Tuesday, November 11,2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.
The Shutdown is ending.
Don’t listen to the political pundits or read the press and despair.
Trump did not win the shut-down.
Public Opinion on the Shutdown.
The public blames the Trump and his cult Republicans for the longest Government shutdown in American history. #TrumpShutdown2. 2025. 41 days. (#TrumpShutdown1. 2017. 35 days)
- Quinnipiac poll. 45% of registered voters congressional Republicans were most responsible, compared to 39% who named congressional Democrats. 
- Reuters/Ipsos poll. 67% said Republicans deserved “a fair or great deal” of blame; 63% said the same of Democrats; and 63% also blamed the President (Donald Trump). 
- Associated Press‑NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey. 60% of Americans said “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility lies with Trump and congressional Republicans; 54% said Democrats in Congress bear such responsibility. 
- The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos - the most recent poll found 45% blame Trump and Republicans as primarily responsible, while 33% blamed Democrats.
Crowds booing Trump at the Commanders-Lions game.
On Sunday, Nov. 9, Trump arrived at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland with House Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and other members of his administration after Air Force conducted a flyover above the stadium.
He was shown on the stadium videoboard late in the first half and introduced at halftime; the crowd responded with loud boos.
Touch to watch.👇
Trump is the most hated President in American history.
Trump’s shutdown goals were ambitious and thwarted.
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Trump goal #1. Permanently fire furloughed federal workers.
They will not only not be fired. They will be rehired and get back pay.
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Trump goal #2. Severely damage Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides money to hungry Americans.
SNAP will restart and will be fully funded through fiscal year 2026.
SNAP was cut by $186 billion over ten years by Trump’s July bill but if there is another shut down from now through fiscal 2026, SNAP is safe from further cuts or interruptions.
- Trump goal #3. The Senate filibuster was not ended, despite Trump’s efforts to end it.
Had the filibuster ended, Trump wanted the Senate to pass bills that would have given him limitless power.
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Trump goal #4. End Americans access to affordable quality healthcare.
Trump has had a short term win on this. The existing tax credits put into place during COVID will likely expire on December 31.
78% of Americans want to keep them and supported the Democratic fight on this issue.
Under the recent deal which ended the Shutdown, Republican Leader Thune has promised a vote in the Senate before then. Mike Johnson, Republican Speaker of the House, will not let this come to a vote.
According to the Urban Institute, about 4.8 million more Americans will become uninsured in 2026 because of these Trump/MAGA positions on healthcare.
In November 2026, Americans will remember which Party supports Healthcare for the American People.
November 10, 2025. Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson.
Last night, the Senate advanced a measure to end the government shutdown, which at 41 days today is the longest in U.S. history.
The 8 Democratic senators who voted to end the shutdown, 2 retiring, 6 not up for re-election.
Left to right, staring with the top row. Catherine Cortez Masto of NV, Dick Durbin of IL, John Fetterman of PA, Maggie Hassan of NH, Tim Kaine of VA, Angus King of ME, Jacky Rosen of NV, Jeanne Shaheen of NH.
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Last night’s vote did not pass the bill, which still faced procedural hurdles in the Senate that the chamber is cleared tonight. It now goes to the House, which must either pass it, reject it, or amend it.
If Trump signs the measure into law, the 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP payments will get relief. The two million federal workers who need paychecks will get them, and airlines should eventually get back to business as usual.
These are no small things: aside from the individual human cost of the shutdown, the undermining of the federal government threatened to destroy it, and the
administration’s cuts to air traffic were hitting cargo planes, adding yet another blow to the weakening economy just before the busiest shopping season of the year.
News of the terms of the deal to end the shutdown hit the country rather like a cue ball hitting a rack: lots of balls started to move in wildly different directions.
The eight senators who voted with the Republicans appear to have lost any hope Trump would negotiate and, in that absence, decided they had to relieve the pain of the shutdown.
As Dan Drezner noted in his Drezner’s World, Trump’s behavior during the shutdown made it clear he simply didn’t care how badly Americans got hurt.
“He did not just refuse to negotiate,” Drezner noted. “During the shutdown month he also completely bulldozed the East Wing, cut SNAP benefits, witnessed producers passing on the cost of tariffs to consumers, announced curbs on air travel, and participated in a Great Gatsby–style party at Mar-a-Lago.”
Voters hated this, but Trump didn’t appear to care.
Indeed, his administration was working to ratchet up the pain of lost SNAP payments and canceled flights, including not just passenger planes but cargo planes right before the shopping season in which many businesses make the income that keeps them afloat for the year.
