RE-OPENING DAY 1: Nobody wins a shutdown

AGORA SHUTDOWN UPDATE

November 13, 2025

After 43 days, the government is back open . . . for now.

President Trump signed the CR into law last night after it cleared the House. The House vote was not as close as expected, 222-209, with six Democrats voting in favor and two Republicans opposed.

While not in doubt, the vote was accompanied by bipartisan anger over a provision the Senate added that would allow Senators to sue the government for as much as half a million dollars each if the feds search their phone records without notifying them, a vestige of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump. House Speaker Mike Johnson promised a vote next week to repeal it to help pave the way for the CR’s passage.

While the shutdown is over, the fighting is not. Although Senate Republicans promised a December vote on extending Obamacare subsidies, the House made no such promise. Last night, House Democrats announced plans to try and force a vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies, but it’s iffy at best that any Republicans will go along.

And of course, the new CR expires January 30, meaning we could be back in the same place early next year, with threats of a shutdown looming over the Capitol.

One thing that should be clear by now to everyone is that nobody wins in a shutdown. Democrats did not achieve their main goal, to force an extension of the subsidies. They also exacerbated fault lines between the centrists, like the eight Senators who backed the CR, and the progressive wing, which demanded an all-out fight. And Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s position is potentially at risk, even though he opposed the CR.

But Republicans fared no better. While they managed to evade an extension of the health care subsidies, they’ve taken a beating in the opinion polls that show Americans blame them more for the shutdown. By trying to deny food stamps to needy families, they’ve exposed themselves to charges of cruelty. And they are going to have to deal with the high cost of health insurance sooner or later.

One can hope that they will learn the lesson that shutdowns never succeed. But thirty years after the first major federal shutdown, that hope is probably misplaced.

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