Americans are paying the price while Democrats play politics. Federal workers are staring at empty paychecks, low-income women wonder if food benefits will be there for their children, veterans question whether their benefits will arrive on time, and families across America are left carrying the burden and asking if politicians in Washington are working for or against them. This shutdown is not just about budgets or borders. It is a warning shot at the soul of the Democrat Party—a party owned by a donor class that prioritizes illegal alien healthcare, massive climate slush funds, and unchecked subsidies for legacy media over the paychecks of the Americans who keep this country running.
While air traffic controllers and border patrol agents go unpaid, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing for $1.5 trillion in new spending, including taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants even as sanctuary cities strain their hospitals. He presses for green energy subsidies that drive Midwestern factories into decline under Biden-era regulations. And he backs $535 million in restored funding for NPR and PBS—outlets that continue to push anti-Trump narratives. This overreach is tone-deaf. Democrats are openly siding with elite donors over middle-class Americans.
Democrats continue to underestimate President Donald J. Trump, who built his legacy on calling bluffs, breaking stalemates, and exposing the rigged games of Washington. His strategy is unapologetic: draw a hard line against the donor-fueled agenda that Democrats are trying to force through. No open borders. No woke mandates. No blank checks. As Trump said on Truth Social: “Republicans must use this opportunity of Democrat forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud. Billions of Dollars can be saved. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” That message was for the Republican base and also a reminder to swing-state voters why he won last November.
And the polling backs President Trump. A Fox News survey shows nearly two-thirds of voters oppose Democrats forcing this shutdown. Across the country, working-class Americans are rallying behind the president as Democratic favorability plummets to its lowest point in 35 years, a dismal 33 percent approval rating in recent Wall Street Journal polling. Once branded as the champion of working people and the so-called “party of the little guy,” Democrats are now defined by progressivism and billionaire buyouts. Trump, by contrast, stands firm for the forgotten workers, fighting for the vast majority of Americans that Democrats continue to ignore.
The shutdown has also revealed the Democrats’ deeper trap. Schumer is boxed in by partisanship and beholden to mega-donors like George Soros, poured millions into Democrat causes and PACs—funding ballot initiatives for open borders, sanctuary policies, defunding police, and equity experiments that devastate the very communities Democrats claim to uplift. This checkbook activism is leaving moderates without a home, underscored by AP-NORC polling showing one in three Democrats now describe their own party as “weak” or “ineffective.” That perception is a fatal flaw the shutdown has only made worse.
Trump meanwhile leans on his proven 80/20 blueprint —protecting a government that funds mandatory programs and essential entitlements, while forcing Democrats to defend their radical 20 percent. That fringe wish list includes free healthcare for illegal immigrants, taxpayer subsidies for liberal media, and billions in DEI and pet projects. What began as another Washington crisis has now become a clarion call, with Trump turning the fight into a showcase of leadership that is driving his approval ratings higher in the latest polls.
The cracks in the Democrat Party are clear. Senators like John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada in swing states publicly break ranks, voting to avert a shutdown. Fetterman has repeatedly called out the radicalism and warned his party that a shutdown would hand President Trump even more leverage allowing for fueling mass firings and policy. Cortez Mastos shared the same concerns, fearing that a shutdown would empower the other side. These are just the initial fractures that raise the question of what is the long-term Democrat strategy to win back the American people, or will they remain tone deaf?
History shows what a course correction is for Democrats today. From 1955 to 1994, Republicans endured decades in the political wilderness, struggling with the same doubts about competence, compassion, and voter connection that Democrats face today. The 1994 midterms were a Republican Revolution. Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America forced Bill Clinton to reinvent himself after his early agenda collapsed. Clinton was forced to pivot to the center, embracing welfare reform and balanced budgets to reclaim power. Today’s Democrat Party shows no such political judgment. Schumer continues to double down on a shutdown, betraying working Americans and proving his party is trapped by its own radicalism.
Democrats continue to betray their constituents. While they collect paychecks, federal workers remain without. There is a human cost to elitism that will catch up with their party. They have spent years lecturing the American people about “systemic inequities,” yet they manufactured a shut-down crisis instead of passing a clean continuing resolution—one that disproportionately harms the very working class they claim to protect. Republicans, by contrast, are united behind America First policies that resonate from the Rust Belt to the Heartland.
“The commonsense position among everyday Americans is that illegal immigrants should not receive free health care, and that the federal government should not be shut down until illegal immigrants get free health care,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.
“Amazingly, common sense is still not so common among Democrats who find themselves, yet again, on the wrong side of the majority of the American people by forcing a destructive and unnecessary government shutdown.”
The American people are watching. This shutdown is Exhibit A in the case against Democrats—a party so entangled with billionaire donors that it has turned its back on American workers. Trump’s unshakable 80/20 strategy is Exhibit B—the fighter who will never stop putting America first. We are at a crossroads, and unless Democrats change course, 2026 will deliver a reckoning. With Trump at the helm, America’s path forward is clear: Republican victory in 2026 and beyond.
Mehek Cooke, an attorney and political strategist, was a surrogate for the Trump for President Campaign and the Republican National Convention.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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