Today, Explained - Shutdown for what?

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

We ask Sen Elizabeth Warren why. President Donald Trump is reportedly mostly worried about the midterms. This episode was produced by Kelli Wessinger with help from Ariana Aspuru, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adriene Lilly, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. A sign advertising a government shutdown relief loan in the Hart Senate Office Building. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump kind of declared war on a bunch of American cities yesterday. San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they're very unsafe places. And we're going to straighten them out one by one. More on that tomorrow, because on today explained from Vox, we've got a shutdown. It's the first shutdown of Trump, too, but technically the fourth shutdown for the president, if you count the three from his first term. For now, you're still going to get your mail and your Social Security checks. but a bunch of government services are going to be on hold.

Some super fun cleanup sites are not getting clean. Some veterans are not getting services they've been promised. No jobs report this Friday. I know someone who's going to be very happy about that one. But nobody likes a shutdown. So to better understand what the thinking is behind this move, we're going to talk to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who's on the Senate Finance Committee here in Washington, D.C.

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So the government is shut down, the Democrats shut it down. to shut down. I wonder who you think people will blame, you guys or the Republicans. So I tell you what, let's back up just a tiny little bit. What happened in July was that the Republicans said, yeah, yeah, we know the budget's out there, but we want to make this change to the budget. We want to roll back health care coverage for 15 million Americans because we want to use that money for tax breaks for a handful of billionaires and billionaire corporations. And Democrats said, you can't do that. We already had a budget. We already

allocated that money. And Republicans said, oh, yes, we can. And they voted it through. Only Republicans voted for it. And the Democrats just stood by because it was a special device that only took 50 votes. So now they come back and they say, okay, now we're ready for the budget, the part that takes 60 votes, the part where government has to be funded for the whole year. And we're saying, hey, we want to talk about that health care part. We want to make it part of the negotiations that if you want to pass a budget right now, you've got to roll back those cuts on health care because this is about seniors who are going to get pushed out of nursing homes. This is about brand new babies and their mamas who are going to lose their health care.

This is about your neighbor who needs a home. health aid or a wheelchair so that she can live independently. It's about losing that. I want to ask you about the optics of the shutdown here because you're clearly setting up how you guys are framing this fight. And then you've got the Republicans who are framing it very differently. They're saying that you guys want to give health care to illegal immigrants, in their words. Now, can we just stop right there?

This is just a lie. I mean, how many times do they get to stand? They can also stand out. say the sky is green. They can say it. It is not true. The law is clear. There is no one who is an undocumented immigrant who is entitled to any help from Medicaid, from the Affordable Care Act. Zero, none. That is already the law. I wonder if you think it's an issue that these cuts to Medicare that you've referenced a couple of times now haven't gone into effect yet. So Americans aren't feeling that particular pinch, but Democrats in Congress are framing this fight because of those cuts.

Yeah, it's a fair point about what's happening. We don't want to wait on this, but do understand, the effects are beginning to be felt. So, for example, a couple of rural hospitals in Virginia just closed last week. And they said it's because our books just don't add up, we cannot afford to take on uncompensated care from people who've lost their health care coverage. And starting today, we're now in the period when people will start getting notices about their health insurance coverage and how much it's going to cost next year. I wonder, have you been to the website for HUD this morning, the U.S. Department of Housing? No, I haven't seen it yet. Huh.

There's a red banner on it right now that says the radical left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need. And then if you're on the website for about five seconds, a pop-up pops up and says the exact same thing. They're really trying to drive this message home. I wonder, I don't think we've seen something quite like this before during a government shutdown. Do you feel like we're going to, you've experienced a few shutdowns now? Do you think we're going to see, you know, some new territory here in this particular fight? So, look, first of all, we know that is wrong, using federal resources in order to play politics here.

