House Democrats, depressed and divided, are still disoriented from Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night. Recent targets of their venom and second-guessing include the progressives who brought props; Rep. Al Green, who heckled the president and was escorted out by security; and the Democratic leadership, who had encouraged them to sit on their hands throughout the speech—resulting in footage of Democratic members sitting stone-faced while Trump honored Devarjaye “DJ” Daniel, a 13-year-old boy who’d survived brain cancer. The angsty Wednesday morning quarterbacking has spilled into current conversations over government funding, one well-wired House Democrat told me. The party, as directionless and leaderless as modern memory affords, must now countenance its first real legislative challenge of Trump II. As the government prepares to run out of funding at midnight on Friday—an outcome that would certainly lie on the shoulders of the Republicans in charge—the balkanized Dems find themselves at the sort of philosophical crossroads that inevitably overwhelms the party’s Hamletesque instincts: How should they approach their first big consequential act of resistance under the new Republican regime? Joining Republicans to pass a bill extending government funding carries risks that no one seems able to pre-game. Nuking the bill would also prompt significant fallout. What to do? On a principal basis, of course, this should be an easy one. Speaker Mike Johnson, at Trump’s behest, is putting forward a six-month funding bill at levels lower than 2024 spending for nondefense programs—which should make it even easier for Democrats to hold the line in opposition. Meanwhile, I’m told by sources close to the White House and on the Hill that Trump doesn’t want a shutdown—a shift from his first term, when he welcomed the public relations middle fingers. Nowadays, the administration fears a shutdown would pull the focus away from the White House and its blitzkrieg agenda. The economy is more precarious, too. Trump and his liaisons are also telling allies and members of Congress that the government’s lights need to remain on for continued DOGE chainsawing. Johnson, who has lost the trust of many in his party, is leaning heavily on Trump to help him secure the 218 votes required. This is largely a mess of Johnson’s own rendering, of course. He punted the funding vote until now so that it wouldn’t derail his election as speaker back in January. But it’s the Democrats who are most fretful about the politics of it all. The bulk of House Democrats believe any vote to fund the government would make them complicit in DOGE’s actions, and could be seen by constituents as giving Elon Musk a green light to keep going. But they also worry that if they vote against the funding bill, Republicans will frame the party’s actions as an endorsement of the ostensibly wasteful status quo. Further complicating the calculus is that House and Senate Democrats are not on the same page. In the Senate, Democrats are cautious about prompting a shutdown—worried about the political consequences if they provide Republicans with necessary votes. House Democrats are more willing to resist, even as they debate the real-life consequences for federal workers in a shutdown during the DOGE age, when agencies are already under siege. Some progressives who are supportive of a shutdown, however, do worry it would only make it easier for Musk to fire people.