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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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Schumer: Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs, and personnel “non-essential,” furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired.

So the same thing that's been happening for the last 3 months?

Also, the fact that Medicaid remains untouched and the defense budget is actually increasing demonstrates once and for all that these guys were never serious about curtailing spending.

Trump is not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid. If he does it won't be until after he's cut so much from DC and NGOs that the average Trump voter feels that those orgs have sacrificed enough.

So the same thing that's been happening for the last 3 months?

No.

What has been happening for the last 3 months is a result of the different legal authorities for government agencies existing.

While Congress is the root authorizer of all money for the government, Congress is not the origin of all agencies. Certain agencies / offices exist because Congress says so, and some exist because the President thinks it'd be a good idea. When Congress funds the later, it tends to be in a far more open-to-executive discretion way. Instead of 'spend X amount on Y program for Z purpose,' where a failure to spend is against the law, the authorizations may be structured more like 'here is X amount for you to figure out how to spend best for Z purpose.' The last 3 months has been, in effect, the Executive branch saying 'we don't need all this after all' in the agencies where the Executive gets to make greater calls in what to spend on.

What Schumer is referring to is what happens when Congress does not pass a spending bill at all, and/or shifts to a continuing resolution model. Which has far more expansive in implications.