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A bird flies near the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 25, 2025.

REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Will the Democrats risk a government shutdown?

Well, the old game of chicken over funding the US federal government is back on, as Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday his party would NOT vote for the six-month stopgap funding bill passed by the GOP in the House on Tuesday night.

Given the procedural details of this kind of funding bill, which requires 60 votes, the Dems can kill the bill despite holding just 45 seats.

Why’d the Dems do this? They say the six-month bill, which would keep current overall spending levels in place without earmarking specific outlays, would give the Trump administration, and quasi-official DOGE Czar Elon Musk, too much leeway to radically reshape the federal government.

Instead, the Dems prefer a 30-day stopgap, during which time they want to negotiate more specific tax and spend details with the GOP. Getting a new bill will be tough, as the House has already broken for a weeklong St Patrick’s Day recess.

The clock is ticking: Current funding for the Federal government expires just past midnight on Friday.

The political calculation: Although Democrats have in the past criticized Republicans for pushing the government towards a shutdown, they may be betting they’d face less blowback for a shutdown than they would for the perception that they failed to stop Donald Trump’s cost-cutting agenda, which could target key entitlements like Medicaid.

But is this just posturing? A report in The Hill early on Thursday suggested that in the end, enough centrist Democrats could in fact vote to pass the bill.

Then-President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, in November 2024.

Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

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It’s not a reality TV show, but it sure feels like one. On Tuesday, the US government kickstarted a plan to slash the public service by offering a “deferred resignation program” to approximately two million civilian full-time federal employees. The offer came in the form of an email from the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, with the subject line, “A Fork in the Road,” similar to one sent by X CEO Elon Musk to Twitter employees after he acquired the company in 2022. Musk was behind the effort, which reportedly blindsided some of President Donald Trump's advisers and budget officials.

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Biden pushes forward on AI

Joe Biden is starting to walk the talk on artificial intelligence. Federal agencies have until December to get a handle on how to use — and minimize the risks from — AI, thanks to new instructions from the White House Office of Management and Budget. The policies mark the next step along the path laid out by Biden’s October AI executive order, adding specific goals after a period of evaluation.

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