LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 10, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 11, 2025

Last night, the Senate advanced a measure to end the government shutdown, which at 41 days today is the longest in U.S. history.

Seven Democrats and one Independent voted with all but one Republican to advance a measure that funds the government through January 30 of next year. It includes funding for military construction and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, and operations for the legislative branch, or Congress. Tucked within that last appropriation is a measure that allows the eight Republican senators whose phone logs were seized during former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to sue the government for up to $500,000 apiece.

The measure stops the administration’s firings of public employees during the shutdown, reinstating them with full pay. States will be reimbursed for monies they spent covering for federal shortfalls during the shutdown. This means air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay for more than a month, will get paid again.

The measure also funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), although it does not restore the cuts Republicans made to it in their budget reconciliation bill of July—the one they call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

While the measure provides more funding for Indigenous health services, it does nothing to extend the premium tax credits for insurance purchased on the Affordable Care Act healthcare marketplace. Without those credits, millions will lose their healthcare insurance and millions more will face skyrocketing premiums. Republicans did not extend the premium tax credits in their July budget reconciliation bill, although they did extend tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Senate Democrats said they would not advance a measure to end the shutdown without a deal to extend the premium tax credits, but seven of them, along with one Independent, have now done so. Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) has promised to bring to the Senate floor a bill to extend the premium tax credits before the end of the second week of December. It will be written by the Democrats.

In the 60–40 vote, Rand Paul (R-KY) did not join the rest of the Republican senators to advance the measure. Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Independent Angus King of Maine all voted with the Republicans to advance the measure.

Last night’s vote did not pass the bill, which still faced procedural hurdles in the Senate that the chamber is cleared tonight. It now goes to the House, which must either pass it, reject it, or amend it.

If Trump signs the measure into law, the 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP payments will get relief. The two million federal workers who need paychecks will get them, and airlines should eventually get back to business as usual. These are no small things: aside from the individual human cost of the shutdown, the undermining of the federal government threatened to destroy it, and the administration’s cuts to air traffic were hitting cargo planes, adding yet another blow to the weakening economy just before the busiest shopping season of the year.

News of the terms of the deal to end the shutdown hit the country rather like a cue ball hitting a rack: lots of balls started to move in wildly different directions.

The eight senators who voted with the Republicans appear to have lost any hope Trump would negotiate and, in that absence, decided they had to relieve the pain of the shutdown. As Dan Drezner noted in his Drezner’s World, Trump’s behavior during the shutdown made it clear he simply didn’t care how badly Americans got hurt. “He did not just refuse to negotiate,” Drezner noted. “During the shutdown month he also completely bulldozed the East Wing, cut SNAP benefits, witnessed producers passing on the cost of tariffs to consumers, announced curbs on air travel, and participated in a Great Gatsby–style party at Mar-a-Lago.”

Voters hated this, but Trump didn’t appear to care. Indeed, his administration was working to ratchet up the pain of lost SNAP payments and canceled flights, including not just passenger planes but cargo planes right before the shopping season in which many businesses make the income that keeps them afloat for the year. In the senators’ statements about why they voted with the Republicans, Drezner noted a pattern: the words “pain” and “hurt.”

As Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark noted, the Democrats gave in to Republican plans with few concessions, but the shutdown hurt Trump’s popularity and the Democrats won a vote on the ACA subsidies, which is a terrible issue for the Republicans. Seventy-eight percent of Americans actually want such a measure to pass, meaning that a vote—even one only in the Senate—will help clarify for voters what’s at stake.

Another moving ball was the voters and organizers who turned out for Democrats last Tuesday and who had made it very clear they think it’s long overdue for the Democrats to stand up to Trump. Ezra Levin of Indivisible, which organized the No Kings rallies, described his reaction to the deal as “incandescent rage, incredible disappointment.” “What do we do to demand a better party, a party that actually fights back?” he asked.

