The American government has been shut down since 1 October, 2025. Government shutdowns do not mean full shutdown, but, rather, than some government services halt.
As usual, the Democrats and the Republicans have been exchanging blame.
President Donald Trump has, in our view, succeeded in placing the blame on the Democrats. His claim is that the Democrats are trying to give access to healthcare to illegal immigrants - the debate over funding does involve how much to spend on healthcare, and the Democrats deny that they want to fund healthcare for illegals. However, regardless of the technical details, the reality is that Democrat candidates during the 2019 presidential election debates all expressed their support to giving illegal aliens healthcare. Trump’s attack therefore sticks, and no amount of “fact-checking” from a highly biased media is going to be stronger than the image below.
More importantly, Democrats are simply in a mental and moral miasma. They do not understand who the nation is for: its citizens, whether these are defined on a creedal basis, a civic nationalist basis, or an ethnonationalist basis. They also reject any healthy understanding society and order: their policies favour not judging criminals, up to and including releasing criminals as soon as possible. As a result, most urban crime in the USA is from repeat offenders, and would not even exist under tougher sentencing policies. Democrats’ policies also ignore the reality that, by definition and historic experience, marriage and healthy family life are morally superior to all other forms of relationships. Simply, the beliefs of Democrats are those of deracinated, irreligious, amoral, extremists. They are shared by large segments of the civil service and academia, but, among the general population, they are a minority.
Given the extent of the bankruptcy of the Democrats (and the left globally), they have no choice but to use obstructionism as much as possible, and to support more welfare spending. The USA has been sleepwalking into a debt crisis, as indicated by the unprecedented rise in gold prices. And the Republicans have no incentive to distribute welfare to voter blocs that would never support them. Critically, with the debt ceiling lifted to USD 41 trillion, there is no time pressure on them. Therefore, the Republicans are unlikely to make concessions to the Democrats. Indeed, they may work on the media presentation of their case by making some offers to the Democrats that help divide them. A big obstacle to Republicans and Trump especially in the past has been the unwillingness of Democrats to break ranks, while Republicans have typically been more fragmented. Reversing this dynamic would enable Trump to use the same tactic in the future, and perhaps even gain some defections from the Democrats.
Commercial Impact:
The more successful Trump is despite the shutdown, the more the Democrats will attempt to challenge him in other ways, including through more unrest targeting ICE and security services, raising risks of arson, shootings, and riots, affecting nearby buildings.
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