We’ve been conditioned for decades by the political class — and its members on both sides of the aisle are doing what they can to reinforce that conditioning today — to regard any budgetary impasse that results in a temporary interruption of status quo bureaucratic governance as a disaster.
So when the government went into shutdown mode Wednesday after a third attempt to pass a continuing resolution that would fund the government as is for a month or two, there they were, caterwauling about the Parade of Horribles that a shutdown would unleash.
It’s what the Capitol press corps expects, it’s what the political consultants demand, and it’s what Official Washington decrees as the only allowable narrative.
And it’s nonsense.
We’ve had government shutdowns in virtually every decade of modern American existence. They never last long, they never do any permanent damage, and they’re never even remembered a year later. The only possible exceptions were the shutdowns during the Obama years, when the president did everything he could to inflict pain on ordinary Americans so as to make us notice the refusal of the Republicans to cater to his budgetary whims.
Shutdowns are nothing. They’re inconsequential. When the feds aren’t closing open-air monuments like the ones in Washington to our fallen veterans, regular folks don’t even notice.
And with Donald Trump in the White House, nobody is really noticing this one.
Well, that’s not quite true, is it? This shutdown actually has a brand. It’s the Sombrero Shutdown, because of this:
That was a “deepfake video” that the president shared on Truth Social starring Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the king and crown jester of the shutdown court, and while it set off spasms of outrage among the Democrats and their votaries, the rest of the country seemed to have been greatly amused.
And Jeffries, who was festooned with a sombrero and clip art moustache in Trump’s meme to give added flavor to the fact that the Democrats are dragging the country through this dorky psychdrama over federal dollars being spent to subsidize healthcare for illegal aliens, threw a fit on camera over having been made fun of.
Which… wasn’t a good idea, because it brought down another troll-bombing run on Truth Social…
And a national media bored with the usual unserious arguments and fake outrage on both sides picked up on the sombrero-and-moustache AI ensemble, and before you knew it there was this exchange as Vice President JD Vance showed up at the White House press briefing to tell the administration’s side of the story:
If @RepJeffries helps us open the government right now, the sombrero memes will stop.
This is my solemn promise. pic.twitter.com/pL99Wsun4i
— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 1, 2025
And now, it has become a cultural sensation…
Chuck Schumer & Hakeem Jeffries are really taking this Sombrero thing too far.
Cultural Appropriation? ???? pic.twitter.com/NYPP2TIr0g
— ????erias (@xerias_x) October 2, 2025
Long live the Hakeem Jeffries sombrero memes ???? pic.twitter.com/MlwHa00uHG
— Joel Varela (@JoelVarela79) October 1, 2025
And one more, because why not…
“The fact that a sombrero meme of Hakeem Jeffries has Democrats melting down tells you everything. Trump lives rent free in their heads 24/7 ????” pic.twitter.com/uWLK0XxAlb
— Dark Patriot (@BasedWakeninq) October 1, 2025
It’s everywhere.
Oh, but we shouldn’t be making light of such a serious situation, you say.
Really? What about this is serious?
Schumer, Jeffries, and the rest of the Marxist vanguard on Capitol Hill thought it was a good idea to jack up Trump, Mike Johnson, and John Thune for $1.5 trillion in government swag, pretty much all of it being gains won in the Big Beautiful Bill, for a seven-week continuing resolution.
That isn’t a serious gambit. It’s one of the stupidest political moves ever made. And if there’s any sanity or justice to our politics, it will be repaid in permanent loss of leverage by the Democrats over the budget process.
Trump teased on Truth Social that he would be meeting with Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought to – as he warned Democrats he would do – reevaluate the necessity of various government agencies.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump wrote.
As a potential shutdown loomed, the administration cautioned Democrats that if they didn’t sign on to Republicans’ short stopgap funding bill and prevent a shutdown, more federal employees would lose their jobs. The OMB sent a letter to federal agencies last week directing them to take a critical look at where they might be able to shed more employees.
“With respect to those Federal programs whose funding would lapse and which are otherwise unfunded, such programs are no longer statutorily required to be carried out,” the letter reads. “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.”
Every federal position eliminated, every program excised, shrinks the budget baseline and delivers exponential savings to the American taxpayer specifically in the out years — programs that no longer exist no longer get artificially inflated by automatic spending increases. Trump and Vought now have the power to make permanent reform to government spending that Congress lacks the will to do, and the fun part is that congressional deadlock means Trump’s changes will be permanent so long as America isn’t stupid enough to put someone like Gavin Newsom or Wes Moore in the White House.
This is an unalloyed good thing.
Vought is already excising stupid Green New Deal spending that was going to blue-state political grifters, including some $18 billion that was scheduled to be spent in Schumer’s New York.
So sad.
I wrote this at RVIVR on Wednesday:
But to fully create advantages out of the shutdown, the advice I’d offer is this: lean in.
And specifically at this point, do NOT pursue a continuing resolution to reopen the government. One was presented to the Democrats; they voted it down via the filibuster and created the shutdown. They had their chance, now it’s time to think bigger and leave them in the dust.
Instead of trying to negotiate with them on a short-term spending measure, work on the 12 appropriations bills and pursue regular order on the budget.
You’ll never have better leverage to get a true budget passed for next year than you have right now.
Three of the 12 appropriations bills are in conference right now, and they should be the first priority. Pass the conference reports of those appropriations bills in both houses, and now the government is not fully shut down.
The other nine bills have moved out of committee and are awaiting votes on the House floor. So move them to passage and send them to the Senate.
Do that, and Republicans become the party of a regular budget and not emergency, jammed-up CR’s. Which is where you want to be.
In normal circumstances, this would be an open invitation to obstruction by the Democrats. But right now, when their obstruction has already shut down the government, the leverage is extreme. They’ll beg for a CR but they’ve already filibustered it, so now they can have the appropriations bills and their objections will have to be specific and germane. That is not the field they want to play on.
Don’t fall into the CR trap. You offered a CR in good faith and it was rebuffed. So now drag the process through regular order and let’s see just how badly they want to obstruct it while Russ Vought is firing all their friends in the bureaucracy and shrinking the budget baseline.
That advice stands.
Pass the appropriations bills. Not the CR. Use this shutdown to finally get to regular order and force the Democrats to come to the table on those 12 bills — with their backs to the wall, because if those bills are the only budgetary game in town, they’ve got no other choice but to work with them.
And let’s finally explode this stupid myth that a government shutdown is a catastrophe. It isn’t. It never has been. Wall Street is unmoved, Polymarket says most expect we’ll be here awhile, and America is laughing at sombrero memes starring Temu Obama.
Two weeks of those memes, and we might just have an American revival. We sure as hell will get to regular budget order.
The Sombrero Shutdown is a good moment. Let’s relax and enjoy it.
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The Spectacle Ep. 278: Trump vs. the UN: The Truth They Can’t Handle
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