37 minutes agoShareSaveAnthony ZurcherNorth America correspondent, Washington DCShareSaveGetty ImagesWelcome to the shutdown, 2025 edition. On Tuesday evening, the US Senate was unable to pass a spending bill that would have kept the US government funded, and for the first time in nearly seven years, federal operations have been drastically curtailed.At some point, this shutdown – like all the ones before it – will end. It may take days; it may take weeks, but eventually, as public pressure and political pain grows, one side or the other will yield.Here are four scenarios for how that might play out.Democrats quickly break ranksSenate Democrats shot down a Republican spending bill that would have kept the government operating until November, but that vote may have contained the seeds of their defeat.While forty four Democrats (and Republican iconoclast Rand Paul) voted no, two Democrats and one Democrat-allied independent sided with the Republican majority.Independent Angus King of Maine is always a bit of a wildcard. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has been charting his own path for nearly a year. But Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, while not a liberal firebrand, is not your typical political maverick.She is, however, up for re-election next year in a state that Donald Trump carried in 2024 and which has been slowly trending Republican for years. In her statement explaining her vote, she expressed concern about the economic toll government closure would have on Nevada. She might also be worried about the toll it could take on her political prospects as an incumbent on the ballot when voters turn angry.She’s not the only member of her party from a battleground state who will be on the ballot in 2026, either. Democrats in Georgia, Virginia and Colorado could also start feeling the heat. And while incumbents from Minnesota, Michigan and New Hampshire have chosen to retire rather than run for re-election, they might worry that a shutdown puts Democratic control of their seats at risk, too.Republican Senate leader John Thune says that he is already hearing from some Democrats who are uneasy with the way the shutdown is playing out. He’s planning a series of funding votes in the coming days to keep the pressure on.There were no new defections during the vote on Wednesday, but if five more Democrats break ranks, the shutdown will end – whether the rest of the Democratic Party wants it to or not.Democrats back downEven if the Democrats stay (relatively) united, the pressure on them to abandon the fight is likely to increase as the shutdown drags on. Government employees are a key constituency in the party, and they will be the ones feeling the pain most immediately from delayed paycheques and the possibility that the Trump administration will use the shutdown to further slash programmes and turn their furloughs into permanent unemployment.The American public as a whole will also start feeling the bite through curtailed government services and economic disruption. Typically the party that triggers a shutdown and is making the policy demands – in this case, the Democrats – is the one that accrues the public’s blame. If that’s how this plays out, the party may conclude that they’ve made as much of a point as they can and cut their losses.Even without tangible gains, they may even be able to take comfort in the fact that they have put a spotlight on the expiring health insurance subsidies and Republican-approved government healthcare cuts for the poor that will be kicking in for tens of millions of Americans in the coming months.When that blame game starts, such thinking goes, they could be better positioned to reap the political benefits.The Democratic base that has been demanding their party dig in and fight the Trump administration won’t be fully satisfied, but it’s the kind of off-ramp the party leadership might be able to live with.EPARepublicans make concessionsAt the moment, Republicans feel like they are i …
