The New Yorker:

The President learned in 2019 how to undercut Congress in a funding fight, and he’s been making the same move ever since.

By Susan B. Glasser

Ever since Newt Gingrich brought the federal government to a halt for three weeks in 1995, “birthing a new era of American gridlock,” as NPR later put it, the shutdown has been one of the capital’s recurring set pieces. Republicans, as the official anti-government party going back to the Reagan era, have usually been blamed. Maybe that’s why Democrats are charging ahead this time. Party leaders on Capitol Hill are calling the partial closure of the government that began at midnight on Wednesday “the Trump shutdown” and claiming that they have no choice but to stand up to an “erratic and unhinged” President in order to protect health-care subsidies that are about to expire for millions of Americans. With Republicans in charge of the White House and both houses of Congress, initial polls suggest that the public is inclined to pin responsibility on the G.O.P. once again.

To which I’d suggest: Be careful what you wish for. What looks like good politics might also prove to be another step in the undoing of the Constitution’s checks and balances.

During Donald Trump’s first term, the President’s demand that Congress fund his proposed wall on the Mexican border led to the longest shutdown in history—thirty-five days, from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019. In the end, Trump caved, agreeing to reopen the government even without the nearly six billion dollars in border-wall funding that he had demanded.

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