Many seem to think the Republicans “won” the government shutdown just ended.
It’s true that this shutdown, at 43 days the longest in U.S. history, ended because several Senate Democrats changed their vote on a Republican-backed funding deal to allow things to open back up.
But I’m fairly sure that President Trump and some other Republicans will regret their “win” on the shutdown.
Senate Democrats had been voting no on a Republican-backed package of legislation that would extend funding for most government agencies until January 30 and would include three full-year funding bills for other parts of the government.
The Democrats had insisted that any deal to open the government should also include an extension of enhanced tax credits for ACA plans that are set to expire at the end of 2025. When those subsidies expire, health-care premiums for many people are expected to skyrocket. Some may not be able to afford insurance at all.
In the legislation just passed, Democrats didn’t get the extension they had demanded. Instead, they got the promise of a vote in the Senate next month on whether to extend the tax credits that have helped people afford health insurance under the ACA.
No guarantee of its passage in the Senate, of course.
As for an extension’s passing in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to even promise a vote and has said he’s against extending the credits without significant “reforms” (Mary Kekatos, “The government shutdown has ended. What this could mean for the future of the ACA,” November 14, 2025, abcnews.go.com/Health/government- shutdown-ended-future-aca/ story).
Passage of the budget legislation also means that Federal workers go back to work, of course, at least until the next crisis. That’s widely expected to happen January 30.
And then another government shutdown could occur.
But the main reason I think Republicans will regret their shutdown “win” is that opening the government has also meant releasing the Epstein files.
When the U.S. House finally went back into session, the first order of business was to swear in Adelita Grijalva, who had won a special election 7 weeks earlier but whom House Speaker Mike Johnson had refused to swear in until the House was in session again.
(Johnson had earlier sworn in two newly-elected Republican House members when that body was not in session. Partisan? Duh.)
The obvious reason he hadn’t sworn in Rep. Grijalva earlier is that she had pledged to be the cru- cial 218th vote favoring a discharge petition to release the Epstein files. Those files were expected to reveal much about the close relationship between President Donald Trump and convicted-sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Grijalva was as good as her word once the swearing- in occurred. Her first official act was to sign the discharge petition, and 20,000 pages of emails and documents in the Epstein matter have now been released.
That does not bode well for Trump and his GOP allies.
To be clear, Trump has never been charged with any crime related to Epstein’s lewd and illegal activities that included rape of young girls. But the fact that Trump had gone to great lengths to keep the Epstein files from being released definitely raised questions.
As just one example of such efforts, Trump administration officials (anticipating Grijalva’s swearingin) tried hard to convince Rep. Laren Boebert (R. of Colorado) to remove her name from that petition, so that Grijalva couldn’t be the crucial 218th vote.
To her credit, Boebert held firm: she did not remove her name.
And when the vote was finally taken, all but one Republican voted in favor of releasing all the Epstein documents.
Much of the credit for the near-unanimous vote must go to the brave women who, as young teenagers, experienced sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. They kept insisting that their abuse be revealed In an unexplained and suspiciously lenient move, Maxwell was recently transferred from a prison where she had received standard treatment for the convicted sex trafficker she is to a “country club prison,” where she reportedly is treated more like a celebrity than a prison inmate.
Was this a reward for Maxwell’s protection of Donald Trump, whose name reportedly appears in the Epstein file hundreds of times? We don’t know yet. Maybe we will at some point.
It appears, from public statements by Republican lawmakers and from reports of what they’re saying in private, that the dam is breaking and Trump is now perceived as being weak, too weak to wreak vengeance on any who vote against his clear preferences.
That’s what I mean by saying that Republicans’ “win” in the shutdown may prove to actually be a loss.
Trump has now seen votes in both House and Senate that suggest Trump no longer has the political “juice” he previously had. Sure, once he learned he would lose the vote to keep the Epstein files secret, he came out telling Republicans to pass it.
But anyone who had paid attention to the news before his late switch saw it for what it was, a lame attempt to claim credit for a vote he knew he’d lose badly anyway.
Trump has weaseled his way out of many tight spots before, and no one would have gone broke by betting that Republican lawmakers would always cave to him.
But something feels different this time. For one thing, Trump rarely avoids reporters’ questions—he seems to see them as opportunities to tell more of his lies—and he avoided answering any query about the Epstein matter for days before issuing one of his typical “hoax” denials.
For another, even the Trumpiest of Trump supporters in Congress have now voted to release the Epstein files. (Boebert is one case in point; other Trump backers who have spoken out publicly on behalf of the Epstein survivors are Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina.)
Another indication of Trump’s current weakness was the recent Democratic sweep of elections results in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City. Even the President has acknowledged that those losses were an overwhelming defeat for Republicans.
Trump may not yet be the “lame duck” he appears to be. But I wouldn’t bet money he’s not.