struggle within the Democratic Party shows the split between those who lead an opposition party devoted to keeping the government functioning and a number of Democrats who are stepping into the position of leading the resistance to MAGA as it tries to destroy the American government. Praise for those resistors shows the popular demand for leaders who will stand up to Trump and Musk. In a

similar moment in 1856, newly elected representative from Massachusetts, Anson Burlingame, catapulted to popularity by standing up to the elite Southern enslavers who had dominated the government for years. Blustering, threatening, and manipulating the mechanics of the government, Southern lawmakers had come to expect their northern political opponents, who valued civil discourse and compromise, to cave. Southern leaders threw their weight around to gather more and more power over the country into their hands. Finally, in 1854, they overreached, forcing through Congress the Kansas-Nebraska Act that

permitted them to spread human enslavement into the American West. In the following elections, Northerners sent to Congress a very different breed of representatives. On May 22nd, 1856, pro-slavery representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina came up behind Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner and beat him nearly to death on the floor of the Senate after Sumner had given an anti-slavery speech Brooks found objectionable. But rather than pleading for calm and compromise in the wake of the attack, Burlingame had had enough. On June 21st he rose and gave a speech about his colleague and his state, calling it Defense of Massachusetts.

Berlingame stood up for his state, refuting the insult Southerners had thrown at Massachusetts in recent speeches and insulting Southerners in return. And Berlingame did something far more important. He called out the behavior of the Southern leaders as they worked to attack the principles that supported the very existence of the government itself. The sons of Massachusetts are educated at the knees of their mothers in the doctrines of peace and goodwill, and God knows they desire to cultivate those feelings. Feelings of social kindness and public kindness," Burlingame said. But he

warned his southern colleagues that Northerners were excellent soldiers and that if we are pushed too long and too far, Northerners would fight to defend their lives, their principles, and their country. Burlingame provoked Brooks and he, temperamentally unable to resist any slight, challenged Burlingame to a duel. Brooks assumed all Yankees were cowards and figured that Burlingame would decline in embarrassment. But Burlingame accepted with enthusiasm, choosing rifles as the dueling weapons. Burlingame was an expert marksman.

Berlingame also chose to duel in Canada, giving Brooks the opportunity to back out on the grounds that he felt unsafe traveling through the North after his beating of Sumner made him a hated man. The negotiations for the duel went on for months, and the duel never took place. Berlingame had turned Brooks, known as Bully Brooks, into a figure of ridicule, revealing that when he faced an equal opponent, his bravado was bluster.

Forgotten now, Burlingame's speech was once widely considered one of the most important speeches in American history. It marked the moment when Northerners shocked southerners by standing up to them and vowing that the North would fight for democracy. Northerners rallied to Burlingame's call and, in so doing, reshaped politics.

Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. Thanks for watching.