Democrats Should Do the Honorable Thing and Refuse to Fund an Authoritarian Administration
Selling out democracy in exchange for petty subsidies is an affront to the Constitution and the freedom of Americans
Once again, Washington is facing the prospect of a government shutdown when congressional appropriations lapse at the end of this month. But this is anything but a normal shutdown standoff. Against the backdrop of an administration that is waging an unprecedented war on free speech, ginning up corrupt prosecutions of its opponents, facilitating unimaginable levels of self-dealing and personal grift, and subjecting states and cities to military occupation, this standoff cannot help but take on a heightened valence. If ever there was a time for a legislature to wield its power of the purse against a power-grabbing executive, this is it.
And what are congressional Democrats—whose votes are essential to reach the 60-vote threshold in the Senate—reportedly demanding in exchange for keeping the government open? Their main condition is a temporary patch for health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.
It would be laughable if the situation weren’t so serious. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are treating the gravest constitutional crisis in generations as just another opportunity for legislative bargaining, often sounding absurd in the process. Meanwhile, state and local leaders like JB Pritzker in Illinois, Gavin Newsom in California, and Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb are openly warning of authoritarian danger, mobilizing local institutions, and confronting Trump’s threats head-on. The contrast could not be sharper. On Capitol Hill, Democrats haggle over subsidies. In statehouses and city halls, leaders are treating Trump’s attacks on the Constitution as the emergency they are.
Understandably, shutdowns are unpopular. They have immediate negative consequences for many people—both government employees and those in need of government services. Democrats fear getting blamed for one, and are keen to make it look like Trump and congressional Republicans are the ones being unreasonable. But this misunderstands how radically different this situation is from prior shutdown fights. To win the battle for public opinion, Democrats must make plain they are holding the line for more important fundamental principles, in defense of the Constitution itself, and not just mundane policy disputes. It is precisely the latter framing that makes Democrats look more at fault, as if they’re the ones forcing a shutdown simply because they want to block the GOP majority’s policy agenda.
The question is not whether to fund or shut down the government—it’s whether to fund or shut down this government. There is no abstract, apolitical entity called “the government” that exists separate from the regime currently in charge. Today, it is Trump’s government, dominated and subordinated to his erratic dictates. To blindly fund that machine is to underwrite the very apparatus now being weaponized against American democracy.
The Framework Is the Fight
For so long, the foundational principles of American democracy were treated as so widely accepted that they could fade into the background of partisan disputes. The Declaration, the Constitution, liberty, democracy, and the rule of law were taken for granted. To affirm them was not itself a political statement. They were simply the shared framework within which Democrats and Republicans clashed over healthcare, taxes, or foreign policy.
That old way of doing business is gone, whether congressional Democrats recognize it or not. In the Trump era, those principles are not the backdrop to political issues—they are the political issue. The central question is not whether Democrats can secure a temporary health subsidy or Republicans can notch another tax cut. It is whether the institutions of American self-government will continue to function at all. Nothing else matters when the rules that allow us to contest elections, pass laws, and peacefully rotate power are under siege.
Schumer and Jeffries seem unable or unwilling to adjust. They continue to treat democracy itself as one issue among many, something to be mentioned in speeches before pivoting back to legislative horse-trading. But our constitutional republic is not one line item on a checklist. It is the condition that makes addressing every other issue possible. Without it, there are no real debates, no second chances, no prospect of revisiting policy defeats at the next election.
This is where the power of the purse becomes central. Control over appropriations is not some minor bargaining chip; it is the fundamental check a legislature has on a power-grabbing executive. In the Anglo-American tradition, it goes deeper than even the power to make laws, dating back centuries to Magna Carta. Representative assemblies were born from the principle that rulers could not tax or spend without consent. It was a central tenet of the American Revolution, explicitly codified in the Constitution. To squander that leverage now, to fritter it away for policy trinkets, is to abandon the very foundation of congressional power. It is to give Trump everything he wants while pretending to have negotiated a deal.
