Editorial: The Cruelest Month
By • October 7, 2025 0 473
“I want federal employees to be traumatized, I want to put them in trauma, I want them to not want to come to work.”
—Russell Vought, OMB director
“When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs. So, we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected. And they’re gonna be Democrats.”
—Donald Trump, president
And that, dear readers, tells you everything you need to know about the federal shutdown, the fourth under Trump and his fellow GOP travelers. It’s not about efficiency, government spending or deficit reduction. Instead, it’s all about revenge, spite and fear. (Also health care. More later.)
Who talks like that? I want to inflict pain on the workers who do the people’s business. I want to terrify citizens and immigrants alike. The Democrats are the enemy. I hate them.
As they say, the cruelty is the point.
By coincidence, the shutdown began at midnight on Oct. 1, the eve of Judaism’s most sacred holiday. For many civil servants, the pain began well before then with the advent of the DOGE boys, who created chaos and unemployment to cover their theft of our private data.
So, what does this all mean? For the District itself, not a lot, unless you’re a furloughed worker. (You can file for unemployment, and you will get back pay once you return to work.) Home Rule, which itself is at risk, ensures that schools remain open; Metro runs; the mail’s delivered.
On the other hand, the whole country cannot operate safely without the dedicated employees who handle what the New York Times calls “the day-to-day mechanics of American life.”
And why is this happening? Health care. That pesky Obamacare just won’t die, no matter how many times the GOP tries to take it down.
Now the fight is over tax credits that reduce the cost of policies bought on the ACA marketplace. If they are allowed to expire, premiums will increase exponentially, further burdening families facing higher prices at the grocery store and the fuel pump.
Additionally, the Democrats want to restore the Medicaid funding that had been cut in the Big Beautiful Bill enacted this summer. More important, they want to make sure that the president doesn’t impound these funds or claw them back, something he is wont to do. He is also threatening to withhold funding for blue state (Democratic-run) projects, in another attempt to extort cooperation.
Without a majority in either house, the Democrats are stymied. They can only withhold their votes to deny passage of this noxious Project 2025-inspired budget. Thus, the standstill.
Already the lies and misinformation are flowing. In AI-manipulated out-of-office messages and memes posted on social media and government websites, unwary visitors will see a variation of the following: “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. [Agency] will use available resources to help Americans in need.”
Seriously?
The previous shutdown, which lasted 35 days in 2018-19, cost our city nearly $56 million. That was untenable then, and more so now. We can’t afford these juvenile, unpatriotic games.
