Shutdown Circus: Bayonets, Sombreros, and Pink Slips

Trump and Mike Johnson turn a constitutional crisis into bad improv while Leavitt and Vance gleefully script mass firings.

Good morning! Donald Trump shuffled into Quantico this week, flanked by his self-anointed “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, and delivered a spectacle that made even the most seasoned generals tighten their jaws. Hegseth opened the matinee with a tirade against “the Department of Woke,” dismissing the Geneva Conventions as “stupid” and mocking shaving profiles for Black soldiers as if racism were now official defense doctrine. He hawked his book, berated the brass, and declared the military’s only true mission is “killing people and breaking things.” If that sounds more like a barstool fantasy than a strategy, that’s because it is.

Then came Trump, croaking his way through more than an hour of word salad so limp it made iceberg lettuce look like a gourmet dish. He floated the idea that America’s “dangerous cities” should be used as training grounds for troops. Translation: prepare the military for occupation of Philadelphia, Portland, and Chicago, Constitution be damned. Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, watching with the kind of horror only a professional soldier can summon, said it plainly: “What I heard the president say yesterday was an implied remark that he was telling everyone in that room, ‘be prepared to do that.’ And that only happens once an insurrection occurs, like during the Civil War.” Not policing, not aid, but bayonets on Main Street.

And here’s the remarkable thing: the spectacle was so grotesque, so brazen in its contempt for the Constitution, that even the mainstream press couldn’t look away. Editors who usually move on after a 24-hour cycle are still digging through the rubble of Trump’s Quantico ramble, publishing new angles, new fact checks, new warnings. Comedians are feasting on it, too, because absurdity this rich practically writes its own punchlines. When a president turns a room of admirals and generals into a silent hostage audience, the analysis doesn’t stop when the cameras do.

In a way, that’s the heartening part. Amid the noise and lies, the spectacle has backfired. Instead of being the tough-guy rally Trump craved, Quantico has become the blooper reel of his presidency: endlessly replayed, mercilessly analyzed, and increasingly recognized as the authoritarian tell that it was.

The generals in the room offered no applause, no chuckles, no chants of “Lock Her Up.” Just stone-faced silence. Trump thrives on the roar of a rally; this time he got the quiet professionalism of a thousand officers who know their oath is to the Constitution, not to a man. The silence rattled him. Retired generals were less restrained. Major General Paul Eaton thundered that Trump’s misuse of the Guard to strut through Los Angeles, D.C., Memphis, Chicago, and soon Portland is nothing less than “a horrifying misuse of our military.” He warned that “using the National Guard has become a pattern for Trump… but it needs to be the last. Using the military to create political theater as a means of distraction is nothing more than intimidation.” Eaton pointed out what should be obvious: this is intimidation dressed up as national security, photo ops masquerading as protection. Trump wouldn’t send the Guard to defend the Capitol on January 6, but now he’s thrilled to send them to blue cities as props in his authoritarian stage play.

And while Trump tries to transform the Pentagon into his personal reality show set, the rest of the world is busy recoiling in horror. Last night, the Israeli navy swarmed the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of forty civilian boats carrying food, medicine, parliamentarians, and activists, including Greta Thunberg. Soldiers in night vision helmets boarded ships while passengers huddled in life vests, hands raised. South Africa’s president called it a “grave offence”; Colombia expelled Israel’s diplomats and tore up its trade deal; Italy is bracing for a general strike. Israel insists the mission was a “provocation.” Of course it was, because nothing provokes quite like food and antibiotics for children under siege.

At the White House lectern, press secretary Karoline Leavitt practically vibrated with glee as she declared that Democrats had “officially shut down the United States government,” because, plot twist, they want to “force American taxpayers to pay for free health care for illegal aliens.” She cited a New York Times poll that apparently proves two-thirds of Americans hate Democratic shutdowns, praised Trump’s “historic” pharma deal with “Pfizer,” and promised layoffs were “very likely” because the government is “not receiving any cash at the moment.” It was the kind of performance that makes you check the seal on the podium twice to be sure you’re not watching a campaign rally in cosplay.

Then Vice President JD Vance stepped up to scold the “Chuck Schumer–AOC wing” for taking the economy hostage, and to break with decades of shutdown precedent by floating permanent layoffs, “in a couple days,” he guessed cheerfully, while promising to “triage” services and freeze billions for blue-state projects. When asked whether they were targeting Democrats for pink slips, “there are going to be Democrats,” Trump had teased, Vance said no, no, of course not, they’re just “targeting the people’s government,” which is definitely the sort of sentence you say when you’re not weaponizing the state.

Leavitt came back to the mic to insist firings are “imminent… two days… very soon”, all synonyms, she helpfully clarified, because “unfortunately layoffs are very likely.” She insisted Democrats had stuffed “taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens” into their proposal, and when pressed about the real-world hit from letting ACA subsidies expire, she waved it off: that’s months away, we’ll chat later, after the layoffs. Also, if you’re wondering whether the sombrero memes will continue during this national emergency, Vance assured reporters the president is “having a good time,” and the sombrero bit is just “a little fun.” Cutting food assistance while posting racist gag art is just so Trumpian.