But Donald Trump and the Republicans will do anything to change the subject. This is going to hurt people. It's already hurting people. And I think there just comes a time. You've got to be willing to stand up and push back against that. Another group that's going to be hurting here, I think, potentially, especially in this shutdown, is federal workers. President Trump is saying that this government shutdown could lead to thousands of federal workers losing their jobs, perhaps permanently in this case. Are you worried that he may be more willing this time around than he was during previous shutdowns to take this out on federal workers?

Yeah, you have exactly the right phrase here. He will punish people who do important. work in the government. This is just plain old hostage taking. He's saying we think that Democrats care about the federal workers, care about the people who are doing your food inspection, care about the people who keep planes flying in the air, care about those people, and the threat is we will fire them. Why? Out of spite. You know, I just got to stop and say on this one, What kind of person does that? What kind of person says that he is president of the United States

and his plan to run government is to take people who are doing the work and who are essential for doing this work and to punish them to fire them for his own political reasons? That's not someone who's looking out for America. I guess I wonder, though, if he does such a thing, are the Democrats going to, you know, hold? the line, because if you guys have a few people who ditch the front, you essentially lose the fight in the shutdown. Do you know if the front is united on this one for the long haul?

Look, I always. I can only speak for myself. But I got to tell you, people understand that Donald Trump has broken the law over and over, he has already fired tens of thousands of federal workers. And using federal workers as hostages and claiming he will fire even more, what's he going to do? Is he permanently going to shut down the national parks? Is he permanently going to shut down the air traffic control system? Is he permanently going to shut down food inspections across this country? Is he that vindictive? If he is, then he doesn't need an excuse.

He will do what he wants to do because it fits his narrative. The real question is, when are Republicans in Congress going to grow a spine and put a stop to it? You know, I wonder, speaking of Republicans in Congress, we made a show a couple weeks ago that weighed whether or not Democrats should indeed shut the government down. We spoke to your colleague, Senator Van Hollen from Maryland. And one of the things we discussed on that show was whether Democrats would run the risk of tempting congressional Republicans to get rid of the filibuster by shutting the government down. Are you at all worried that if this drags on for weeks or even months that you guys could lose this tool? Look, the Republicans will get rid of the filibuster the minute they think it's to their advantage. And that's been true all along.

There's not any, you know, well, if you do this, they'll do this. that they have they make the decision that they will do what works best not for the country what works best not long term for Congress what works best to keep this government running nope they will do what they think works best for the Republicans and where they have been ever since Donald Trump got elected is that they believe what works best for the Republicans is whatever it is Donald Trump wants and the Republicans in the United States Senate spineless Republicans have nothing to say about it. If fortunes change in the midterms, it'll be Republicans who want to have a filibuster handy.

However, Democrats are historically unpopular right now. How do you think a government shutdown may factor into Democrats' fortunes in the midterms? So the way I see this is we should do what we believe is right. And what I believe is right is we make the fight to lower costs on behalf of the American people. We don't take away health care for millions of people. We don't take an already broken, creaky health care system and smash it to the ground. We do what we can to make this government work for people. And that is true now.

It is true in 2026. It is true in 2027. It is true in 28. and we tell the American people that's what we're doing. That's all I know to do in a democracy. I think it is the right thing to do, and it's what I'm going to keep on doing. Senator Elizabeth Warren, thank you so much for joining us. You bet. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

And congratulations to your red socks last night. Here we go, socks. How about that? Okay, but now that she's gone, let's go Blue Jays. We hear it today explained don't love bringing up elections that are more than a year away. It feels unhealthy. However, when we are back, a well-sourced reporter is going to make the argument that the midterms are actually what's been motivating our president as of late. So I guess we've got to talk about the midterms.

