The Democratic Party scored some big victories in last week’s elections as the US government shutdown approached the forty-day mark.
Trump’s approval rating had been falling since Oct. 18, when his Agriculture Secretary announced that funding for SNAP, the national food assistance program that benefits 42 million people, would run out at the end of the month.
While 42 million people worried about what they and their families would eat in November, Trump hosted a lavish Halloween-themed party The Great Gatsby at Mar-a-Lago.
She posted photos of her shiny new marble bathroom in the White House.
And he tore down the East Wing of the White House to build a larger, more luxurious ballroom.
When the courts ruled that he must continue feeding 42 million Americans, Trump fought to keep them hungry.
Donald Trump, during a speech in Florida last Wednesday.
Reuters
The Supreme Court allowed him to do so and demanded that states stop any actions they had taken to assist their starving citizens. In practice, that meant withdrawing the food assistance that had been given to those families or facing legal consequences.
It is shocking that someone goes hungry in a country where the rich spend tons of money on weight loss drugs. But it is absolutely disgusting that a president would be so cruel as to fight against food aid to families who cannot afford to buy that food.
This is the same president who promised to lower food prices on “day one” of his return to the White House.
As on all other issues, Trump applies a partisan approach, meaning that he thinks there are more Democratic citizens benefiting from this program than Republican citizens.
Although there is no current data to support or refute this, The New York Times crunched some numbers and found that “SNAP recipients represented an average of 10.9% of households in Republican-controlled congressional districts and 13.8% in Democratic-controlled districts.”
Therefore, there could be slightly more Democratic voters receiving food assistance. But many MAGA voters and their families also depend on it.
It’s hard to tell poorer MAGA voters that Trump doesn’t care about them. But the administration shutdown was beginning to show its true colors.
64% of those surveyed by FMI-The Food Industry Association in May had favorable opinions of the hunger assistance program. A more recent Data for Progress poll put that support at 78%.
Nate Silver notes that this issue received a lot of media attention based on Google search data, which has grown steadily since the October 18 announcement. And this coincides with a decline in Trump’s approval rating.
Why then have seven Democrats and an independent senator broken with their leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumerand voted to end the shutdown now, while Trump’s cruelty is so on display that it appears to be affecting his approval ratings?
And why do it in exchange for so little?
One reason is Schumer’s lack of strategic thinking.
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a briefing on October 29, 2025.
Reuters
At the heart of the shutdown strategy was extending subsidies that help low- and middle-income Americans buy health insurance beyond the Dec. 31 expiration date.
Once these subsidies, which come in the form of tax credits, expire, health insurance will double for millions of Americans. It is estimated that 4-5 million Americans will no longer be able to afford coverage. Some people will die.
The problem is that Schumer got into this shutdown skirmish only asking for one more year of funding. This protects Trump and his party in next year’s midterm elections from the wrath of voters who would lose their health insurance or pay sky-high premiums.
And then it will put these same voters at risk of losing their benefits again, right after the election.
Certainly, this poses a profound moral dilemma for Democrats. Fight for something voters may not even be grateful for next year, or let voters feel the pain inflicted by Trump?
Who will reap the electoral benefits of this pain?
But this small group of Democrats caved to Republicans in exchange for guaranteed jobs and back pay for federal workers. furloughed [una licencia temporal sin remuneración impuesta a empleados federales, generalmente debido a la falta de fondos o razones no disciplinarias]and the promise of a vote on the health tax credit in mid-December.
In doing so, Democrats who voted to end the shutdown gave up every card they had: Trump’s approval ratings in free fall while his inhumanity was on display as people went hungry, imminent chaos at the country’s airports just before Thanksgiving and the rapid approach to the end of affordable health insurance for millions of Americans.
Those Democrats deserve the ire of Democratic activists and leaders.
And Schumer too, for leading Senate Democrats into a fight without thinking it through. Schumer has earned calls for his resignation.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to see federal workers being treated decently after such a difficult year. The end of the shutdown should mean that food aid will regain its funding, that air traffic controllers will receive their salaries and that airports will return to 100% operation.
And I say “should” because Trump would clearly want to defund those federal programs and cut jobs.
And in December, there is little hope that a Republican-majority Congress will allow the health tax credits to continue, even though 78% of Americans support them.
The widespread pain this causes among poor and middle-class voters could carry Democrats to victory next November.
There may be no way for Democrats to stop this financial pain and the deaths that will come from millions more who won’t be able to see a doctor when they are sick.
But the American people deserved at least a good fight from a unified opposition with a real strategy, not the political malpractice we just witnessed.