Here’s How This Shutdown Was Different Than Others

In a time of deep divisions, both sides see an advantage in leveraging funding deadlines for political advantage.

A sign indicates that the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center is closed due to lack of funding from the government during the 41st day of the government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, in Washington on Nov. 10, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

A sign indicates that the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center is closed due to lack of funding from the government during the 41st day of the government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, in Washington on Nov. 10, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

News Analysis

The recent 43-day government shutdown—the longest in U.S. history—resulted not from an impasse over a piece of legislation but from the deepening political divide in the country that has left politicians and voters alike spoiling for a fight, some experts say.

That polarization has been evident for some time, but it has grown in recent years, according to a study Gallup released this year.

Political moderates, once the largest ideological group, have diminished in number for decades, Gallup found. Meanwhile, the number of Americans describing themselves as “very conservative” and “very liberal” has increased.

Here’s how that divide reshaped the politics of political shutdowns to produce the longest and most costly federal government shutdown in history.

Prompted by Frustration, not Legislation

This shutdown differed from others in that the partisan standoff appeared imminent despite the initial lack of a particular legislative focus.

Democrats originally presented a large number of health care spending demands to address what they called a health care crisis.

Eventually, they coalesced around extending certain subsidies for the Affordable Care Act Insurance Marketplace that are set to expire at the end of the year, but in the end achieved nothing more than a promise to hold a Senate vote on the matter.

Matthew Wilson, associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, told The Epoch Times that the initial lack of specificity indicates that the party was primarily motivated to signal opposition to President Donald Trump rather than to achieve a specific policy outcome.

“There’s widespread anger among Democrats about everything associated with this administration,” Wilson said. “There are a lot of people on the Democratic side that wanted to do something dramatic.”

Commenting on the impending end of the shutdown, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said on Nov. 10 that extending the health care subsidies “was the main reason for the shutdown in the first place.”

He then blamed several economic issues, including the cost of housing, electricity, child care, and groceries, along with health care, on the current administration and described them as the impetus for the shutdown.

“America is too expensive, and far too many people are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck,” Jeffries told reporters. “That’s why Democrats have been waging this fight.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, criticized a Senate vote on Nov. 9 that cleared the way for the shutdown to end.

“The American people want us to stand up to Trumpism, to his war against working-class people, to his authoritarianism,” he said in a video posted to X.

Higher Pain Threshold

Both parties appeared more willing than in the past to allow the shutdown to drag on regardless of its impact.

Some 700,000 federal workers were furloughed without pay on Oct. 1, and others were required to continue working without pay. About 1.1 million active duty military personnel missed a paycheck on Oct. 15, and air traffic slowed as air traffic controllers, working without pay, became fatigued.

“Shutting down the government seemed to have no political effect for about the first four weeks of the shutdown,” Henry Olsen, senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Epoch Times.

“That’s unusual, and I think that’s attributable to the polarization,” Olsen added.

Even as the shutdown droned on, both parties appeared to believe the public would blame the other.

When the 2018–2019 shutdown threatened funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Trump administration released January funds early to prevent a shortfall for recipients.

This year, neither side immediately took action to end the shutdown when SNAP funds ran out. When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to partially supply the program using existing emergency funds, the Trump administration agreed to do so, though it appealed an order to supply additional funds, arguing that the government cannot spend money without congressional authorization and that the order constituted judicial activism.

“When both sides think they’re winning, there’s no incentive to stop,” Olsen said.

Wilson believes flight cancellations were the straw that eventually broke the camel’s back. “That affects the political class,” Wilson said. “We’re talking about members of Congress themselves being affected by flight delays and cancellations.”

The shutdown delayed about $54 billion in federal spending over the last six weeks, meaning that money was kept out of the U.S. economy, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate. That will create a permanent loss of $7 billion to $14 billion in gross domestic product, making this the most expensive shutdown ever.

Tactics Are Evolving

As government shutdowns have become longer and more common, administrations have become more adept at responding to them.

Amid the 2013 shutdown, during the Obama administration, all national parks were closed. Later polling by Hart Research for the Center for American Progress showed that 52 percent of Americans viewed the closure as a big problem, and 57 percent blamed Congress rather than the president.

During the recent shutdown, the Trump administration kept most parks at least partly open with a reduced staff, which may have influenced public opinion as well.

“The Trump administration tried to keep it from affecting most people for the first couple of weeks,” Olsen said. In fact, Trump’s approval rating increased marginally during that time, according to RealClear Politics.

Wilson noted that the administration arranged for active duty service members to be paid in mid-October, a move that would likely please Republican constituents.

Both parties proposed bills that would have paid civil service employees during the shutdown, but none passed. The employees’ union eventually called on Democrats to end the shutdown.

Also, the Office of Management and Budget announced the layoff of about 4,000 federal employees on Oct. 10. Unlike furloughs, these layoffs were intended to be permanent. However, Republicans agreed to reverse those cuts in negotiations to end the shutdown, and the president said he would abide by that.

“This was a step beyond what we have seen in the past,” Wilson said of the administration’s shutdown management strategy.

Even so, Democrats’ messaging on health care was effective, as polls showed that the public blamed Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown. By Nov. 9, that differential was 48 percent to 34 percent.

What’s Next

While the sharp political divide persists in the country, shutdowns could grow longer and costlier, Nicholas Higgins, chair of the political science department at North Greenville University, told The Epoch Times.

“It is becoming the new normal,” Higgins said.

“The danger is that this becomes a routine tool that parties use to try to advance their agendas,” Wilson said. “It speaks to broader issues of congressional dysfunction and problems with the budget process in the United States.”

Wilson believes procedural changes are needed to mitigate the “choke points” that allow for shutdowns, such as the debt ceiling and the end-of-year deadline for all spending bills.

“In a highly polarized age, both sides have less inclination to compromise, and both sides will see less harm to their position,” Olsen said. “When 90 percent of America is pretty much dug in, there’s not a whole lot of room to move.”