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Elections & Politics Brief #197 | Nate Iglehart | October 2, 2025 

Summary

Push has come to shove, and for the first time in six years, the United States government has shut down. Driven by disagreements over the Republican federal spending bill, which would let tax credits for many American’s healthcare insurance expire at the end of the year, this shutdown is shaping up to be different from the rest.

The last shutdown, in 2018, also occurred under a Trump administration and lasted a record 35 daysover a disagreement regarding funding Trump’s border wall. But with this shutdown, President Donald Trump has stated that it presents an “unprecedented opportunity” to continue his push to slash the federal workforce and gut federal agencies.

With pressure from Democratic constituents not to yield anymore to Trump’s pressure, the shutdown could drag on for weeks. So what exactly sets this shutdown apart from the rest, what will its repercussions be, what changes might Trump make while it continues, and how might it end?

Analysis

The main issue, at least nominally, regards the Trump-backed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Over the summer, cuts to the healthcare programs were predicted to cause nearly 12 million people to lose Medicaid coverage and another 5 million people to lose health insurance because of a reduction in government subsidies to private insurance.

These cuts are a big policy sticking point for Democrats, and are also seen as generally unpopular with Americans. Now, with separate health care tax credits expiring at the end of the year, Democrats have chosen this as the hill to die on, or rather, to shut down the government on.

The broader reason why Democrats are willing to shut down the government is to push back on Trump’s wide-reaching agenda that many see as an expansion of power beyond its limits that threatens democracy.

By finding a win here with healthcare spending, Democrats are looking for a political win before the midterms that will also help halt Trump’s funding cuts across the board. They also want to show Republicans that they must make legislative concessions across the aisle, and that they can’t just pass bills without meeting in the middle.

Republicans, on the other hand, want to show that they can keep the government funded and functioning, and passing a stopgap bill to maintain funding at current levels until late November would show their capability. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that he won’t negotiate, and blames any consequences of the shutdown on Democrats

But the position of both parties is tenuous. Right now, Republicans control both chambers of Congress, with a 53-47 seat majority in the Senate and a 220-213 majority in the House. This means that for the spending bill to pass, 60 Senators would need to vote yes, and that would require at least 7 Democrats to give in (six if Republican Sen. Rand Paul continues to vote no) in order to pass the spending bill.

There have already been some Democrat senators who have voted yes to the bill, including Catherine Cortez Masto and John Fetterman, believing Republican claims that they are willing to negotiate the healthcare cuts after the spending bill is passed.

For the moment, the two parties are at an impasse, and the longer the impasse continues, the more damage will be done.

Government shutdowns have both short and long-term effects. Off the bat, about 40% of the federal workforce – nearly 750,000 people – will be furloughed on unpaid leave.

This will leave agencies like the civilian arm of the Departments of Defense, Health, Commerce, and State relatively gutted, along with the threat of shuttering US financial regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Additionally, national parks and federally funded museums will likely be disrupted, on top of canceled immigration hearings, delayed visa processes, and delayed federal loan approvals. Finally, social programs like Medicaid and food assistance programs will also be disrupted.

Other services like the postal service and many federally funded schools will likely only face minor disruptions, but if the shutdown drags on, things could change.

The damage in the event of an extended shutdown could be drastic in the long-term, as analysts estimateit could shave 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points off economic growth for each week. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office found that the 2018-2019 shutdown cost the U.S. economy $11 billion in economic output, including $3 billion that it never regained. Another analysis upped that number to $20 billion.

But on top of the economic effects, Trump has vowed to inflict extra pain on Democrats and use this shutdown to further push his agenda through. Already he has halted about $26 billion in previously approved funding for infrastructure and green energy projects that are mainly in Democrat-run states.

Russel Vought, the Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget and a key author of Project 2025, reportedly told Republican lawmakers that mass layoffs targeting federal workers who don’t align with Trump’s agenda could be imminent.

These moves are partially what sets this shutdown apart already. The administration’s seeming giddyness at shutting down the government and pulling every lever it can to inflict the maximum amount of damage on its political opponents does not bode well for any cross-aisle cooperation.

Broadly speaking, there are three rough ways this shutdown ends: the Democrats cave and vote the budget through without healthcare protections, the Republicans cave and mix healthcare protections into the spending bill, or nobody caves and that 35-day record gets broken with everyone suffering.

The first path, Democrats caving, is certainly possible; the two previous senators mentioned who’ve voted yes so far (Fetterman and Masto) don’t bode well for an already disunified party. As time goes, more people will likely blame the shutdown on the Democrats, and with Trump putting pressure on blue states and legislators, the pain may cause a few more Senators, some of whom might be up for reelection, to cross the aisle.

