00:00Where are we on the shutdown? What might cause this actual shutdown?
00:04What is it that the Republicans want or won't do? What is it the Democrats want and won't do?
00:10So right now, both sides aren't really talking to each other. They're sort of in this weird
00:14wakening game at the moment as we get closer to midnight. Now, I think the Democrats,
00:18from their perspective, there are two wants going into this shutdown. The first is really
00:22being driven by the House progressives, and that is they want to be seen being very tough
00:26in combating President Trump on his policies. The other thing they want is they want an
00:31extension to ACA or Obamacare subsidies that are going to be expiring at the end of the year.
00:35From the Republican perspective, their wants are a little bit different. They've already passed
00:39via the House what is known as a clean CR that gets us through November 20th. And generally speaking,
00:44the party that passes that clean CR feels that they have a moral high ground. Now, I woke up this
00:49morning thinking that there was a chance that we would not go into a government shutdown and that
00:52something would happen to make a deal. But as we get closer and closer to midnight, it begins
00:56to sound like both parties feel that they are in the best political position possible
01:00and that both sides think that a shutdown will end up helping them politically. And that's usually
01:05what happens when you have a shutdown. So if a shutdown does occur, we'll wake up tomorrow and
01:10we'll have to deal with the short term impacts because I don't think this is going to go more
01:13than a week or so. I think really the next real negotiation point if the government shuts down
01:17will be next week when the House Republicans return. Well, Nathan, what are the political
01:21implications of a government shutdown? You said both sides think that a shutdown will help their own
01:26side. But what are the implications? We have a little bit of history to look to.
01:30Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the best case scenarios is go back to the Tea Party of October,
01:34I'm sorry, of 2013. And there's this very similar playbook that is happening to that. Now,
01:39from the Democratic perspective, you know, they want to be able to essentially combat President Trump.
01:44Their approval ratings, not that good at the moment. And, you know, there's plenty of time between now
01:49and November 2026 to be able to turn that messaging and at least start to build momentum off to that.
01:54Now, there is some local politics here at play. Virginia and New Jersey both have governor races
01:58in November. I would anticipate if President Trump and the Office of Management and Budget were to
02:03begin to follow through with mass firings of government workers, that's going to impact
02:07Virginia and Maryland pretty significantly. I would expect those policymakers to come in and say,
02:12maybe we should stop this and turn things around here. But if the shutdown occurs and Democrats start
02:17to take the blame, then I think you'll see those politicians of Virginia and New Jersey get a little
02:21nervous. It's like you just, you know, just delivered a ball into my court perfectly.
02:26You mentioned the OMB, which takes us to Russell vote. Max, you wrote an in-depth profile earlier
02:31this year, back in April. It was a big take. You talked about the architect behind President
02:35Trump's imperial presidency. Vote not usually out in front in the Oval Office or at a White House press
02:42conference. And yet he was yesterday afternoon, along with the Republican leadership. He was front and
02:48he went to the mic, made some comments outside the White House after that meeting in the White House
02:53with minority leaders. Tell us about, remind us who this guy is. He's very, very influential when it
02:59comes to the Trump White House. Yeah. As you said, Carol, he is the head of the Office of Management
03:04and Budget. But I think more importantly, he is one of these kind of behind the scene intellectuals who
03:10helped shape this presidency, who worked on Project 2025, who basically, after Trump's last term,
03:19spent four years essentially planning for what this presidency was going to look like. And Trump,
03:25and we talked about this a lot, you know, at the beginning of the year, but Trump was unusual because
03:30all these people around him had a long time to plan. And a big part of the plan, of course,
03:34is massive cuts to the budget and massive cuts, crucially, to the federal workforce. We saw a
03:40little bit of that, or more than a little, I'd say, with Doge and Elon Musk's efforts. And this
03:47has been going back and forth. But a budget shutdown, a government shutdown would be a huge
03:52opportunity for vote and for people who are sort of aligned in this direction to do something that
03:58they want to do for a very long time, which is essentially take a bite out of the federal government.
04:03So what is this opportunity, Max, for him, for his role at OMB, but also his role in Project 2025
04:09and shaping what he wants the presidency to look like?
04:13So the ideological idea is that there is this kind of like fourth branch of government, like,
04:20you know, you sometimes hear people talk about the deep state or something like that. This is the
04:23idea that there are civil servants who are operating outside of the realm of the president, who are
04:28just doing whatever they want. This is an attack, of course, that Donald Trump sort of pioneered during
04:32his his first presidency when he would complain about the deep state. And and and votes idea is to
04:39weaken this and weaken it both in by by making it more responsive to the president. And like that's
04:45that's a key point. When when you hear people talk about the unitary executive idea, it's the idea that the
04:50president, not these, you know, quote unquote, unelected bureaucrats should be deciding, you know, what the
04:55government does. But also because there's going to be there's they've wanted to fire people for a long
05:01time and you're going to have a government shutdown. You could imagine vote and others inside of the
05:07Trump administration seeing this as an opportunity to something very drastic and blame it on the
05:12Democrats and be able to say, hey, this wasn't because it didn't really work during the Doge episode
05:17because people got mad at Elon Musk. And and you had a lot of Democrats sort of beating the drum about
05:22saying, oh, you're waiting. You're waiting for Social Security to talk to somebody at the Social
05:26Security office. That's Elon Musk did that. And that that made Musk very unpopular. It also caused
05:30Trump to kind of back off. You know, they had talked initially about using a chainsaw and then he
05:34right. And he was like, oh, no, we're actually a scalpel. But now if we have a government shutdown and
05:40the Trump administration is able to blame it on Democrats, then maybe that gives them the ability
05:47to try to do something more drastic they weren't able to do earlier. So, Nathan, come in.
05:50How exactly do these job cuts work in a government shutdown? And this isn't just something specific
05:55to a Trump White House, right? I mean, does any president have the ability to cut jobs,
06:02cut costs, if you will, in a government shutdown? Well, you know, obviously this is a new legal issue
06:08that's going to most likely come up if it happens. But one thing that we've already noted is that Russ
06:12Vogt, when he's provided guidance to agencies in terms of deeming who is essential and who is not
06:18essential, he said specifically that those individuals that are working on reduction in
06:22force plans should be deemed essential. And there's this theory out there that if the Congress isn't
06:27available to essentially do its job, then the White House has to come in and step in and do it for
06:32them. So I would say, though, that is that, you know, right now we're in the state between the
06:37Republicans and Democrats where both sides are essentially talking past each other and there's a
06:41lot of threats going on. But I would also remind folks that doge cuts weren't popular with just the
06:46average American because of the reasons Max was laying out there. And so even though you're
06:51hearing threats like 750,000 government workers will be furloughed and a lot of them may not come
06:56back, you know, there is this ultimate decision that's going to be made by the president. And if
07:01Congress comes together and makes a deal by, say, early next week, I think they'll be able to get
07:05in front of the OMB and stave off a lot of these job cuts.
07:08So I'm going to say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let's say let
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