Trump Blames Shutdown for GOP Losses; Dems Dig In to Fight

Trump at his breakfast with senators
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Wednesday brought the first fallout from Tuesday's elections, in which Democrats swept key races by large margins. President Trump, clearly bothered by the election results, voiced growing frustration with the government shutdown, which is now the longest in history. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court heard arguments today challenging Trump's authority to impose many of his tariffs. Here's your evening update.

As Trump Blames Shutdown for GOP Losses, Dems Dig In for Longer Fight

Democrats' decisive victories in Tuesday's key elections have already begun to reshape the political landscape, forcing President Donald Trump and Republicans to reckon with the message sent by voters and what it might signify for 2026 and beyond.

At the same time, the elections cast fresh doubt about the potential for a quick deal to end the 36-day-old government shutdown, now officially the longest in U.S. history, surpassing the record set in Trump's first term. Senate Democrats, some of whom had been warming to a potential deal, were left considering whether the election results in New Jersey, Virginia, California and elsewhere signaled that they should look to make the most of their momentum and keep fighting.

"It was a great night for America, and a five-alarm fire for Donald Trump and Republicans," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a post on X.

A frustrated Trump blames the shutdown: While Democrats and analysts said that voters had delivered a strong, unambiguous rebuke of the president and his policies, Trump, not surprisingly, framed it far differently.

A year to the day after he was re-elected, the president hosted Republican senators for a morning breakfast meeting at the White House to discuss the party's electoral drubbing. "I thought we'd have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it, and also about the shutdown and how that relates to last night," Trump said in his opening remarks to the senators. "I think that if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans."

Trump has allowed congressional Republican leaders to guide the GOP strategy on the shutdown, so blaming the election results on the shutdown insulates him at least partially from responsibility for the outcome. Trump also said Republicans had lost because he wasn't on the ballot, calling that "the biggest factor."

In talking to GOP senators, Trump noted the pain being caused by the shutdown and called for getting the government reopened immediately - but he didn't call for negotiating a deal with Democrats. Instead, he again forcefully urged Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster, not just to end the federal funding lapse via a simple majority vote but to enact additional planks of the GOP agenda.

"It's time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that's terminate the filibuster," Trump said. "It's the only way you can do it, and if you don't terminate the filibuster you'll be in bad shape. We won't pass any legislation. There'll be no legislation passed for three and a quarter years."

Trump urged Senate Republicans to reopen the government on their own, then enact voter ID laws, eliminate mail-in voting and "pass all the things that we want to pass to make our election secure and safe." He then pointed to California and other states that he called "disasters" for their election laws.

Senate Republicans aren't likely to heed Trump's call. Majority Leader John Thune has said repeatedly that the votes simply aren't there to end the filibuster. "It's not happening," Thune told reporters.

Democrats demand a meeting: Tuesday's results may have undercut growing sentiment among some Senate Democrats to accept a shutdown-ending deal that fell short of the party's goal of ensuring the Affordable Care Act subsidies are extended. At the very least, it stiffened some Democrats' resolve to keep pressing their demands and to refuse to accept just the promise of a vote on the subsidies.

Buoyed by the election results - and by Trump's own remarks about the effects of the shutdown - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent a letter to the president to demand a bipartisan meeting to end the shutdown and address what they call a "Republican healthcare crisis" - their term for the looming expirations of more generous Affordable Care Act subsidies.

"We have been asking for a meeting for weeks, and even months," Schumer said on the Senate floor. "But now the election results ought to send a much-needed bolt of lightning to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis and his shutdown, which he admits, hurt him badly in the election."

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, warned against accepting anything less than firm commitments to extend the healthcare subsidies.

"What people want is that the Democrats stand up and continue to fight, so I think that one of the reasons, of many, that the Democrats had so much success is an appreciation that Democrats are trying to protect healthcare for the American people," Sanders told reporters.

He said Democrats must press for commitments from Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson that they will back any bill to extend the subsidies.

"If it's just a piece of legislation that passes the Senate," Sanders said, "so what? Where does it go? Then it becomes just a meaningless gesture."

A set of talking points reportedly circulating in Democratic congressional offices included a similar warning: "Caving without concessions would sap Democrats' momentum and undercut the party's support from its base."