However, this shutdown is the stiffest resistance Democrats have put up to the Trump agenda so far, and they may choose this hill to die on. If their plan is to simply outlast a handful of Republican Senators (who might also have constituents to answer to at the midterms), it is not an impossible one.

In Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, GOP Congressmen faced heated town halls of voters angered over Trump’s rule-of-law breaches and Medicare cuts. The GOP is also not as unified under the MAGA banner as it was when the election was won.

There have been occasional breaks from Trump’s agenda by Senators arguing against things like ignoring nationwide injunctions and the U.S.’s involvements in foreign wars military operations, even from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

On the healthcare front, Republicans are also split on the healthcare cuts. So while there is an advantage for the Republicans in the Senate, it is one that could be strained enough to cause a few defections.

The final path, an extended shutdown without an end in sight, would arguably be the worst case scenario. Blame against both parties would mount to new heights, while preventing an enormous array of public services from functioning.

On top of all of the normal consequences of a shutdown, the postal service would likely eventually halt, federal research grants would be completely stalled, and even airlines would be stressed to their absolute max.

Those airline issues actually were what helped end the last shutdown after 35 days, and air traffic controllers are bracing for another ordeal. This time, however, the stakes are much higher, and the air traffic controllers might not be the backstop this time.

Additionally, an already stretched Fed is now operating in the blind, as federal agencies responsible for key economic data collection said they will suspend the collection and distribution of data in the event of a government shutdown.

Whichever way these negotiations go, a government shutdown has very few winners amongst its citizens. As the shutdown drags on, pain will begin to be felt across the country, and with an already tense political atmosphere, it comes down to the legislators on Capital Hill right now to prevent hell from breaking loose.

Engagement Resources

• AP News is providing live updates on the shutdown, as is The New York Times.
• While the government won’t be providing economic data, private companies such as the ADP also release data on job openings, hiring, and wages. But it’s not as comprehensive or authoritative as official government data.

Election and Politics #197 | Nate Iglehart | September 19, 2025

With only nine months of his presidency in the books, President Donald Trump has undertaken a radical reshaping of American democracy. From its courts to its liberties, Trump is actively pushing for an American society that serves him and his movement.

This push, however, has a price that he and his supporters are beginning to see on the horizon; the possibility of a blue wave in the 2026 midterm elections. Historically, the opposition party in the U.S. tends to gain ground at the midterms, with 20 of the last 22 adhering to this trend.

Trump and the Republican Party know this well, and are taking steps to ensure as large of an advantage as they can ahead of time. But they aren’t the only ones, as foreign interference has been a consistent electoral threat since the 2016 election. In order to secure safe and fair elections, the United States needs to empower poll workers, ensure election rules are set and enforced, and prevent the moves by actors, both domestic and foreign, directed at weakening the electoral process.

Analysis

To begin, it is important to lay out the threats facing the prospect of fair 2026 midterm elections. Donald Trump has already laid out his plan to overhaul the electoral process in this country.

The plan is multifaceted. One of his first targets its mail-in balloting, a method used by nearly one in three Americans. Over the years, Trump has attacked the method, saying it is “horrible”, “corrupt”, and “dangerous”, despite little evidence that widespread voter fraud via mail-in ballots actually occurred in the last few elections. Right now, he announced that his lawyers are drafting an executive order to end mail-in voting, alongside banning voting machines and tabulators.

Experts say that this would be disastrous for states. Removing these three tools for voting would result in a massive influx of voters in-person as almost a third of voters used mail-in ballots.Their banning would cause chaos for the already underfunded and extremely stressed poll workers.

But Trump doesn’t stop here. He also has demanded voting data from at least 19 states for the expressed purpose of weeding out ineligible voters, he’s said he wants to mandate voter IDs, and he has promoted gerrymandering seats to maintain republican power in Congress, breaking from standard redistricting schedule that aligns with the censuses each decade.

Practically all of these efforts have been or will be challenged in court, but relying on the courts to protect elections is not a surefire bet, especially if the cases end up in the Supreme Court.

So, what can be done at the state and federal levels to ensure free and fair elections? Short of simply winning all of these cases, there are some actionable steps to be taken.

Because it is the states that decide how states are run according to Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution, there is a lot of power that lies in the hands of state legislatures. However, the federal government does have some influence through a network of agencies, committees, bureaus, departments, and institutes.

What states can do is pass laws that empower local election systems to prepare for the huge logistical burden of a wave of voters arriving in person. This can be done by simply increasing the funding and training of poll workers, as well as creating state interagency working groups on election security.

