Tyler Pager

And so far, he has largely kept an arm's length away from the shutdown.

He has railed against Democrats for keeping the government closed, and he has weighed in on which workers should get paid, like the troops, but he has not really dived into the fight going on on Capitol Hill.

And I think just to add on to Katie's point, this is one of the first moments in Trump's second term where Democrats have had any leverage as it relates to the functioning of government.

They are in the minority in both the Senate and the House.

And a big part of the Democratic base has been agitating for Democrats to try to stand up in some way to Donald Trump.

The last time Chuck Schumer helped Republicans keep the government open, there was...

serious backlash to him.

And there is this energy in the Democratic Party to try to pressure their leaders to do something, to really stand up to Trump, because Republicans need a handful of them to go along with anything to reopen the government.

I'll posit two things.

One is, Michael, as you alluded to earlier, if we start to see real impacts on Americans' daily experience beyond federal workers, if planes are being delayed, air traffic controllers are not showing up to work, if we really start to see acute impacts from the continued shutdown.

I think a second thing is when and if President Trump really does get engaged.

He has focused on other things during this period.

He's referenced the shutdown and discussed the shutdown, but he has not made it a priority of his to end.

The White House feels confident that the shutdown ends.

is more harmful to Democrats than it is to the president and his political party.

If the fortune changes there and Trump decides he wants to end this once and for all, I think that will be a key turning point.

And also, I think one of the things is the administration is unlikely to be able to continue to move funds around to keep programs open and troops paid.

And so that pain point has been nullified for the time being.

But White House officials have privately conceded to me that is not a long-term solution.

And so... When that runs out.