Mike Johnson’s Shutdown Strategy Is Corruption in Broad Daylight

Federal workers go unpaid, premiums are set to spike, and Congress is on a paid vacation—all to protect Trump from the Epstein files.

Typically, a government shutdown is the story in American politics. It dominates the conversation, with wall-to-wall coverage of the impacts and political stakes. Past shutdowns have been treated as cataclysmic clashes between the two parties over issues of massive consequence.

But with Trump sending troops from red states to occupy blue ones, masked ICE agents shooting civilians in the streets, the political prosecution of opponents, and a major ceasefire deal in the Middle East, this shutdown hasn’t grabbed the nation’s attention in the same way.

You can see that dynamic in new data from Resonate, which tracks online engagement.

It’s a statement about life in the Trump era that a government shutdown is the most normal thing happening in politics.

If people were paying attention—or if the political press had the attention span and reach to cover the shutdown—the behavior of Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republicans would be a massive scandal.

I’ve worked through shutdowns. I’ve witnessed them in Washington, and I’ve covered them for Pod Save America. What Johnson and the Republicans are doing—and why they’re doing it—is truly unconscionable.

It should be a national scandal.

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An Absent House of Representatives

On September 19, House Republicans passed a doomed-to-fail bill to fund the government temporarily, and then they went out of session. Today is October 15, and they haven’t come back yet.

This is wild to me. The government is shut down, premiums are slated to spike for millions of Americans, and House Republicans can’t even be bothered to come to work.

Let me say that again for emphasis: the government is shut down, and the House is in recess.