This week, we’re getting a stark reminder of what legislation has looked like under President Donald Trump — and the turmoil we can soon expect in his new term.
Trump, along with his ally Tesla CEO and Elon Musk, scrapped a bipartisan spending deal on Wednesday, just days before government funding was set to expire. The deal would keep the government open until March 14, combine $100 billion in disaster relief with $10 billion in farm aid and a slew of other measures. After grumbling from Musk about the size of the legislation, Trump called on Republicans to negotiate a new deal that would address the debt ceiling and strip the deal of so-called “Democrat giveaways.”
House GOP leaders tried to do just that, introducing new legislation Thursday. Unsurprisingly, that version of the bill failed to get the votes it needs to pass — leaving lawmakers once again facing a closing deadline looming Friday night.
Trump’s 11th-hour decision to engage in negotiations, weighted via social media (and apparently without coordination with allies in Congress), is reminiscent of his first approach to Capitol Hill, when he regularly blew up funding talks and directly caused the longest government shutdown in history USA. As such, this week’s chaos is both a callback and a preview of the mayhem to come.
Trump’s Blow Up History Briefly Explained
During Trump’s first term, he repeatedly called on Republicans to shut down the government to pressure Democrats to support his priorities, and he also proved to be a mercurial negotiator.
In his first year as president, Trump began pushing for a shutdown as early as August, attacking members of his own party and emphasizing his willingness to tolerate a shutdown if it meant securing funding for the border wall. He went out of his way to skewer Democrats on Twitter ahead of a funding negotiation meeting in November, prompting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not attend.
And as a shutdown loomed in January 2018, Trump further helped sink a potential spending deal by imposing external requirements on border security. That month, Trump and Schumer famously met over cheeseburgers and appeared to have reached an agreement, according to the Democratic lawmaker.
That deal would include Democratic support for increased military spending and potential wall funding, in exchange for legislation that created a path to legal status for DACA recipients (a category of undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children). But after the meeting, Trump reportedly pushed for tougher immigration measures — including policies to enforce illegal immigration across the country — which ultimately killed the deal.
In the week that followed, Democrats withheld votes on the funding bill in an effort to force the inclusion of DACA protections, leading to a brief shutdown. However, this did not work in the end. The shutdown ended when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised Democrats a vote on an immigration bill that later failed.
Perhaps most notably, Trump caused a 35-day government shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019 after violating a bipartisan funding deal that lawmakers had already agreed to. His statement prompted House Republicans to pass a different version of the spending bill, which included more than $5 billion in funding for a border wall that Democrats refused to support. With the House and Senate unable to find a version of the bill they could both pass, the funding deadline came and went and the government entered a shutdown.
After more than a month, Trump backed off his demands when it became clear that he and his Republican allies did not have the votes to fund the border wall and the shutdown’s effects on government services were becoming unsustainable (his approval ratings also suffered noticeably as the shutdown continued). He eventually signed a short-term funding bill that reopened the government but did not include his requested border wall funds, although he later declared a national emergency in a second, more successful attempt to secure funding for the wall.
Even after leaving the White House in January 2021, Trump continued to meddle in financial accounts. Just this fall, he again called on Republicans to reject funding legislation and shut down the government unless Congress passes a bill to limit absentee voting, which is already illegal.
A return to the chaos of Trump’s first term
This week’s developments are another indication that Trump’s disruptive style hasn’t changed — especially with the vocal support of new allies like Musk.
Trump and Musk’s shared approach to governing via tweet (or Truth Social post) could add to the chaos and pressure Republican lawmakers will face in the president-elect’s second term.
Neither was shy about using threats to force people to agree. For example, Musk has said he will financially support primary challengers against senators who do not support Trump’s cabinet. And Trump has his own history of pushing primaries against lawmakers who don’t do his bidding, a tactic he repeated this week.
While Republicans will again control both houses of Congress next year, as they did during the first two years of Trump’s first term, they will have a narrow majority that presents its own challenges. House Speaker Mike Johnson will have to keep the fractured coalition fully united — or rely on Democrats — to get anything done. Already this year, Johnson has had to rely on Democrats to help pass several financial bills, a dynamic that is drawing ire from his right wing and could fuel challenges to his leadership in a new term.
Even after lawmakers resolve this funding dispute, Johnson won’t have long to stay; the likely next date, in mid-March, will be an early test for the return of unified Republican rule. If this week is any measure, GOP leaders will have their work cut out for them — and Trump and Musk are likely to throw a few more grenades into the process.