Catie Edmondson

And we should not forget about them.

But the troops has always been sort of one of the biggest pain points.

I mean, we're also seeing and again, this is more insulation, I would say, of the president himself.

He said that he is going to take similar actions to ensure that law enforcement agents continue to get paid.

We believe that is going to include FBI agents, ICE agents potentially.

And that is an area now where you have Democrats, if not angry, certainly extremely uncomfortable because you are seeing the White House pick and choose which agencies they want to continue to fund and which they don't.

Well, they think that they have found a winning issue in centering this shutdown around healthcare.

Their bet is that as people continue to get letters in the mail saying,

informing them how much their health care premiums are going to go up, that they are only going to get more and more public support, and that even, I think, in a worst-case scenario for them, if the ACA subsidies are not extended, then they have a ripe issue to run on in the midterms.

But I think, Michael, part of what is fueling the impasse on the Hill is real anger from Democrats over the way that the administration is weaponizing this shutdown.

In the days before the government actually shut down rest vote, the budget director teased the idea that they would use a shutdown to accelerate their campaign of mass layoffs of federal workers.

And I think the calculation from the White House was that that was going to cow a number of centrist Democrats, maybe those in particular who have large numbers of federal workers in their states.

I'm thinking of people like Mark Warner of Virginia, Tim Kaine of Virginia.

Two pretty centrist members who sort of pride themselves on negotiating through gridlock.

I think the calculation was that maybe the White House would be able to peel off a handful of Democrats like those men and get them to join Republicans in keeping the government open or, in this case now, reopening the government.

And if that was the calculation, it has completely backfired, right?

These are two normally pretty affable men, having covered them for seven years now, and they are furious.

And they have constituents who are federal workers who have been coming up to them in the grocery stores telling them, you know, look, I started the year getting the Doge email, being asked to report five things I did this week.

Now I'm laid off.

This administration is out of control.