From your lips to God’s ear, Senator

White House: Nice Swamp Ya Got There, Chuck. Shame If Something Happened to It. 

ED MORRISSEY  10:40 AM | September 25, 2025 

Two days ago, Chuck Schumer threatened Donald Trump with a good time. Now, the White House threatens to make the good time permanent. Literally. 

The deadline for a government shutdown is fast approaching, and Schumer tried to play hardball this week. He and Hakeem Jeffries demanded a meeting with Trump to negotiate, which Trump initially accepted, but canceled after the pair demanded a massive list of concessions before the meeting took place. Schumer then told the press that Trump was "chicken" and that any shutdown would be his fault -- even though the House had already passed the clean CR that Schumer had demanded when Joe Biden was president-ish.

Of course, even with the spin, that stlll leaves Trump in charge of any shutdown. As I explained on Tuesday, that would give any aspiring swamp-draining president plenty of opportunity to hammer Democrats' constituencies, but even I may have underestimated Trump's ambition. The Wall Street Journal reports today that they will use any shutdown as an opportunity for permanent mass firings, not just furloughs:

The White House’s budget office directed federal agencies to draw up plans to permanently reduce their workforces if there is a government shutdown next week, raising the specter of mass firings on top of the customary furloughs during a lapse in funding. 

The new memo sent by Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought sharply raises the stakes for funding talks and increases the pressure on Senate Democrats, who are demanding that Republicans restore hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare spending as a condition of their support for keeping the government funded.

…. Vought makes clear, too, that the cuts will get targeted in accordance with Trump's priorities:

The OMB memo instructs agencies to design reduction-in-force plans for employees who work for programs that have no current funding and have no outside funding source, and that are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.” This would be in addition to any temporary furloughs that happen during a government shutdown. 

The memo from Vought says that any cuts made after the funding deadline would be permanent.

In fact, Politico notes that some Democrats are beginning to wonder what their feckless leader thinks he's doing. They also note that Schumer made the exact opposite argument just six months ago:

The memo appears to vindicate warnings issued by some Democrats — most prominently Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — during the last shutdown standoff in March. Schumer at the time moved to allow a GOP-written spending bill to pass, arguing that a shutdown would be a “gift” allowing Trump and his deputies “to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now.”