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I didn't know that. I just, you're telling me now for the first time. Jonathan Lemire, staff writer at the Atlantic, and co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe. And you recently wrote a piece in The Atlantic titled, Fear of Losing the Midterms is Driving Trump's Decisions. I was skeptical when I saw it because I was like the midterms of the year 2026, it only Tuesday. But then when I read your piece, I felt compelled. What compelled you to write it? Well, it became clear to me that there was some sort of connective tissue to a lot of would may at first glance had been.

unrelated but rather extreme actions taken by this White House and the Republican Party. Everything from trying to seize control the Federal Reserve. People aren't able to buy a house because this guy is a numbscull. He keeps the rates too high. To try to have Republicans gerrymander new districts in GOP-controlled states. This is Governor Greg Abbott. I'm about to sign a the law that creates the one big, beautiful map that ensures fairer representation in the United States Congress for Texas.

And even deploying the National Guard at first to Washington, D.C., now to other cities. There is no insurrection, there is no threat to national security, and there is no need for military troops in our major city. And so much of this is fueled, and I've talked to people in the White House, those close to the president, Republicans on the hill and the like, by a fear of indeed losing

the midterms, not just because it would blunt Trump's ability to get anything done in his second two years of this term, if the Republicans were to, say, lose the House of Representatives. But beyond that, if the Democrats control, even just that one body of Congress, even just the lower chamber, that would suddenly give them the power of the subpoena, which would allow them to launch investigations and potentially even another impeachment. And certainly the first Trump term, once Democrats took control of the House in 2018, there was a series of investigations. You know, there was also the special, separately from the House,

where there was the special counsel probe run by Robert Mueller. At the end of the day, yes, Donald Trump was reelected, but those investigations did hurt him at the time. And then we also have President Trump, it's deeper, more personal than that. He, as I report in the peace, was impeached twice. He finds that memory infuriating and humiliating. He knows that will be part of his... The first line or two of his political obituary

will be that he was the only president impeached twice. He is someone who we hear this in his constant musings about wanting a Nobel Peace Prize. Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements. They won't give me a Nobel Peace Prize because they only give it to liberals. Be a big insult to our country, I will tell you that.

I don't want it. want the country to get it. He is someone who is thinking more and more about his possible legacy, and he doesn't want to go through that again. He doesn't want the third impeachment, even though there's little to no chance he'd be removed from office, but he doesn't want to have to go through that again. And let's remember, he also just faced a series of criminal charges, and that is still raw for him, in fact, fueling in many ways his current campaign and retribution against James

Pomey and the like. So he's simply, I think at this point, he's very triggered. at the idea of the Democrats having the ability to investigate him in the dealings him and his business and his staff and his family even, and he would like to avoid that again. The president isn't coming out and saying very much about the midterms other than the Texas redistricting affair. Are there internal conversations going on that we know of about this? Yes. They began over the summer, as I report in the piece, in part after the Republican Republicans achieved the president's signature legislative priority, the so-called one big,

beautiful bill. But it has been polling poorly, both before it passed and afterwards, after the president signed into the law on July 4th in a lavish White House signing ceremony. Thank you very much for being here, great honor. And stick around for the fireworks. And Republicans were faced with a lot of hostility. when some of them, and there have not been many, lawmakers decided to hold town halls in their districts. Why did you cut SNAP and health care research?

We do not have unlimited money in the United States. So people are not, well, we all are going to die. And normally, the party out of power does well in the off-year elections, right? If the president is a Republican, more times. and not in those midterms the Democrats do well and vice versa. So knowing this history and seeing the president's slipping poll numbers and the unpopularity of the bill, Trump and some senior aides and outside advisors really started shifting conversations. Okay, if this momentum continues, as in their opinion, as poorly organized as Democrats have been so far since election day,

2024, still, the Republicans did stand a good chance of losing a House of Congress. Trump knows what that is like. He, you know, had control of both the House and Senate in the first two years of his first term, only to lose that in 2018. And he made it clear to his aides, he didn't want to go through that again. What one might see as a pivot to the midterms, another might see as a distraction from Jeffrey Epstein. Because for a minute there, it really felt like the president was trying to distract us from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. I never had the privilege of going to his island. And I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn't want to go to his island.

