Now, a quick word from Bill on Trump’s crypto plans…

And now, here’s Abby…

While House Democrats alternatively fret and fantasize about the possibility that they could make or break this week’s vote to prevent a government shutdown, cautiously upbeat Republicans are coalescing around the notion that they might not need their colleagues’ support at all. Until recently, the conventional wisdom held that at least some Democrats might need to cross the aisle to offset the usual brinkmanship among House Freedom Caucus types. But with four days remaining until the federal government runs out of money, I’m hearing mostly optimism on the G.O.P. side following Donald Trump’s recent all-caps diktat that Republicans vote for Speaker Mike Johnson’s continuing resolution with “NO DISSENT.” Of course, the mood in Washington during a shutdown week has a tendency to change every few hours. Perhaps the Republican whip is undercounting potential defectors from the cause. (Depending on attendance, some days House Republicans can’t afford to lose a single vote if they hope to pass a bill on party lines.) For a time, it was assumed that if the G.O.P. conference could not pass a Republicans-only bill, Democrats might have some leverage to rein in Elon Musk’s efforts to strangle the federal government. But Trump and Johnson are making a big and risky bet that they can keep their conference in line, just as they did during Johnson’s speaker vote on January 3, and again two weeks ago, when House Republicans narrowly passed their budget framework. The dynamics here are similar: Once again, Thomas Massie is a renegade. But as my partner Leigh Ann Caldwell reported the other week, Trump wields a brutal whipping operation, and isn’t afraid to personally berate members to bend holdouts to his will. “It shocked us when he was able to get the speaker vote in one [round of voting], and turn it around,” a House Democratic chief of staff told me, espousing the view that Trump has largely subordinated even the Freedom Caucus to his will. Trump and Johnson are so confident, in fact, that they’re not even attempting to attract votes from across the aisle, House Dems told me. Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi confirmed as much Sunday on Face the Nation, in an interview that quickly made the rounds on the Hill. “Right now, I’m a no,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan. “I mean, there’s been no outreach on a bipartisan basis.” Suozzi is exactly the kind of Democrat who, in a previous era, would be participating in aisle-crossing back-channel talks among friendly members: He’s from a Trumpy Long Island district, and he has a history of defying party leadership. If Johnson isn’t courting Suozzi, the thinking goes, he’s not reaching out to anyone.

We’ll see. Assuming the Trump-Johnson theory of House Republicans holds, the operative question in the Senate will be whether six or seven Democrats, depending on Rand Paul’s whims, will join with Senate Republicans to override a filibuster and keep the government open. If Suozzi appeared a persuadable Dem for House Republicans, then Michigan freshman Democrat Elissa Slotkin should be his Senate counterpart: She and Trump both won Michigan on the same ballot in 2024. But Slotkin was also a clear “no” on Sunday, when she told Meet the Press that “the president has been deciding how to spend the money any way he wants even when we have a budget that both Democrats and Republicans voted on.” She said she would withhold her vote in the absence of assurances that the money would be spent the way Congress intends. “Everyone knows Congress has the power of the purse,” she said. Still, when it comes to the all-important metric of vibes, many Democrats I spoke with on Monday seemed to think a shutdown would be avoided—that, in the end, enough Senate Democrats would back a Republican spending bill to keep the government open, even though it’s hard to see right now where those votes would come from. Their logic is as follows: First, securing a compromise on spending amid a shutdown might actually lead to a worse outcome relative to current spending levels, which were passed when Democrats controlled the White House and Senate. And second, what good would a clause attempting to rein in Trump and Musk really do? “He’s already breaking the law,” a senior Democratic Hill aide told me. “What are we gonna do, pass a super law?”

Regardless of what House Republicans do, it remains unclear whether Democrats are backing off their flirtation with a Freedom Caucus–style hostage situation, or merely taking a beat as they assess whether to keep their powder dry for the next political fight. No Democrat is really rooting for a shutdown. Even Appropriations ranking member Senator Patty Murray, a hardline Democrat who sent strong public hints about tying shutdown and debt ceiling negotiations to DOGE’s overreach, is arguing that the best course is to pass a short-term spending bill. A Democratic leadership aide has taken to referring to her as the “anti-venom” to DOGE. Meanwhile, Democratic sources seemed genuinely divided on whether enough Democrats would join with Republicans to pass the House bill—which presents the question of leverage. If Republicans prevail in the shutdown and subsequent debt-ceiling negotiations, will Democrats have any leverage left? At first glance, their outlook is bleak. The party’s leverage consists of “nothing, only public opinion,” the House Democratic chief told me, summing up the consensus among their peers. “We only have the public to raise enough hell, and litigation, over it.” But that’s really nothing. Indeed, a growing portion of Democratic energies are being focused outside of Washington, where public protests and angry town halls are metastasizing in even Trump-friendly districts. Any doubt that Republicans were beginning to feel the heat disappeared when The New York Times reported last week that Trump put a muzzle on Musk, albeit a loose one, in an apparent effort to quell the blowback. “Winds can change directions, but I also think that we need to let the cycle come to us,” a vulnerable House Democrat told me the other day, following that fateful Presidents’ Day recess. “The cycle began to come to us this week.” In the meantime, there are several roads that Capitol Hill Democrats may travel over the coming days. Senate Democrats could filibuster a spending bill and gamble with a national shutdown; Murray could succeed in persuading both parties, and both chambers, to kick the negotiations back to the appropriators; or, enough Senate Democrats could join with Republicans to keep the government open. If that happens, Democrats may be left with only one response: making the lives of vulnerable Republicans—the likes of Susan Collins and Thom Tillis and David Valadao—as politically miserable as possible. In doing so, however, they’ll have to endure some political pain of their own. The Democratic base is furious, and stands to be only further demoralized if their politicians back down from the current fight. At the very least, any Democratic senator who votes for the Republican spending bill will have a moral obligation to take the staff assistants out for a drink, after all holy hell comes down on the office phones.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news. You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with . To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10006