Have the Democrats made their point and it is time to end the shutdown.

[EarlG]

31. Republicans are choosing to let people starve

by not tapping emergency funds for SNAP. They could do this, but they've chosen not to.

Republicans have put themselves into this position: Trump is claiming that he has ultimate authority over everybody. To prove this, he has formed a secret federal police force which he has specifically sent into cities where the public elected Democrats, and he is hunting people down and disappearing them without due process, in violation of their Constitutional rights. He's also knocked down one third of the White House without asking anybody for permission. He's also using the US military to murder people in the Caribbean, just because he says he can.

Trump's position is that it doesn't matter what bills Congress passes or what money they appropriate, he can just decide where and when to spend that money all on his own, like a king. He can take funding for disaster relief and make sure it only goes to states where the majority voted for him. He can cut money from infrastructure projects in states where the majority voted against him. He can pay the military with a $130 million donation from a private citizen.

So the Dems are right -- what's the point in re-opening the government if they can't trust that the money they're appropriating will ever reach the people it's supposed to? They weren't elected to Congress just to rubber-stamp everything that Trump wants. Democrats try and try to save people from the worst excesses of Republicans, but Trump has now thwarted their power to even do that. There's little they can do to stop the ship sinking at this point, even if they do bend the knee and re-open government.

But... when the ship sinks, people blame the captain. Trump is the captain -- and not only is he the captain, but he's spent every day of the last year making sure that everyone is reminded that he's the captain -- he's doing it all by himself, with no assistance from anyone else, and he's repeatedly told everyone that he's the best captain the world has ever seen, or will ever see. He's already positioned himself as the figurehead for whatever is about to happen. And his current approval/disapproval numbers are already underwater on all the issues. I don't see how this gets better for him when his only response to people going hungry is to whine that it's the Democrats' fault.