These agencies can then do the training and vulnerability assessments for election offices that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) previously was responsible for at the federal level. But CISA is currently out of the picture due to DOGE firings and budget cuts.

The aforementioned vulnerability assessments point to another issue facing the safety of the 2026 midterms; physically protecting voting places. The 2024 saw 227 bomb threats and multiple drop box fires, but despite this none were allowed to cause too much damage to the voting process thanks to advanced coordination and preparation between law enforcement and election officials.

With tensions as high as they are right now with political assassinations and protests growing in number, there is no telling how dangerous voting in person might be. That is why physical safety at the ballot box must be priority number one, as it allows people to express their right to vote without fearing for their lives and without outside pressure, such as if militias arrive to “safeguard” the elections in lieu of police officers.

On the gerrymandering front, it is safe to say that that the practice itself is dishonest and can dilute the vote for many U.S. citizens, especially minority groups who have historically faced widespread gerrymandering. That being said, getting rid of the practice at all, let alone before the midterms, is practically impossible due to its entrenchment in our political system and use by both parties.

Additionally, the tit-for-tat battle to balance out redistricting advantages between states like Texas and California should not be allowed to spiral too far out of control across the country. While it certainly could be argued that if one state steps out of line, another should step out as well to counter the impact an unfairly redistricted map could have, that is a slippery slope.

Not every state will be able to pass a new gerrymandered map, and any gains might be uneven across states while also fueling tensions and igniting lawsuits that could extend up to and through the elections. That being said, there are reforms that can be made.

One avenue is freezing maps as they are, to prevent rapid redistricting in the runup to the election, but this is not a guaranteed fix. The other would be to pass parts of the Fair Representation Act, a law in Congress at the moment, but to pass its core components at the state level. The bill focuses on creating multi-member districts for congressional elections, ranked choice voting in these elections, and new requirements for congressional redistricting.

It is unclear if the FRA will pass at the federal level, so taking steps to make reforms at the state level have a chance at leveling the playing field.

Now, there are also steps to be taken at the federal level besides canceling or undoing undemocratic election reforms. In addition to passing the FRA and giving states more funding and training for poll workers, there is an opportunity to create a national nonpartisan system of election administration. This agency or collection of boards could act to entirely focus on election safety, administration, and coordinating state level systems to help them succeed.

There is one final threat posed to the 2026 elections, one that the federal government is the only actor in a position to counter; cyberattacks. Successful cyberattacks can take down or slow voter registration portals, along with practically every electronic voter check-in system and election reporting outlet on election day.

The federal government needs to take cybersecurity seriously, as every foreign adversary will be looking to sow discord through interference and misinformation. Rejuvenating our cybersecurity defenses, as well as protecting poll workers from doxxing and outlets from hacks, is a necessary step that this country needs to take.

All of these steps, from protecting the system from further attacks under this administration, to ensuring the safety and training of poll workers and voters, will work in conjunction to achieve the most important part of elections: trust. Trust in the electoral process is a core element of democracy, and we have already seen how distrust can swiftly lead to violence when protesters stormed the capital in 2021.

These next midterms are perhaps the most important. They will determine the ability this administration has already flexed to change the American political system at every level. With how fast the Trump administration, the 2026 elections will either act as a brake-check or a blank check for Trump to continue his policies. But the election needs to take place as fairly as possible, or else American democracy will truly be on its last legs.

Engagement Resources

• The Fair Elections Center is a nonpartisan voting rights and election reform organization based in Washington, D.C.
• The S. Election Assistance Commission is an independent, bipartisan commission focused on improving the administration of elections.
• The Brennan Center for Justice is a nonprofit law and policy institute, think tank, and advocacy group at the New York University (NYU) School of Law.

Elections & Politics Brief #194 | Nate Iglehart | September 11, 2025 

Summary

In a surprise move, on August 22nd Donald Trump’s administration and the global technology company Intel announced a deal. In it, the United States government will make an $8.9 billion purchase of Intel stock, giving it around a 10% stake in the company.

While this isn’t the first time in history that the U.S. government has made such a move, it has raised eyebrows among many experts, and especially among Trump’s own voter base, who see this as an unfair manipulation of the free market or simply as just a “terrible idea”.

The move is not mindless, however, and with signs pointing to more government stock purchases in the future, the Trump administration is flexing its power to interfere where it wants, when it wants, and how it wants more than ever.

Analysis

To begin, the deal itself doesn’t mean that Trump has a say in what business decisions Intel makes. As part of the deal, that 10% ownership does make the government the single largest shareholder, but it takes the form of what is called “passive ownership.” The government gets no Board representation or other governance or information rights, while also agreeing to vote with the Company’s Board of Directors on matters requiring shareholder approval, with some exceptions.

