Trump: Government Shutdown Could Do 'A Lot of Good'

Plus: Addressing "the enemy within," the FTC's pointless meddling, Joy Reid finally understands half the country, and more...

Welcome to the club: President Donald Trump says "a lot of good" might come from the government shutdown.

"We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn't want and they'd be Democrat things," Trump told the press on Tuesday. "They just don't learn. So we have no choice. I have to do that for the country."

I don't think he's totally wrong. And now we're getting what he wants (what we all want?) since the federal government shut down at the start of today—though, to be clear, this is a misnomer, since shutdowns are always just partial, with "essential" government services preserved and most employees just furloughed, granted back pay later on once the government reopens. ("The worst that happens is that some people are inconvenienced for a few days," writes Reason's J.D. Tuccille, "as the only things that really cease to function are public-facing operations such as parks and offices—deliberately so, to maintain the illusion that something important is happening.")

"In back-to-back Senate votes that reflected how acrimonious the funding dispute has become, each party blocked the other's stopgap spending proposal, just as they had earlier in the month," reports The New York Times. "On a 55-to-45 vote, the G.O.P. plan, which would extend funding through Nov. 21, fell short of the 60 needed for passage. Republicans also blocked Democrats' plan, which would extend funding through the end of October and add more than $1 trillion in health care spending, in a 47-to-53 vote."

This time, a shutdown might be different since Trump has made clear he's looking to use this opportunity to make more permanent cuts to the federal work force and its many, many functions. An Office of Management and Budget memo says that "agencies are directed to use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities (PPAs) that satisfy all three of the following conditions: (1) discretionary funding lapses on October 1, 2025; (2) another source of funding, such as H.R. 1 (Public Law 119-21) is not currently available; and (3) the PPA is not consistent with the President's priorities.…Once fiscal year 2026 appropriations are enacted, agencies should revise their RIFs as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions." This type of directive is not customarily given out, and indicates that the president is looking at the shutdown rather differently than have past presidents in recent memory.

Certain benefits will continue to be administered: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and assistance for Veterans. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will not be affected initially, but could be if the shutdown goes on for a long time. The federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program will not be able to accept any new applicants starting today. In the past, "inspections of chemical factories, power plants, oil refineries and water treatment plants were disrupted because the Environmental Protection Agency furloughed most of its employees in charge of monitoring pollution and compliance," reports the Times. "Some routine food safety inspections also stopped."

National parks have previously had their operations hobbled; open-air sites will probably stay open but visitors centers or other areas that need staffing will shut down. The Department of the Interior says that restrooms will be cleaned and garbage will be collected, per NBC News—possibly a Trump directive aimed at ensuring there's no malicious compliance from federal employees, performatively making quality of services worse so that public sentiment sours on the shutdown, the way it did during the 34-day 2019 shutdown, during his first term. ("A government shutdown would leave our parks understaffed and vulnerable, putting our most cherished places and millions of visitors at risk. If a national park has a gate or door, it must be locked until a funding deal is reached and our parks can be staffed and protected," said the National Parks Conservation Association in a statement on Monday, calling the impact of former shutdowns "disastrous.")

Nobody yet knows the extent of the cuts, both temporary and permanent, but this is a huge opportunity for Trump to reevaluate what's truly in the interest of the American people. I'm hoping for TSA abolition. What's on your wish list?

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Scenes from New York: Spotted in Gravesend yesterday.

markets in everything, baby. i love new york. pic.twitter.com/7ICEK8q25b

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) September 30, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• Yesterday, President Donald Trump addressed top military brass at Quantico and told them part of their mission would now be to fight "the enemy within" with some troops deploying in American cities. "San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they're very unsafe places and we're gonna straighten them out one by one," said the president. "This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also addressed the assembled troops, mostly talking about the lowering of certain physical standards for members of the military by previous administrations.
• Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry asked for the president to deploy the National Guard to New Orleans, citing high crime rates there. ("New Orleans residents recall how the national guard was sent into their city in 2006 in the name of crime control," notes The Guardian. "That happened on the orders of the Democratic Louisiana governor at the time, the late Kathleen Blanco, in the wake of an infamous quintuple murder—victimizing five teenagers—as New Orleans slogged through rebuilding from the deadly federal levee failures which devastated it during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.")
• "The US Federal Trade Commission sued to block a partnership to make Zillow Group Inc. the exclusive provider of information on apartment rentals offered by Rocket Companies Inc.'s Redfin," reports Bloomberg. "In a complaint filed in Virginia federal court, the FTC said the partnership would reduce the number of websites offering apartment listings, leaving consumers with fewer places to search for and driving up the price for buildings that want to advertise." This is a little ridiculous: Zillow already owns StreetEasy (used by pretty much all New Yorkers to find apartments), Hotpads, and Trulia. And "in 2020, the FTC blocked CoStar Group Inc. from buying the company that then maintained Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com. That company was later acquired by Redfin in 2021. Rocket acquired Redfin earlier this year."
• This whole thread is interesting, on the recent (buckle up) Ezra Klein x Ta-Nehisi Coates interview that's been making the rounds, receiving lots of warranted criticism that the Democratic Party seems incapable of both self-reflection and understanding their opponents in any meaningful way:

Ta-Nehisi Coates and I agree that there is a line. When people cross the line, conversation between the two sides is no longer possible. That line for both of us is the dehumanization of others.

For me, that means celebrating their death, believing that the world is a better…

— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) October 1, 2025

• I am actually 100 percent fine with this, she understands the plan perfectly:

BREAKING: Joy Reid warns Americans of MAGA plans: "No income tax, no regulations, earn as much as you want, and leave it to your children with no taxes, that's the world they want." pic.twitter.com/1kBkmk4EaZ

— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) September 30, 2025