Weekend Report: What's happening?

Democrats are winning the shutdown. Trump is being kept in the dark by advisers. Is the White House using the shutdown to punish blue cities and federal workers, or would they have done this anyway?

We’re now several days into a shutdown that many media pundits—and Democratic bedwetters—said Democrats would lose. But the polls have shown that by large margins Americans are blaming Trump and Republicans. And whoever is blamed in the beginning of a shutdown has born the responsibility until the end. Underneath the snide remark and stupid AI videos, you can see Republicans cracking, having backed themselves into a corner.

Part of the veneer of confidence and bravado we’re seeing from Trump is the fact that he’s increasingly being kept in the dark. Several glaring examples surfaced this week, and it is a very dangerous situation. Trump’s underlings are acting unilaterally without informing in taking major actions, or they’re keeping information from him or feeding him disinformation to get the result they want, as his own mental state continues to decline.

Many have pointed out that Trump and his Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought of “Project 2025 fame,” as Trump put it, are using the shutdown to permanently fire federal workers and exact revenge on blue states. It’s definitely true that they’re exploiting the shutdown to do that, but they’ve been doing so since the beginning of his presidency. Anyone who thinks the end of the shutdown would stop these actions—many of which are illegal—hasn’t paid attention to that fact.