The money that the government spent on acquiring those stocks came from converting billions of dollars in grants to Intel, via the CHIPS and Science Act under President Biden, into equity.

There are also clauses in the deal that include a five-year warrant for the government to get another 5% of Intel stock if the company reduces its ownership of its manufacturing arm below 51%. This is seen as a move for the government to maintain control of that manufacturing part of Intel’s business, namely its production of computer chips.

This aspect, the domestic production of computer chips, is seen as the driving force behind the deal. Both Biden and Trump, as well as leaders in Europe and across the world, have realized the importance of computer chips and especially semiconductors in everyday life. From cars and iPhones to advanced weaponry, in recent years they have been deemed a matter of national security.

Most semiconductors are produced in Taiwan, although Trump has said that increasing domestic production of semiconductors is a national security priority, given their central role in products ranging from cars and iPhones to weapons and medical machinery. Currently, most of the world’s chips are produced in Taiwan, and China’s market share of the industry is growing. With the current tariff wars, empowering a domestic semiconductor and computer chip industry is generally seen as a prudent move.

Intel, being a leading player in the industry, has recently fallen by the wayside in the market after laying off 15% of its staff over the summer and failing to meet profit goals for a while now. With a major domestic computer chip manufacturer failing, the Trump administration saw an opportunity to bolster the domestic industry through buying its stock.

Government control of a critical industry is rare in American history, but not unheard of. In both World Wars, the government seized control of rail and telegraph networks while also nationalizing industries like coal mining. Far more recently, during the 2008 financial crisis, the government took ownership stakes in insurers like AIG and automakers like Chrysler and General Motors to rescue them.

What is different this time is that the move to take government control of Intel comes before any crisis has occurred. Additionally, the move represents a rapid about-face regarding Trump’s relationship with Intel’s CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, who Trump said should resign days earlier over his connections to Chinese companies.

With the timing of the move being unprecedented in its early implementation, voters and representatives across the board have had mixed reactions. But oddly enough, in the opposite way one might think.

On the right, senators like Rand Paul have called the move a “big mistake” that is a “step towards socialism”, while Tom Tillis said that he “[doesn’t] believe that the U.S. government should be picking winners and losers because you won’t always be right.” The conservative leaning National Review also published an editorial titled “The Government Shouldn’t Get into the Chip Business.”

On the left, the move has drawn an extremely rare amount of praise for Trump. Senator Bernie Sandersoffered tepid praise of the move, in part because it mirrors an amendment to the CHIPS Act that he and Senator Elizabeth Warren put forward years ago that would have required companies receiving funding via the bill to issue warrants or equity stakes to the US government.

Other progressives, like Representative Ro Khanna, see the positives of the deal but say it is an incomplete move. But the positives are there nonetheless. For starters, the move does have a chance of stabilizing Intel by giving it breathing room to rebuild its foundry arm, something that has run at a loss for a while now.

More importantly, if the Trump administration genuinely wants to stimulate a domestic semiconductor industry, government backing is a crucial factor according to experts. Many other countries have a similar setup regarding government backing of their own semiconductor industries, and Taiwan is a shining example of its success.

The move is not without its risks however. If Intel continues to struggle, then government money (and by extension taxpayer money) can get caught up in a failing business.

Michael R. Strain, an economist with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, also raised the possibility of government funds being difficult to remove from this arrangement because of a reluctance to let Intel collapse. While the Biden administration had conditioned the money on Intel reaching milestones, the Trump administration has removed those protections as well.

But with this deal now signed and on the books, Trump has signaled a full-steam-ahead posture moving forwards, with his economic advisors hinting that this deal could be the first of many such deals.

While he has made previous deals with similar setups, like the “golden share” agreement with Nippon Steel and a Pentagon deal with a domestic rare earth magnets company, the Intel deal is the largest one so far.

It has tangible upsides, regarding both national security and industry, but it carries with it gambles that could rear their heads should things go wrong. But regardless of its efficiency, it represents a slowly growing trend of the U.S. government toying with nationalizing industries. How both sides react going forwards, and if this practice slowly becomes a bipartisan issue, are both questions whose answers only time will show.

Engagement Resources

• The National Bureau of Economic Research is an American private nonprofit think tank focused on economic research.
• The S. Semiconductor Ecosystem Map, run by the semiconductor trade association and lobbying group SIA, tracks the industry across the U.S.
• The Intel Lay-off Tracker, run by the coalition of organizations known as CHIPS Communities United, tracks the health of Intel.