Last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that Democrats would be seeking a restoration in funding to Medicare and to extend Obamacare subsidies in the upcoming government funding bill. If Republicans refuse to come to the table, Senator Schumer says Democrats will withhold their votes, forcing a government shutdown at the end of the month.
Days before Schumer’s announcement, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at an event in Utah. In the aftermath, President Donald Trump and his allies laid blame at the feet of Democrats and the left. In a speech from the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump vowed that his administration would “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.” Some are arguing that in the midst of this heightened rhetoric, picking a fight over the budget could give Trump license to further his authoritarian aims. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland thinks it’s worth the risk.
In an interview with Today, Explained, Van Hollen said “there are always risks, but again, it’s Republicans and the Trump White House that will be taking this risk, because they will clearly be seen to be going it alone, trying to essentially impose total one-party rule on the country.” Senator Van Hollen believes that the Republicans have more to lose by withholding concessions than the Democrats do by holding the line.
Below is an excerpt of Senator Van Hollen’s conversation with Today, Explained host Noel King, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Schumer and minority leader Hakeem Jeffries have set their terms for avoiding a government shutdown. They want Republicans to reverse Medicaid cuts and to extend the Obamacare subsidies. What’s your position on a shutdown?
Well, first and foremost, we should not be giving President Trump a blank check to continue his lawless activities, including his illegal withholding of funds from — for example, NIH [the National Institutes of Health], where people are undergoing clinical trials for cancer — and he’s withholding funds that could literally mean a death sentence for them. And the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, has found that he is illegally impounding, withholding these funds. And so, we can’t give them a blank check without guardrails and safeguards to make sure that that won’t happen.
What do guardrails and safeguards look like? What specifically are you after here?
So, for example, the Republicans in the Senate and the House voted for this so-called rescission package, meaning that they voted to undo resources, appropriations that they previously voted for. You can make that much harder to do by requiring, for example, a 60-vote margin to pass it.
You can also do other things, Noel. For example, if the president were to engage in an illegal rescission, you could have an across the board immediate cut in White House appropriations. So, there are things you can do if Republicans were willing to join us, but so far, they’re not willing to take on President Trump in any way.
The country was in a very similar position back in March of this year. And the concern back then was that, if Democrats shut down the government, they would end up taking the blame. They would end up alienating voters. Is that a concern this time around?
Well, this would be the Trump administration and Republicans in the Congress shutting down the government, because they decide to go it alone. They decide to have a one-way street. They decide to give President Trump a blank check for his lawless activity. And I don’t think the American people want to see President Trump get a total blank check, because they’ve seen that he’s withholding monies from things like FEMA and places that have been hit by disasters and refuse to provide funding for disaster relief. He’s withholding funds from the National Institutes of Health. In fact, by our calculation right now, they’re withholding about $400 billion of funds for important priorities for the current fiscal year we’re in, which ends in just a few weeks. So, if they’re doing that now, he will do it again unless we stop it.
In the first half of the show, our colleague Andrew Prokop proposed this as one possible scenario: An extended shutdown leads Republicans to believe that Democrats are abusing the filibuster, and so they end the filibuster. And so, that means that Republicans no longer need any Democrats to vote with them, and they can do whatever they want. He’s painting the shutdown as quite a dangerous possibility for Democrats. What do you think about that?
There are always risks, but again, it’s Republicans and the Trump White House that will be taking this risk, because they will clearly be seen to be going it alone, trying to essentially impose total one-party rule on the country. Trump’s sort of authoritarian impulses would have no checks and no balances on them.
With respect to Republicans getting rid of the filibuster, I think they recognize that more democracy in the Senate and the House does not favor them in the long run. I mean, I’ve been an advocate for ending what’s called the supermajority requirement to end a filibuster; you would still have ample debate for weeks or months, but at the end of the day, you would bring debate to a close with 51 votes. Republicans have been able to do what they want without doing that. So, for example, they use the reconciliation process to pass big tax cuts for the very rich and cut programs for working Americans. We saw them do this in the so-called “big, beautiful bill,” which is beautiful if you’re a billionaire but stinks for everybody else. So, the big things Republicans like to do, like tax cuts, they get to do even with the filibuster in place. I don’t think the Republicans will go down that road, because the supermajority requirement [that currently exists] to end a filibuster favors their agenda, not the people’s agenda.
After the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was killed by a shooter last week, President Trump in a speech from the Oval Office blamed, quote, “the radical left.” He vowed to, quote, “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”
This strikes people as a potentially very concerning threat to free speech, civil liberties. Have the events of the past week changed your mind at all about how you approach the Trump administration? What do you think the president is saying here?
I’m very, very alarmed by what the president’s saying. There’s no room for political violence in our discourse. We can have robust debates without it veering into violence, and there should be no vengeance. President Trump had a chance to bring the country together to say that political violence is unacceptable regardless of its source, but instead, he’s decided to engage in finger pointing. Instead, he is weaponizing this awful tragedy, this murder, to advance his political goals, which include going after what he calls folks on the left, which, in Trump world, means anybody who disagrees with Donald Trump. So yes, it’s very concerning that he would threaten to use the full power and instruments of the federal government to literally go after people who disagree with him.
There is a lot at stake for Democrats here. As you’ve been saying, polling shows that Americans are really displeased with the party and not just the general public. Democrats themselves are not happy with the party. In August, an Associated Press poll of Democrats saw people using words like “weak,” “tepid,” “ineffective,” and “broken” to describe their own party. What do you think is going on here?
Well, I don’t think the Democrats have done enough to stand up to Donald Trump’s lawlessness, nor do I think Democrats have done enough to put forward our own positive vision of what we would do, including taking on very powerful special interests and fighting instead for the common good and the public interest.
I was invited just over the weekend to speak to the Polk County, Iowa, Democratic Party, and I laid out exactly that argument: that more needs to be done to stand up to Donald Trump in this moment. But clearly in 2024, the American people, the majority of the American people, did not trust us to take on the status quo and take on these special interests. And so, I believe we need to be much more clear not only about what we’re fighting against, but what we are fighting for.
At that event on Saturday, you also endorsed Zohran Mamdani. You criticized other Democratic leaders for delaying on endorsing him. You referred to something that you called “spineless politics.” What’s going on? What’s Mamdani doing that you like?
What I said was, as we prepare to try to win majorities in the House and the Senate in 2026, we need to first win the 2025 races. We have big races in Virginia and New Jersey for the governor seats, great candidates, and we also need to win the mayoral race in New York City. I pointed out that Donald Trump has spent a huge amount of time and resources trying to defeat Mamdani. Mamdani’s platform was people who work in New York should be able to afford to live in New York, which would be good for people in New York City; and Des Moines, Iowa; and in Maryland; and throughout the country. And yet, you have these very powerful big money, special interests — financial interests combining with Donald Trump to try to defeat Mamdani. And so, I do think this is a moment where Democrats need to stand up for the person who is fighting to reduce costs and make sure that people can afford to live where they work.
