00:00In the US, the government shutdown has ended its third day with the threat of job cuts hanging over staff and the pause of public programmes.
00:08President Trump has threatened mass layoffs, arguing it's an unprecedented opportunity to look at cuts at what he called Democrat agencies.
00:16There's no end in sight with Democrats and Republicans at odds over how to settle the funding dispute.
00:20Lawmakers are expected to try to resolve things with a vote in the Senate today.
00:25I'm joined by Shannon Felton-Spence from Harvard's Belfast Centre. Thanks very much for being with us.
00:30Are the pauses in some of the programmes taking effect yet? Is the public starting to feel it?
00:37I think that the public will start to feel it really going into next week, but certainly the public servants that work for the government have already felt it.
00:45You know, when we go into a government shutdown, they're typically about a week long, but the longest one was actually under President Trump the first time, 35 days.
00:53Those federal workers are not getting paid. Some of them are just furloughed.
00:58Others of them are expected to come to work without pay. But, you know, the mortgage bill still comes, the car insurance bill still comes, and they are just not having those paychecks come in.
01:07So they are certainly feeling it acutely at the moment and the public will start to feel it soon.
01:11What are the key policy areas, do you think, that could shape whether there is a resolution to this and, you know, the whole politicisation of this?
01:20Well, I think that the politics of this are the most interesting.
01:23So the Democrats have really dug in on healthcare subsidies, and that is not something that the president is going to budge on, because it is part of his keystone bill, the big, beautiful bill.
01:35And so I think that we are a long way from a deal.
01:37And the politics of this are that I think that the Democrats are feeling from their voter base probably an artificial adrenaline rush at this moment.
01:46Like I said, I'm not sure that most people are feeling it at the tiller in their pocketbooks yet, the government shut down or not being able to access their services.
01:52But this is really the first time that the party, the Democrats, have stood up to Trump since Trump took office earlier this year.
02:01And so there is a little bit of a rush right now that, good, we're finally doing something, we're finally pushing back, but I don't see the president or the Republicans backing down anytime soon.
02:10And so there is going to be some real pain and some real delay in services that are going to come.
02:15And, you know, the holdout is going to start to affect the Democrats who are going to say, come on, just get a deal done so that we can reopen up the government.
02:23And we're going into a midterm year, so this is actually very important.
02:26That's what Donald Trump is banking on.
02:28And we've heard from Donald Trump that he's targeting what he calls Democrat agencies and talking about Russell Voight, you know, trying to work out which programs could be axed.
02:41Yeah, so absolutely.
02:42And also, he said on his Truth Social last night that he couldn't believe that the Democrats had given him this unprecedented opportunity to do what he wanted to do anyways, which is wind down the EPA, you know, totally wind down the Education Department, wind down HUD.
02:59And this messaging that is coming from Donald Trump, Donald Trump is a political athlete.
03:04He's a political animal.
03:05He understands his faith.
03:07He understands what riles people up.
03:09And I am not sure that the Democrats have that same sort of animal instinct that Donald Trump has.
03:17And I think that this is going to show he's not going to give in.
03:19He's, you know, the art of the deal.
03:21He is a hard, you know, he is a hard negotiator.
03:23And he is going to stay firm until Democratic states, Democratic voters really, really feel the pain and they start to think, what can we do to soften this up?
03:34And they're only going to turn against their own representatives.
03:35And so, going into a midterm year, you know, if nothing changed, if we didn't go into a shutdown, maybe the Democrats pick up a couple House seats.
03:44But Donald Trump's approval rating has stayed the same since April.
03:47You know, this is a very, very difficult political environment for the Democrats.
03:50And this shutdown, I think, it is a real risk for them.
03:54Shannon Felton, Spence from Harvard's Belfast Center.
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