Now for the main event…

In a way, a government shutdown is among the more normal things to occur in Washington since Donald Trump returned to the White House—certainly more normal than the U.S. government taking stakes in private companies, or the president selling his own cryptocurrency, or the military being deployed to American cities, etcetera. This part is all comfortingly familiar. The tactics, the strategy, the weak-kneed, the hard-liners: They’re all part of the same predictable narrative we experienced three times already in Trump’s first term.

But this time the script has flipped. Now, it’s the Republicans demanding a clean spending bill rather than the House Freedom Caucus opposing it, and it’s the Democrats opposing a seven-week stopgap rather than agitating to fund a functional government and support federal workers. As one Democratic strategist put it: “We aren’t in normal times, and there is nothing that demands a normal response.”

There are many other facets to this shutdown, some of which make sense and some of which don’t. Here’s a roundup of what I’m hearing around the Hill, what members and their staff and strategists are thinking about, and the strategizing at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A central figure in this phase of the shutdown drama is Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, who has been itching to downsize the government since at least Trump’s first term, when he served in the same job. He threatened mass firings of federal workers under a shutdown; told House Republicans in a conference call yesterday that those cuts would come in one or two days; and made a rare visit this afternoon to the Oval Office for discussions with the president—an ideal chance to make his pitch.

But even aides to Republican lawmakers who support Vought’s efforts told me, before this shutdown started, that he has to move cautiously to avoid getting ahead of the president. Trump, after all, may not be fully attuned to Vought’s project. Two Democrats told me that Trump didn’t know the definition of the word “rescission”—the tool Vought has pushed to stop the disbursement of billions in funding allocated by Congress—when he met with congressional leaders earlier this week. (“Absolutely not true,” a senior Republican leadership aide countered.) Other Republicans, meanwhile, are skittish that laying off thousands of federal workers who bear no responsibility for the shutdown might not play well with voters. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for one, has distanced himself from the O.M.B. director, telling Politico, “We don’t control what he’s going to do.”

It’s easy enough to see why. Vought is on an ideological mission that could distract from Republicans’ main argument: that Democrats shut down the government because the G.O.P. refused to fund healthcare for illegal immigrants. This is disingenuous, of course. Democrats want the Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill to be repealed. But it plays well with the base. It’s the ABIBI rule: Always bring it back to immigration. Anyway, if layoffs are small-scale, or temporary, it likely means that Trump doused Vought’s fire.

Vought-related complications aside, Republicans feel they’re on the right side of the shutdown argument in insisting that any negotiation over healthcare should take place after Democrats vote to reopen the government. But Dems, for the most part, are comfortable with how the public is allocating the blame, and they’re keeping close tabs on voter sentiment. Lindsay Owens, who runs the Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank and advocacy firm, told me that Democrats are conducting their own polling twice a week and monitoring the public polling as well. (Republicans are also watching the polling closely.)

Overall, surveys currently show that voters blame Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown by double digits, though the margins vary. Marist found that 38 percent of respondents blamed Republicans, compared to 27 percent who blame Democrats. A Washington Post poll found that 47 percent blame Republicans and Trump, compared to the 30 percent who blame Democrats. The Groundwork Collaborative’s latest polling, out this morning, had 40 percent of people blaming Republicans compared to 28 percent Democrats. In any event, Owens also said it would be a “strategic error” for Democrats to focus on democracy concerns in the government funding debate. In her view, the party should be relentlessly focused on healthcare. “ABIBHC” doesn’t really have the same ring to it, but still.

Back on Capitol Hill, hope springs eternal that a bipartisan gang can compromise their way out of any stalemate. So there was excitement, but also plenty of eye-rolling, yesterday when a nebulous group of senators, led by New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, were seen conspicuously chatting on the Senate floor, in plain view of the press and leadership, about how to reopen the government. (It’s not officially a gang, yet.)

There actually is some hope surrounding this group, however. One very plugged-in K Street lobbyist told me that Shaheen is working with Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, one of three Democrats to vote for the Republican funding bill, to negotiate a deal to reopen the government. They’ve held a lot of calls and conversations today, hoping to move fast and get things back to normal by early next week. They’ll need at least seven Democrats total to agree. It’s an optimistic timeline, and there are a lot of variables here, particularly where leadership comes down. Thune and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer are dug into their corners. Thune insists he won’t pass any bill that changes policy until the government is open, and Schumer says the government won’t open until Republicans negotiate (not just commit to negotiate) on healthcare, as premiums are set to rise on Obamacare recipients. Really, the positions aren’t that far apart. But the will to make a deal might be.

Republicans think the bipartisan talks are a sign that Democrats are getting nervous and won’t let the shutdown last long. For their part, Democrats are mostly fine with their moderate members talking to their Republican colleagues, “as long as they are holding firm that they aren’t going to just vote for the House C.R. without getting something in return,” one Democratic aide said. The optics aren’t bad either: Democrats hope the talks indicate that they don’t actually want a shutdown, and that they’re willing to be reasonable.

Of course, lawmakers are partial to making colossal political errors, which is what Rep. GT Thompson appears to be doing. The Pennsylvania Republican and chair of the House Agriculture Committee posted a sign outside his office before the government shut down on Tuesday night, saying that should funding lapse, his office “will remain closed until this madness stops.” Indeed, I’ve called the congressman’s Washington office in the last two days and the phones go directly to voicemail. Same thing at his two district offices.

But after the 35-day government shutdown that spanned late 2018 into 2019, Congress passed a law that ensured congressional staff would receive backpay after such events. So it seems that Thompson’s office isn’t responding to constituent phone calls or requests during the shutdown, but his team will still get paid in the end—which sounds an awful lot like vacation.

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