In the senators’ statements about why they voted with the Republicans, Drezner noted a pattern: the words “pain” and “hurt.”
As Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark noted, the Democrats gave in to Republican plans with few concessions, but the shutdown hurt Trump’s popularity and the Democrats won a vote on the ACA subsidies, which is a terrible issue for the Republicans.
Seventy-eight percent of Americans actually want such a measure to pass, meaning that a vote—even one only in the Senate—will help clarify for voters what’s at stake.
Another moving ball was the voters and organizers who turned out for Democrats last Tuesday and who had made it very clear they think it’s long overdue for the Democrats to stand up to Trump.
Ezra Levin of Indivisible, which organized the No Kings rallies, described his reaction to the deal as “incandescent rage, incredible disappointment.” “What do we do to demand a better party, a party that actually fights back?” he asked.
Democratic party leaders appeared to acknowledge that the momentum of the party is behind a fight against Trump and MAGA authoritarianism. The senators who voted with the Republicans are all either retiring, not up for election in 2026, or not running for another office, while Democrats who are in one of those categories were vocal about their anger over the vote.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted a video on social media warning: “Bullies gain power when righteous people yield to the face of their wrongdoing. I didn’t want this shutdown. I want it to end, but not at any cost. And of course, I wish that there was a path to saving this democracy and saving people’s health care that didn’t involve pain. This shutdown hurt. It did. But unfortunately, I don’t think there is a way to save this country, to save our democracy, without there being some difficult, hard moments along the way…. [T]here’s no way to defend this,” he said. “And you are right to be angry about it. I’m angry about it.”
There are Republican balls in play, as well.
President Donald J. Trump did not want the shutdown to end this way. He was trying to use the pain he was inflicting on the American people to force Republican senators to end the filibuster and pass a series of measures that would essentially have made him a dictator.
The Republican senators were clear they didn’t want to do that. And now, they haven’t. They chose a way out of the shutdown fight that did not support Trump’s ambitions. After nine months in which they appeared to do his bidding, that’s an interesting development.
Trump does not appear to be giving up his position on hurting the country easily. Late last night, three judges from the First Circuit refused to stop the lower court order saying that the administration must pay SNAP benefits in full, and today, the administration went back to the Supreme Court to ask it to freeze those payments.
Trump also posted an attack on air traffic controllers, saying to those who took time off during the shutdown “I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country. You will have a negative mark, at least in my mind, against your record. If you want to leave service in the near future, please do not hesitate to do so, with NO payment or severance of any kind! You will be quickly replaced by true Patriots, who will do a better job….”
In fact, the country has a shortage of air traffic controllers.
Trump called Democrats “the enemy” today, but told reporters he would abide by the deal, saying that “they haven’t changed anything.” But they have.
And that’s yet another moving ball. If the Senate passes its measure and sends it to the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will have to bring the House into session to conduct work. He has had the chamber on hiatus since September 19, 2025, when the Republicans passed a continuing resolution that offered the Democrats nothing, and has kept members out of Washington, D.C., ever since.
Bringing the House back into session will require Johnson to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ). Erum Salam of MSNBC reported that Johnson told Republicans on a conference call today that the “first order of business will be to administer the oath to Grijalva.” Grijalva says she will be the final signer on the discharge petition that will force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files. Johnson and administration officials have worked hard to keep those files under wraps, especially since news broke that Trump is mentioned in them.
And then, in the midst of all the drama last night, Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin posted a document on social media revealing that Trump had issued an extraordinarily broad pardon to “all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential Electors, whether or not recognized by any State or State official, in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election, as well as for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 Presidential Election.”
As Kyle Cheney of Politico noted, the pardons of those who tried to steal the 2020 presidential election for Trump were largely symbolic because they had not been charged with federal crimes. What they do is suggest that he will protect those who try to cheat for him in the future, an interesting development considering the measure in the government-funding bill allowing senators to sue the government for accessing their phone logs during the events of January 6, 2021.
The sweeping pardons also might be softening up the ground for a pardon or a commutation for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A whistleblower has provided documents to the House Judiciary Committee showing that Maxwell has asked for a commutation of her prison sentence.
And Trump’s popularity continues to drag. Last night he got soundly booed at a Washington Commanders football game.
Lots of balls moving around the table.(Substack.)
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Even the New York Times saw that Trump was holding the poor and furloughed government employees as hostages.
He was willing to hurt anyone to win.
Rightly seen as cowardly and capitulating to Trump, the 6 Democrats who voted to end the #TrumpShutdown, were unwilling to see Americans suffer and even die. They were willing to pay the ransom.