Democratic party leaders appeared to acknowledge that the momentum of the party is behind a fight against Trump and MAGA authoritarianism. The senators who voted with the Republicans are all either retiring, not up for election in 2026, or not running for another office, while Democrats who are in one of those categories were vocal about their anger over the vote.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted a video on social media warning: “Bullies gain power when righteous people yield to the face of their wrongdoing. I didn’t want this shutdown. I want it to end, but not at any cost. And of course, I wish that there was a path to saving this democracy and saving people’s health care that didn’t involve pain. This shutdown hurt. It did. But unfortunately, I don’t think there is a way to save this country, to save our democracy, without there being some difficult, hard moments along the way…. [T]here’s no way to defend this,” he said. “And you are right to be angry about it. I’m angry about it.”

There are Republican balls in play, as well.

President Donald J. Trump did not want the shutdown to end this way. He was trying to use the pain he was inflicting on the American people to force Republican senators to end the filibuster and pass a series of measures that would essentially have made him a dictator. The Republican senators were clear they didn’t want to do that. And now, they haven’t. They chose a way out of the shutdown fight that did not support Trump’s ambitions. After nine months in which they appeared to do his bidding, that’s an interesting development.

Trump does not appear to be giving up his position on hurting the country easily. Late last night, three judges from the First Circuit refused to stop the lower court order saying that the administration must pay SNAP benefits in full, and today, the administration went back to the Supreme Court to ask it to freeze those payments.

Trump also posted an attack on air traffic controllers, saying to those who took time off during the shutdown “I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country. You will have a negative mark, at least in my mind, against your record. If you want to leave service in the near future, please do not hesitate to do so, with NO payment or severance of any kind! You will be quickly replaced by true Patriots, who will do a better job….” In fact, the country has a shortage of air traffic controllers.

Trump called Democrats “the enemy” today, but told reporters he would abide by the deal, saying that “they haven’t changed anything.” But they have.

And that’s yet another moving ball. If the Senate passes its measure and sends it to the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will have to bring the House into session to conduct work. He has had the chamber on hiatus since September 19, 2025, when the Republicans passed a continuing resolution that offered the Democrats nothing, and has kept members out of Washington, D.C., ever since.

Bringing the House back into session will require Johnson to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ). Erum Salam of MSNBC reported that Johnson told Republicans on a conference call today that the “first order of business will be to administer the oath to Grijalva.” Grijalva says she will be the final signer on the discharge petition that will force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files. Johnson and administration officials have worked hard to keep those files under wraps, especially since news broke that Trump is mentioned in them.

And then, in the midst of all the drama last night, Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin posted a document on social media revealing that Trump had issued an extraordinarily broad pardon to “all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential Electors, whether or not recognized by any State or State official, in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election, as well as for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

As Kyle Cheney of Politico noted, the pardons of those who tried to steal the 2020 presidential election for Trump were largely symbolic because they had not been charged with federal crimes. What they do is suggest that he will protect those who try to cheat for him in the future, an interesting development considering the measure in the government-funding bill allowing senators to sue the government for accessing their phone logs during the events of January 6, 2021.

The sweeping pardons also might be softening up the ground for a pardon or a commutation for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A whistleblower has provided documents to the House Judiciary Committee showing that Maxwell has asked for a commutation of her prison sentence.

And Trump’s popularity continues to drag. Last night he got soundly booed at a Washington Commanders football game.

Lots of balls moving around the table.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Dershowitz, Biden Should Pardon Trump. Below is a reprint from Newsmax. By Mark Swanson. Constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Monday that President Joe Biden, using the same principle he applied in pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, should pardon President-elect Donald Trump as well as nonviolent Jan. 6, 2021, offenders to “send a message of equality.” If the president doesn’t…

Dershowitz, Biden Should Pardon Trump. Below is a reprint from Newsmax. By Mark Swanson. Constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Monday that President Joe Biden, using the same principle he applied in pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, should pardon President-elect Donald Trump as well as nonviolent Jan. 6, 2021, offenders to “send a message of equality.” If the president doesn’t…