More to the point, there is no concession Trump could possibly give that he could then be trusted to abide by, which would make it worthwhile for Democrats (or principled Republicans, if there were any left in Congress) to provide their votes. The man and his administration are thoroughly lawless, so what possible value is there in securing funds he won’t spend if he doesn’t want to, in writing new laws he will break just as surely as he does existing laws? The only question is if Democrats will assist in the pretense that what Congress does actually matters, so long as he is in power.
Of course, at the end of the day, Democrats do not have the majorities in Congress, and the filibuster rule in the Senate can always be defeated by the “nuclear option” on a simple majority. It is likely that, eventually, Republicans will simply force through a bill on their own votes. Let them, so that they alone are seen as responsible for betraying their oaths. Do not grant what they really want: the guise of bipartisanship normalcy and pretended legality, the appearance of a constitutional legitimacy they have already destroyed.
By contrast, governors and mayors see the threat more clearly. They have seen with more alacrity how their duty is not to horse-trade but to defend against unchecked despotism. They are treating Trump’s threats and the troop deployments as a five-alarm fire. They understand that when the republic is burning, the responsible course is not to haggle over appropriations scraps but to confront the blaze directly.
The Fallacy of Normalcy
At the core of the problem is that too many on the Hill refuse to update their assumptions. They cling to the old conventional wisdom that says that the opposition party tends to lose when it forces a shutdown. In their mind, it’s still the 1990s, with Newt Gingrich staring off against Bill Clinton.
In this framework, a kind of faux sophistication creeps in, as if the choice is between pragmatic politics and a hardline posture of sticking to principle. But that’s a false binary. Against the kind of constitutional crisis we’re in today, rolling over is both unprincipled and bad politics. We’ve already seen it once before: when Chuck Schumer voted for the continuing resolution back in March. He failed to secure a single meaningful concession from it, and Trump’s crime spree continued unabated. Nor did anybody credit Democrats for “avoiding a shutdown.”
Instead, virtually the only thing congressional Democratic leadership has accomplished since Trump has retaken office is make themselves toxically unpopular. Even as Trump’s own approval ratings tank, everybody hates the weak, tone-deaf messaging and actions from Schumer and Jeffries. While Democrats fare well on the generic ballot (because they’re the only anti-Trump option), the congressional party is breaking records for how widely despised they are not just by Republicans but by their own voters and candidates.
This isn’t a fight about funding levels for this or that program. It’s not like Trump obeys any of that, anyway. So long as he and his enablers are in power, any deal is worthless. What Congress actually passes now has no real force—he will spend or not spend as he pleases, and break any law he wants with impunity. Although he is the president, negotiating with someone like that is worse than a fool’s errand—because it presupposes a commitment to rule-following and good-faith negotiation that is manifestly not there on his part. Not only does it represent an irresponsible abdication of what the moment calls for, it makes those negotiating with him at least partly complicit. That’s what Republicans really want. If push comes to shove, they can, of course, pass a funding bill on simple majorities, the aforementioned nuclear option to abolish the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold. And they will, in any event, simply sit back and do nothing when Trump does as he pleases regardless of what Congress says.
Any vote to fund a government controlled by Trump is a vote to fund everything he is doing with it, every crime he is committing, every assault on the Constitution. You can’t credibly denounce the legitimacy of these things while voting to fund them. The only relevant choice congressional Democrats face is if they want to be party to that betrayal, or if Republicans have to go it alone and own the consequences, both politically and in the harsh judgment of history.
Betting on Incompetence
A common refrain, even among Trump’s critics in Congress, is that he will fail to consolidate full-blown authoritarian rule because he and his allies are too chaotic, too incompetent, too consumed by infighting. That assumption is comforting. It is also dangerously wrong. Every authoritarian regime has been a collection of bumbling, fractious incompetents. The Nazis were riddled with rival factions, the Bolsheviks thrived on paranoia and backstabbing, and strongmen from Caracas to Manila have governed through chaos, not strictly ordered efficiency.