Here’s what their carnival barker act carefully avoids saying out loud. Those ACA subsidies Democrats are trying to extend don’t go to undocumented immigrants; they keep premiums from spiking for working- and middle-class Americans, including millions in Trump-won states. Shutdowns, historically, lead to furloughs with back pay, not permanent purges. The White House’s gleeful promise to make this shutdown “irreversible” with mass RIFs is the point: use a lapse in funding to slash the civil service by fiat and call it fiscal virtue. Call it Project 2025 with a stopwatch.

If Karoline Leavitt’s press briefing was theater-in-the-round, then Mike Johnson’s media tour was pure slapstick, except the stakes are deadly serious. Johnson all but admitted the shutdown isn’t about budgets or deficits but about saving Donald Trump from impeachment. On Fox, he whined that losing the House would mean Democrats “getting ready for investigations.” Translation: this whole shutdown is just one giant human shield for Trump’s legal liability.

When CNN’s Caitlin Collins tried the radical experiment of fact-checking him in real time, Johnson’s act crumbled. She reminded him that it’s already against federal law to give health subsidies to undocumented immigrants. Democrats are fighting to extend ACA tax credits so Americans don’t see their premiums double. Johnson’s response? Wild-eyed claims about migrants and “red herrings,” punctuated with the kind of facial expressions that make you wonder if his soul is trying to escape his body. Collins: “It’s not in their proposal. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Johnson: “Well, you just don’t see it at the level of specification that we have.” Pure gaslighting with jazz hands.

And then the pièce de résistance: Trump himself, confronted by a reporter with the same facts, responded with word salad about having “a bigger heart than you do” and migrants breaking the law. It was the perfect MAGA trifecta, lie, deflect, ramble, served with a side of racist memes. Trump is still posting AI sombrero gags of Hakeem Jeffries as if mocking Mexicans counts as policy. Imagine being a federal worker about to lose your paycheck while the president’s idea of governing is sharing Photoshop memes.

Johnson even tried to claim FEMA cuts were Democrats’ fault, despite Trump himself musing about abolishing FEMA altogether. When pressed, Johnson muttered that what Trump really meant was “reform.” Right. Reform, eliminate, tomato, tomahto, until the hurricane hits.

So here we are: federal employees unpaid, families staring down premium hikes, FEMA on the chopping block, and the White House churning out memes of sombreros and mustaches. The last two shutdowns cost the U.S. economy billions. This one is being pitched as “an opportunity” to permanently fire workers and gut programs. And the people in charge are giggling like frat boys swapping Photoshop filters.

Federal workers are bracing to miss paychecks while the administration gamifies who gets fired first. National parks are shuttering, TSA and controllers are working without pay, WIC enrollment is freezing, and the Coast Guard is now doing “Semper Paratus” on IOUs. Leavitt, grinning widely, calls this unfortunate.

If you were hoping for a quick end to the shutdown, forget it. Lawmakers on both sides are already warning it could drag on for a week or more, maybe much longer, depending on Donald Trump’s “pain threshold.” Senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, have zero intention of flipping on the House GOP’s so-called “clean” bill, the same measure they’ve now rejected twice. Even centrists representing tens of thousands of federal workers are telling colleagues their constituents are “fed up” enough with Trump that they’re willing to wait him out.

Senate Republicans like John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson are openly saying they’ll just keep holding votes on the same failed bill until Democrats break. Democrats, still bruised from their March cave-in on a six-month CR, are adamant that won’t happen again. One senator put it bluntly: voting for the House bill now would look like “too much of a cave.”

There are whispers of compromise, a one-year extension of ACA subsidies, maybe a week-long stopgap to buy time, but don’t expect movement before the middle of next week. Until then, the lights stay off, the doors stay locked, and the White House keeps promising pink slips with a smile.

Jane Fonda has done what the generals in Quantico could not: she walked out, into the open, with 550 artists behind her. At 87, she relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment, echoing the one her father Henry joined during McCarthyism. “This is the most frightening moment of my life,” she wrote, and if anyone has lived through enough war, repression, and political cowardice to measure fear, it’s Jane Fonda. She’s been celebrated and vilified, jailed and applauded, and she still says now is worse. That should chill anyone who thinks this is just another partisan squabble.

So here we stand: a president fantasizing about using tanks on Philadelphia streets, allies expelling ambassadors, federal workers facing unemployment as punishment for geography, and a flotilla of activists locked in Israeli prisons for daring to bring food to Gaza. The institutions bend but, so far, they have not broken. The generals sat in stoic silence, Eaton roared, and Fonda picked up her father’s torch.

The barstool warriors can scream about beards and battleships all they want, but the rest of us still know the difference between governing and grifting, between soldiers and props, between democracy and the farce playing out on stage.

I’ll be on the road tomorrow with Marz, which means the daily roundup might arrive late or pop up at an odd hour. No flights involved, I’m not risking my sanity or safety under Trump’s half-staffed skies, but the highways will be calling, and Wi-Fi isn’t always the most reliable travel companion. Thanks for your patience if my schedule runs a little iffy.