Punching Bag Schumer

Senate passed bill to end shutdown: Last night, the Senate voted 60-to-40 to advance a bill that would end the shutdown, with a critical group of Democrats breaking with their own party and voting with the Republicans.

“We had no path forward on health care because the Republicans said, ‘We will not talk about health care with the government shut down,'” Sen. Tim Kaine (D–Va.) told The New York Times. “And we had SNAP beneficiaries and those relying on other important services who were losing benefits because of the shutdown.”

Now the bill advances to the House, where Republicans have only a narrow margin. President Donald Trump has signaled he will sign it if it lands on his desk. The negotiated spending package would fund the government only through the end of January, though three additional bills are attached that would fund various programs—certain military and agriculture functions—until the end of 2026. The package also makes sure that Trump’s shutdown-era reductions in force are reversed, and that back pay is given to furloughed government workers—something the administration has threatened not to do, breaking with precedent (and probably the law).

Democrats are not happy.

“While Chuck Schumer might look useless this week,” writes Josh Barro for the Times, “he is in fact playing the useful role of punching bag to Democrats who are angry because they want something they cannot have: control over the policy agenda despite having lost the last national election.”

“Democrats in both chambers of Congress are denouncing Mr. Schumer and this deal to end the government shutdown that their voters hate,” continues Barro. “But they offer no plausible account of how they would have done better, because there isn’t one.” It was an unwinnable situation. Democrats had nominal health care–related demands, but there were other Democrats who lacked message discipline and wanted the shutdown to be read as a referendum on Trumpism. There was never a path forward for how Democrats could win true concessions, in part because they didn’t agree on what the point was, exactly, within their own party.

Plus, it doesn’t really matter, adds Barro. “This week’s infighting and recriminations will be ancient history before Democrats go to the polls again,” he writes. “The sort of Democrats who are maddest at Senator Schumer are the same sort of Democrats who would crawl across broken glass to vote for Democrats—it doesn’t matter if they’re displeased. And Chuck Schumer won’t be on anyone’s ballot next year.” They needed a scapegoat, and he served the purpose.

Scenes from New York: 

The NYC left loves unseating Democratic Party leaders and replacing them with freshman socialists who structurally are unable to do as much fir their constituents https://t.co/Xr3z4nnq3q

— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) November 10, 2025

QUICK HITS

• Aviation watch: “More than 1,600 flights were canceled as of 12:45 p.m. in New York on Monday, according to data compiled by aviation analytics firm Cirium. That’s about 6.3% of the day’s 25,735 scheduled flights,” reports Bloomberg. “Chicago O’Hare International Airport had the most cancellations, with nearly 13% of its scheduled flights scrapped. About 11% of flights at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport were canceled, as were 9% of those at Newark Liberty International Airport.” All this follows the Federal Aviation Administration’s directive to reduce air traffic by about 10 percent nationwide due to the shutdown and the strain on the remaining air traffic controllers.
• Of course:

In the most predictable development ever, Mike Johnson is not committing to hold a House vote on ACA subsidies pic.twitter.com/5vmarKed5i

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 10, 2025

• “In March, the U.S. government sent more than 200 Venezuelan men to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador,” reports The New York Times, “part of a larger strategy by the Trump administration to ship migrants to third countries—and deter others from coming.” Many of them suffered terrible abuse there, where they were beaten, forced to perform oral sex on prison guards, and dunked in water tanks to give the sensation of drowning. The full report is worth reading, if you can stomach it.
• Checking in on the venture capitalists:

A fertility tracking app called “28” feels self-discrediting, even before you get to “butterfly energy”

The key difference between nfp and the calendar method is you’re tracking your body, not an imagined, “normal” cycle. https://t.co/1BNSDoBEX6 pic.twitter.com/vs5jFhgZ5b

— Leah Libresco Sargeant (@LeahLibresco) November 10, 2025

• “If you compare the average American in 2025 to the average American in 1985, they have a much better television and also access to a much wider array of programming. Their inflation-adjusted consumption of telecommunications services has improved dramatically. But it is harder to afford child care or a babysitter or other labor-intensive services,” writes Matt Yglesias in a long examination of what’s going on with the affordability crisis (and why it’s such a salient political issue right now). “I think there’s something to the idea that relative price shifts over the course of my lifetime have been unfavorable to a kind of commonsense view of ‘the good life.’ A large share of our increased real consumption is dramatically more streaming video, which has probably had a net negative impact on human welfare. The quality and quantity of medical treatments available to older people is a lot better than it used to be. But while this is very good and important, it doesn’t necessarily speak to the typical person’s ability to achieve basic life goals in terms of employment, housing, family formation, and fulfilling work.” Yglesias lands on policy prescriptions with which I disagree, but his exploration of what voters are reacting to is pretty good.
• Rod Dreher on groyperism in D.C. among young right-wingers.