What matters is not whether Trump’s takeover is clumsy and full of ignorant buffoons, but whether their opponents rise to the challenge. Authoritarians succeed when those who should defend democracy underestimate the danger, dismiss it as bluster, or prioritize marginal legislative wins over existential threats. They fail only when their opponents recognize that the defense of democracy must come before everything else.
Senate Democrats under Schumer’s leadership, on the other hand, appear content to barter for a pittance. If congressional opposition remains focused on side deals and subsidies, they risk becoming the ill-organized, incompetent liberal-democratic opposition whose complacency makes authoritarian victory possible.
Nothing Else Matters
The most dangerous illusion in this current crisis is clinging to normalcy. Congress, above all, is addicted to the pretense that the guardrails of the Constitution will hold on their own. The courts will stop him (not with this Supreme Court), laws will hold (they’re being broken with impunity), and the retaliation and persecution of political opponents won’t get too extreme (it already is).
The Constitution is not a magic spell. It is a framework, a set of rules and norms that require the active defense of those in power. If one side abandons those rules and the other side shrugs it off as part of the game, all our sacred rights can melt into thin air. A republic ending not with a bang, but a whimper.
That is why the contrast between congressional Democrats and state-level officials matters so much. They are treating Trump’s threats and the troop deployments as existential dangers to their constituents and institutions. They are living the consequences of autocracy in action. Schumer and his caucus, meanwhile, are still treating them as leverage points in appropriations negotiations. It is the difference between recognizing an existential threat and pretending it is just another round of partisan brinkmanship.
At a bare minimum, in exchange for their votes, Democrats must demand real checks on politicized abuse of power, viable mechanisms to ensure congressionally appropriated funds are spent as directed, and an end to abuse of the military for political purposes. It’s almost certain Trump would never agree to these demands, but if not, there is nothing to be gained.
At the very least, these demands will make the stakes clear to the American people, serve an educational purpose, show that Democrats are thinking seriously about how to stop an authoritarian from usurping the constitutional order. If Republicans and the White House won’t accept those basic legal guarantees, the results are on them. Make them go it alone, and own the consequences.
American democracy is not guaranteed. It is not immune to the fate that has befallen so many other nations. What we do now will determine whether American self-government survives in any recognizable form. The outcome is not predetermined. It depends on whether we stop assuming that Trump’s incompetence will save us, and whether leaders in Washington stop pretending this is business as usual. If Schumer and his colleagues cannot rise to the occasion, they will discover too late that their bargaining victories are worthless once the system itself is gone.
That means Democrats must use the power of the purse as it was intended: not as a policy negotiation to be bartered away, but as the core constitutional weapon to restrain an out-of-control executive. They should withhold funding from this government until and unless basic democratic conditions are secured. To help fund Trump’s autocratic machine is to subsidize our own undoing. To refuse him the money is the most essential, constitutional path remaining to resist. That is the choice before congressional Democrats now, if they want to live up to their party’s name, or else be remembered as making a bitter mockery of it.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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Thank you Mr. Craig. This political conflict is no longer about policy or debating issues. That era is gone. Trump's Project 2025 is designed to become a permanent political regime which never relinquishes power. Democrats are still clinging to their identity politics and the belief that policy prevails. Policy as a political force is gone. The Democrats' fantasy of MediCare for All is a pipe dream that will not win even if there is another election. And all those government employees that would lose their jobs during a shutdown? Trump'll fire them anyway. That's the plan. He fired the Congress. He pretty much has fired the Supreme Court. The separation between the DOJ and the president is gone. The independence of the FBI is gone. The game is up unless the Democrats hold their ground and play hardball.
But who's gonna' get blamed for the disasters it unleashes? And the Rs can bundle anything else that fails into the same "It's because of the government shutdown the Dems caused." and who will argue with them?
And how did that work out for the Rs the last time they did it?
Any lessons there?
Righteousness is OK. Winning is better. Based on past history this is a BIG vote loser, though "past performance is no guarantee of future results."