The White House's 3D-chess move: crushing the economy to own the libs.

In theory, Donald Trump and his Republicans are the ones holding the cards in this current government shutdown fight. Democrats had plenty of good reasons to withhold their votes for a government funding bill.1 But it’s always risky being the party that directly provokes a shutdown. Unless you can convince the public that your policy priorities—in this case, renewing expiring health care subsidies—are worth playing hardball, you’re likely to take the blame. And that job is harder when you’re hopelessly outgunned in the realm of industrial-strength Ministry-of-Truth propaganda.2

Then there’s the other problem facing Democrats: They and their constituents will be feeling the shutdown pain more acutely than Trump and his. (Trump isn’t particularly bothered by the plight of federal workers—and he certainly doesn’t mind that, for instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics wasn’t able to release what was likely to be a third consecutive alarming jobs report yesterday.) In theory, all Trump has to do is play it slow and wait for Democrats to cave.

But that’s not really his style, is it? Instead, Trump and his mooks are taking what you might call the “cartoon supervillain” shutdown approach. Yesterday morning, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced that the administration was freezing $18 billion in federal funding for two major New York City infrastructure works: the Hudson River Tunnel Project and the Second Avenue Subway project. The government was concerned, Vought said, that funding might be “flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles.”

That’s right: The White House had suddenly decided—ten months into Trump’s term—that these contracts needed more Department of Transportation scrutiny. And, ah, wouldn’t you know it? That scrutiny can’t take place while the government is shut down. So Vought decided to put the whole thing on ice for the time being. Better safe than sorry—New Yorkers wouldn’t want a woke subway tunnel.

It was a blatantly illegal and nakedly transparent attempt to put the screws on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a fact Vice President JD Vance didn’t bother to hide during the White House press briefing yesterday. “I’m sure that Russ is heartbroken about the fact that he is unable to give certain things to certain constituencies,” the vice president smirked.

And Vought wasn’t done. A few hours later, he had a new announcement to make: “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” he tweeted. Of the 16 affected states he named, all voted for Kamala Harris last year and have Democratic senators.

The heedlessness and shortsightedness here is staggering. Set aside the open, obscene partisanship, the loathsome fact that the White House seems to see inflicting economic pain on blue Americans as a worthwhile goal in itself. Although it’s worth wondering whether it will actually be blue America that suffers: The outer-borough blue-collar white guy has been a remarkably valuable voter for the GOP in recent years, handing Republicans a brace of New York congressional seats without which they would not hold the House majority today. Who exactly does Vought think works construction jobs in the Big Apple, or in any of the rest of those blue states?3

But it’s somehow stupider even than that. Keep in mind that all this is happening at a moment of remarkable economic precarity. The jobs data, rattled by tariff pain, looks more unsteady with each passing month; everyone from the chair of the Federal Reserve to the forecasters at Moody’s are warning of storm clouds on the economic horizon. And how does the White House respond to this moment? By firing potentially tens of thousands of federal workers and pulling the plug on a host of already funded and half-finished development projects, most notably in New York City, America’s biggest economic hub. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face—this is more like cutting off your arm.