patrick.net

As you know, Republicans held the Senate in session all weekend. The pressure relentlessly piled up until the cracks became irresistible. By late afternoon yesterday, eight “centrist” Democrats defied their party and voted with Republicans to invoke cloture and end debate on a 90-day continuing resolution. Republicans only gave them a couple minor modifications, related to back pay and re-hiring federal workers fired during the shutdown’s first weeks.

But Democrats completely surrendered on their single claimed reason for forcing the country to endure 40 days of nonsense and angst. There will be no Obamacare subsidies. No participation trophy. Not even a cracker. ...

It sure looks that way. It looks like a Donkey Cage Match. Even though Senate Minority Leader Chuck “Chuckie” Schumer voted against the bill, House Representative Ro Khanna (D-Ca.) hotly demanded Schumer’s resignation:

@RoKhanna
Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you
can't lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for
Americans, what will you fight for?
9:11 PM • Nov 9, 2025

... Not coincidentally, none of the eight Democrats who joined Republicans last night face re-election next year. (Two have already announced their retirement.) It wasn’t any rebellion. They got the green light. All the Democrats’ hand-wringing today is just a fake show for the base.

So how did Trump do it?

Last week, Trump sank the Democrats into a pressure cooker and locked the lid. Here are the four biggest ways:

The Administration ensured that Democrats were squeezed from both ends of their electorate: SNAPpers on the bottom as food stamps trickled out in slow motion, and starting this weekend, laptop-class elites at the top whose flights were canceled and delayed.

Senate Republicans busily advanced a “mini-bus” bill that would have funded SNAP and the military, which Democrats would have been forced to vote against, with ensuing horrible optics and painful political gymnastics.

Trump started using the shutdown as an excuse to nuke the filibuster; and if that ever happens, Dems lose everything. And they know it.

Most explosively, Trump nipped off the Dems’ “affordability” narrative while they were looking the other way. He tweeted a chart showing that Obamacare ‘subsidies’ don’t go to needy patients, but to rich insurance companies. Then he showed how insurance stock prices rocketed over 1,000% since Obamacare passed.

The shutdown isn’t quite over yet. But it is inevitabe now. Invoking “cloture” sends the bill off to the full Senate for debate and passage.

Trump signs funding bill into law, ending record-long government shutdown

On Wednesday, U.S. Congress moved to end the longest government shutdown, 43 days, as the House of Representatives prepared to rubber-stamp a Senate funding package to reopen federal agencies in Washington.