And Katie Bethell, the executive director of progressive organizing group MoveOn, told Axios: "Moderate Senate Democrats who are looking for an off-ramp right now are completely missing the moment if, on the heels of last night's election landslide, they are entertaining the idea of capitulating to Trump and the Republicans in the fight to protect Americans' health care."

The record-long shutdown keeps going: As the political clashes continue, so does the shutdown - and its painful effects are set to get worse. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Wednesday that, if the funding lapse continues, flight capacity at 40 major airports will be cut by 10% starting on Friday morning, which will affect about 3,500 to 4,000 flights a day.

Supreme Court Justices Seem Skeptical of Trump's Tariffs

President Trump's claim that he has the power to impose tariffs unilaterally ran into a wall of skepticism at the Supreme Court Wednesday, as lawyers battled over the legitimacy of a key part of Trump's economic program.

In a case brought by small businesses claiming harm from the tariffs Trump has imposed on trade partners around the world, the justices on the high court dug into the legal reasoning behind the unprecedented use of the import taxes, with the administration seeking to defend its claim that the executive has virtually unlimited power over trade policy during a self-declared national emergency.

The Constitution explicitly grants Congress authority over tariffs, but Trump maintains that, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, his declarations of national emergencies over the size of the trade deficit and the ongoing illegal drug trade give him the power to override congressional control. That claim has been rejected by lower courts.

Skeptical questioning: In what is probably a bad sign for the administration, the justices - including some of the six conservatives who make up the majority on the court - appeared to have significant doubts about Trump's position.

Noting that tariffs are a form of taxation, which "has always been the core power of Congress," Chief Justice John Roberts asked if Trump was using his control over foreign affairs to "neutralize" the power of the legislature. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, said Trump was using his authority to regulate imports during an emergency, as allowed by the IEEPA.

One of the court's liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, focused on the same point. "It's a congressional power, not a presidential power, to tax," she said. "And you want to say tariffs are not taxes, but that's exactly what they are."

Justice Elena Kagan questioned the validity of Trump's many emergency declarations. "It turns out we're in emergencies - everything all the time, about, like, half the world," she said. Sotomayor wondered what emergency occurred that legitimized a new 10% tariff on Canadian imports, which Trump imposed after an ad critical of his policy aired during the World Series.

Asked by Justice Amy Coney Barrett if a president has ever before claimed the power to impose tariffs to regulate imports, Sauer cited the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, which President Richard Nixon used in 1971 during a balance of payments crisis. Critics, however, argue that the IEEPA was passed to limit that type of presidential authority.

Downplaying tariff revenues: Sauer also downplayed the revenue produced by the tariffs - something Trump has discussed publicly and proudly - since that could weaken the administration's claim that the tariffs are driven by an emergency need for new regulations, not a need for tax revenues. "These are regulatory tariffs. They are not revenue-raising tariffs," Sauer said. "The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental."

Whether the tariffs could be reduced or otherwise altered by Congress was another point of discussion. Plaintiff's lawyer Neal Katyal, who served as deputy solicitor general in the Obama administration, argued that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Trump administration, Congress's power over tariff policy will be lost.

"It comes down to common sense," Katyal said. "It's simply implausible that, in enacting IEEPA, Congress handed the president the power to overhaul the entire tariff system - and the American economy in the process. ... We will never get this power back if the government wins this case."

The bottom line: Legal analysts expect the court to push back against Trump's claim that he has unlimited power to impose tariffs, though it's not clear how broad the ruling might be, or when it may come. One way or another, though, it seems likely that some portion of Trump's tariff policy will be struck down.

"After that argument, if I were the Trump Administration, I'd be burning the midnight oil over the next couple of weeks drawing up tariff backup plans," said legal scholar Peter Harell, who served in the Biden administration as senior director for international economics. "A clear majority of the Justices appeared skeptical that IEEPA authorizes the type of broad-based tariffs that Trump has asserted this year."

Chart of the Day: The Cost of the Shutdown

The government shutdown is costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars, though estimates vary as to exactly how much and what portion of the loss could be recovered once the shutdown ends. The Bloomberg chart below shows a number of estimates of the weekly cost, ranging from $10 billion to $30 billion.

The longer a shutdown goes, the more damage it does to the economy. With the current shutdown now entering record territory, some economists worry that the harm may be deeper than usual.

"The experience, historically, is that government shutdowns don't cause calamity," Jonathan Millar, a senior U.S. economist at Barclays, told Bloomberg. "This time could be different."

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