Letters from an American - November 7, 2025

Episode Date: November 8, 2025

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Hello, this is Michael Moss. I will be reading the letter for Heather today. November 7th, 2025. The repercussions from Tuesday's vote, in which Democratic candidates were victorious across the country, continue to echo. Since Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump has tried to reinforce the idea that he is in fact, in control of the country, no matter what voters say.

He has doubled down on his demand that the Republican senators end the government shutdown by killing the Senate filibuster, enabling them to pass legislation without any Democrats. Then they could pass the continuing resolution the House passed on September 19th, the last day the House was in session to work. But Republican senators don't want to get rid of the filibuster. It serves their ideology of slashing the government. Democrats want to pass legislation that changes society, while Republicans want to stop such legislation.

The current exceptions to the filibuster enable Republicans to fund the government and even to get tax cuts, but the wide swath of legislation that can be stopped by the filibuster generally neuters democratic policies. The filibuster also protects Republican senators from having to take painful votes on the hot-button cultural issues important to the Republican base but hated by the general public, things like abortion bans, for example. The filibuster means they can trust the Democrats to stop such measures before Republican senators

have to go on record as either for them or against them. Today, speaking during a meeting at the White House with Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, Trump demanded again that Republicans end the filibuster. He tried to assuage Republican concerns that if they nuke the filibuster, Democrats in power in the future would use a simple majority to pass whatever legislation they wish. Trump said there was no need to worry about future Democratic control because by getting rid of the filibuster,

Republicans could pass legislation that would guarantee they would never lose the midterms and we will never lose a general election again. As House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, announced he is keeping the House out of session again next week for the eighth consecutive week. And as Trump pressured Republicans to rubber stamp his wishes, the Democrats today offered a compromise to end the shutdown.

Senate Democrats have stood firm on the principle that they would not vote for the continuing resolution the House passed on September 19th, the last day it held a vote, without the Republicans agreeing to extend permanently the premium tax credits that support the Affordable Care Act markets. Without those credits, millions of Americans will lose health care coverage, and health care premiums for millions more will skyrocket. About three quarters of Americans want those premium tax credits extended. Today, on the floor of the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York,

said the Democrats would vote to end the government shutdown in exchange for a one-year extension of the expiring premium tax credits and the establishment of a bipartisan committee to figure out how to revise the tax credits so they could continue past next year's open enrollment period. This would have answered the short-term problems of the increasingly painful government shutdown and skyrocketing premiums, and left the question of extending the premium tax credits to voters next year.

If Republicans took the deal, the Democrats could claim they had negotiated an end to the shutdown that put in place the popular extensions of the premium tax credits and that called for next year's midterm voters to decide if they wanted them extended further. But if Republicans rejected it, Democrats would be in the position of having offered a reasonable, even a popular deal that Republicans refused because Trump insisted they must not negotiate. Such an outcome would make the Republicans own the ongoing shutdown.

Republicans rejected the offer outright. Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, called it a non-starter that doesn't even get close. And Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, called it political terrorism. The rejection put the Republicans in the awkward position of rejecting the reopening of the government because they are determined to kill a measure

that is popular with three-quarters of the American people. After a closed-door Republican conference meeting, Senator John Kennedy, a Republican of Louisiana, told reporters, what we have here is an intergalactic freak show. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, said it was insane that President Trump and Republican congressional leaders have refused to talk to Democrats to negotiate a deal. They refused to engage, he told Jordane Carney, Catherine Tully McManus, and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico.

It's killing the country. Tonight, Trump appeared to be trying to keep pressure on the Republicans to kill the Philist or the Democrats to cave by tightening the screws on the American people. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to stay the order of U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell to distribute Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP benefits by the end of today. This put the administration in the position of going to the Supreme Court for permission to stop the distribution of food benefits for 40. million Americans.

While senators say they will stay in Washington and work to end the shutdown, Trump is following House Leader Johnson's lead and getting out of town, heading to Florida for the weekend. Letters from an American was written by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.