{"id":13698,"date":"2025-09-25T08:47:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T08:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/unforced-errors-weigh-on-gops-shutdown-posture\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T08:47:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T08:47:00","slug":"unforced-errors-weigh-on-gops-shutdown-posture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/unforced-errors-weigh-on-gops-shutdown-posture\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Unforced errors\u2019 weigh on GOP\u2019s shutdown posture"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Republicans across the federal government are eager to hammer Democrats for making bold policy demands ahead of next week\u2019s shutdown deadline. But they\u2019re split on how to do it.<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader John Thune<\/a>, are trying to keep the message simple: The GOP wants to keep agencies open for a few more weeks while negotiations continue while Democrats are asking for unreasonable concessions.<\/p>\n

Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> and the House GOP are all in on a message focusing on how the Democratic wish list<\/a> would undo Republican-passed provisions barring undocumented immigrants from accessing public services.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s President Donald Trump, who delved even deeper into the culture wars Tuesday when he accused the other party of seeking to \u201cforce Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors\u201d as part of the negotiations \u2014 an accusation that has puzzled even some fellow Republicans.<\/p>\n

The diverging messages from GOP leaders comes after Trump reversed his decision to hold a White House meeting with top Democratic leaders \u2014 an about-face that came after Johnson and Thune privately warned him<\/a> that it would undercut the party\u2019s negotiating position.<\/p>\n

Taken together, the visible cracks in the GOP front are raising internal concerns as party leaders face off against Democrats who are largely united behind a plan to focus on health care \u2014 particularly an extension of expiring insurance subsidies.<\/p>\n

“There have been some unforced errors, clearly,” said one senior House GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly about Republicans\u2019 strategy so far.<\/p>\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries<\/a> have seized on Trump\u2019s cancellation of the meeting, with Schumer accusing the president of throwing a \u201ctantrum\u201d and Jeffries criticizing Johnson for sending House members home until after the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re not even pretending as if they want to find common ground,\u201d Jeffries told reporters Wednesday<\/a> in the Capitol.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s attacks accusing Democrats of seeking to force taxpayers to underwrite gender-reassignment surgery came the morning after GOP congressional leaders counseled him not to meet with Schumer and Jeffries \u2014 something he told reporters over the weekend he intended to do.<\/p>\n

Not only were Johnson and Thune worried about losing leverage if Trump opened negotiations with the Democrats, they were initially alarmed they might not be included in the meeting, according to four people granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.<\/p>\n

In a lengthy social media post<\/a> cancelling the meeting, Trump decried Democrats for refusing to vote for a shutdown-avoiding spending punt \u201cunless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens (A monumental cost!), force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors, have dead people on the Medicaid roles, allow Illegal Alien Criminals to steal Billions of Dollars in American Taxpayer Benefits, try to force our Country to again open our Borders to Criminals and to the World, allow men to play in women\u2019s sports, and essentially create Transgender operations for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of those claims are rooted in a Democratic proposal to roll back parts of the Republican-passed domestic policy megabill<\/a> that Trump signed in July. That law includes new curbs meant to keep noncitizens from accessing public benefits such as Medicaid, as well as other new verification requirements and border security funding.<\/p>\n

His arguments on transgender surgeries, however, appear to stem from Democrats\u2019 demand for a permanent extension of Obamacare insurance subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year and are currently used by more than 20 million Americans.<\/p>\n

Five states require insurance plans to cover gender-reassignment surgeries and related health care for transgender enrollees, and top Trump advisers and outside groups argue that a straight extension of the existing federal tax credits would continue taxpayer support for those policies. They believe that argument should be a key GOP focus ahead of the potential shutdown, according to three Trump officials granted anonymity to describe the deliberations.<\/p>\n

But some Hill Republicans were confused and caught off-guard by Trump\u2019s focus on transgender politics. It also served to create headaches for a handful of the most vulnerable House Republicans, who are pushing for a one-year clean extension of the insurance subsidies. They include Rep. Jen Kiggans<\/a> (R-Va.), a co-author of the proposal<\/a> who has strong backing from House GOP leaders.<\/p>\n

The White House further scrambled the GOP strategy late Wednesday when it circulated a draft memo instructing agencies to create plans for mass firings of federal workers if Democrats don\u2019t relent and a shutdown occurs. That alarmed some Hill Republicans who saw it as an unnecessary provocation that, in the words of one, “would give Democrats an excuse to vote against” the GOP-led stopgap \u2014 and muddy their message that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were unreasonable hostage-takers.<\/p>\n

House Republican leaders, meanwhile, are much more comfortable hammering Democrats over illegal immigration \u2014 an issue they believe has the best chance of keeping their fractious conference united ahead of the looming shutdown. In interviews and social media posts, they\u2019ve conspicuously embraced those arguments while steering clear of the transgender themes some of Trump\u2019s top advisers are keenly focused on.<\/p>\n

\u201cHouse Republicans have already done the job of passing a clean, bipartisan bill<\/a> to keep the government open,\u201d Johnson posted on X Wednesday. \u201cNow it\u2019s up to Senate Democrats – who have long said shutdowns are bad and hurt people – to vote to fund the American government, or shut it down because they want to restore taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Senate Republicans have also mentioned illegal immigration \u2014 such as Sen. John Barrasso<\/a> of Wyoming, the No. 2 GOP leader, who said last week that \u201cDemocrats would rather shut down the government than stop states from paying for free health care for illegal immigrants.\u201d The Senate GOP campaign arm also knocked Democrats in key races, arguing they would vote with Schumer and force \u201cAmerican taxpayers to fund illegal immigrants’ government benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Thune and other GOP senators have been most comfortable battling Democrats on process grounds, arguing that there is no reason to hold up a short-term funding patch and potentially shutter federal agencies over the insurance subsidies or any other policy dispute. Thune characterized Democrats\u2019 demands Wednesday as \u201ccompletely unhinged\u201d in a BLN interview.<\/p>\n

Asked about extending the expiring tax credits, Thune reiterated his and Johnson\u2019s position to push off those discussions until later this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt ought to be done in regular order,\u201d he said, without repeating any of Trump\u2019s arguments about transgender surgeries or illegal immigration.<\/p>\n

Jeffries on Wednesday said it was Trump who was the \u201cunhinged\u201d one, citing his Truth Social screed Tuesday. He said the GOP has \u201cno path forward\u201d without Democratic cooperation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re running scared,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have no defensible position, and that’s why, unfortunately, they’re marching us to a government shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republicans across the federal government are eager to hammer Democrats for making bold policy demands ahead of next week\u2019s shutdown deadline. But they\u2019re split on how to do it. Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader John Thune, are trying to keep the message simple: The GOP wants to keep agencies open for a few more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}