Some real frustration from the president and his inner circle that for the first time, really, he couldn't change the subject. Trump is, of course, a master of the distraction, a master of being able to dictate the terms of what the media does. And he particularly is good at getting his supporters, GOP loyalists, the manga crowd, to talk about what he wants to talk about. And that's why it was so shocking to him that he wasn't able to do that with the Epstein matter, that this had become this huge conspiracy theory, which, to be clear, though Trump himself, not a driver of it, he certainly fanned the flames at times, you know, and certainly a lot of people around Trump really spent a lot of time and energy pushing the Jeffrey Epstein matter,

believing it could bring down powerful Democrats or entire institutions when instead it's what's become the dominant storyline is a reminder that you know Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends they were good friends for a long time and and that was personally embarrassing to Trump and he didn't want to have to deal with the any part of that scandal but he couldn't get Republicans to he by you know he flat out said hey let's move on they wouldn't so yes part of this is him trying to get the public and even his most loyal supporters to talk about something else. And, of course, we're speaking to you in the midst of a government shutdown. You've covered a few of these things.

Do they just hurt both parties equally? If past his prologue, they tend to hurt the party in power. And we can even just look to Donald Trump's first term. He actually presided over three government shutdowns as president. Two of them were very brief. But one was long. It was over 30 days, the longest than the country's ever seen. And he took the brunt of the hit, polling-wise.

And I think in this case, though the White House, as I reported for the Atlantic on Tuesday, the White House is very bullish. They think they have the better arguments here about, and they're trying to recycle a lot of what they said in 2024, about immigration and the like. At midnight, the Democrats followed through on their threat to shut down the United States government. As we speak here this morning, there are hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are getting their furlough notices.

Nearly half of our civilian workforce is being sent home. These are hardworking Americans who work for our federal government. Our troops and our border patrol agents will have to go to work, but they'll be working without pay. The other day, the GOP controls White House, the Senate, and the House. And most Americans who are not paying attention to the minutia of the government shutdown negotiations are likely just going to blame the party in power. Of course, one thing we can bet on polling worse than Donald Trump is the Democrats.

We had Senator Warren on the show earlier asking her a question that I'll now ask you. I mean, is there anything the Democrats can do to get it together enough to have a fighting chance here against Donald Trump, be it in the midterms or his successor in 2028? It is striking that Democrats are polling even worse than Trump pretty much across the board. though it must be noted in some of those like generic ballot tests like for like just you know not individual democrat republicans by names rather just generic republican versus generic democrat for generic house seat democrats do pretty well in those matchups but there's no doubt this is a party in crisis a party looking for its identity the twenty twenty four losses were so sweeping and so gutting uh and democrats lost a lot of its of its base it's of its core voters uh decided to either cross the island vote republic or just stay home. I think there's still a party that's trying to find itself. Now, most Democratic strategists, I speak to say, you know, those first few months, they were just so shell-shocked they could barely mount a resistance to Trump. Now they do feel like they're more coherent in their

anti-Trump arguments. That said, they have not been able to really suggest any pro-democratic party arguments. They really have not been able to spell out what they stand for. And they're going to have to. They're going to need some sort of, it's not enough just to be anti-Trump, a senior Democrat I've told me recently, you have to be able to present your own vision, your own case. And at this point, they haven't been able to. TheAtlantic.com is where you can read Jonathan's joint on Trump and the Midterms. Kelly Wessinger made our show today with help from Ariana Spurru, Amna Al-Sadi, Laura Bullard, Patrick Boyd, and Adrian Lilly.

I'm Sean Ramos firm, and this is today Explained. I'm Sean Rommis Firm, and you can support today's experience. explained over at Vox.com. Wow, I lost my voice there. I get emotional when I talk about supporting today. ExplainedVox.com slash members. There are perks for doing so, like ad-free shows, exclusive newsletters, and maybe Noel will send you pictures of her dog if you ask nicely.

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