During the 2025 Shutdown, Republicans Refused to Negotiate. This Time Looks Different.

In October 2025, as Senate Republicans and Democrats failed to reach an agreement on subsidies for the then-expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA), the country plunged into what later became the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

This time around, the dynamics around senators’ negotiations to avoid or, if ultimately, end the shutdown are remarkably different from last time.

For weeks before and during the 2025 shutdown, Senate Republican leaders refused to sit at the table and negotiate with Democrats on extending ACA subsidies.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has repeatedly said that Republicans will not negotiate a policy issue as part of the funding process and insisted that Democrats vote for the GOP Continuing Resolution (CR) and reopen the government to unblock health care negotiations.

This time, Republicans are negotiating with Democrats and encouraging Senate Democrats to negotiate directly with the White House.

“If they have things they want, they should let them know,” Thune said of his fellow Democrats before laying out their list of priorities Wednesday afternoon.

“The White House is obviously open to negotiation,” he added – a striking change from last October.

Senate appropriators were also encouraging Democrats to engage in conversations with the Trump White House.

“We believe Democrats should negotiate with the White House for a proper discussion,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), a member of the Appropriations Committee. “Once that happens, I think we’re on board to try to make sure we don’t end up in a shutdown situation.”

What has changed?

It’s hard to ignore the visceral outrage Americans feel in the wake of two killings involving federal agents, both filmed from numerous angles and both easily and widely found on social media, on television and in newspapers. Polls suggest that as a possible shutdown approaches, the reason for the shutdown resonates differently from the more abstract policy questions — even those of life and death, as health care can be — that the conversation focused on late last year.

“The power of the media, the power of television, makes the difference this time,” Wendell Primus, who served for 18 years as the former senior policy adviser on health and budget issues to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), told TPM.

“Anyone can see what’s going on in Minnesota…it’s not going to help if you’re in charge. If you’re the administration, it doesn’t work,” Primus continued. “Trump watches a lot of television…and I think television makes it very clear that the situation needs to change.”

On top of that, Primus — who was the lead House staffer in crafting the Affordable Care Act — told TPM “Republicans have always had difficulty” with the ACA. And, he added, “it just doesn’t do the same thing for television” as what’s happening in Minnesota.

It’s certainly easier for Democrats to get a message out about American citizens being killed on the streets of Minneapolis by federal agents. And, on top of that, Democrats feel — and polls back it up — that the public is on their side as they object to the practices ICE has engaged in as part of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement spectacle, which has played out and at times seemed designed for social media over the past year.

A new poll from the Searchlight Institute found that “large, bipartisan majorities of voters oppose ICE’s lawless tactics, including detaining U.S. citizens (73%), entering people’s homes without warrants (79%), and failing to wear clearly identifiable uniforms (70%).”

Some Democrats also believe that as the midterm elections approach, Republicans don’t want to find themselves stuck in a fight where they defend federal agents who are killing American citizens in the streets.

“I don’t think Republicans want to be able to defend these abuses and this illegality,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told reporters, including TPM, at a rally Wednesday.

Hiding behind the budget procedure

Procedures for how Congress allocates funds also make it harder for Republicans to avoid negotiating this time around.

Technically, Republican congressional leaders’ argument that the then-expiring Obamacare subsidies were not part of the appropriations process was correct. This argument is not accessible to them this time.

“The ACA grants are not part of the annual appropriations process, but DHS and ICE are…So they can claim that they are directly tied to the appropriations process,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal fiscal policy at the Center for American Progress, told TPM.

“It’s a generous interpretation, though,” he continued when asked why he thought this round of negotiations would be different. “The less generous interpretation is that all fights are political, and Thune understands that. He understands that he needs to make changes at DHS but he didn’t want to extend the ACA grants because he was against it.”

Pushing back against the technical – or as Kogan calls it “generous” – interpretation, experts also pointed out to TPM that negotiations between Senate Republicans and Democrats included an option where Democrats would vote to support the current DHS bill in exchange for separate legislation where their concerns about ICE conduct would be addressed. Of course, a separate bill would also be separate from the budget process, rendering their October arguments mute.

Thune also said this week that he was pushing for dialogue between the Trump administration and Senate Democrats so that the two sides can come to “a mechanism where you don’t have to change the bill or split it up and send something back to the House.”

This is a far cry from the attitude Republican congressional leaders took last time when they claimed that President Donald Trump had nothing to discuss with Democrats and that they should step in and simply help pass the GOP CR.

Hypocrisy

Kogan also pointed out the hypocrisy of the Republican Party in the latest shutdown, saying that maintaining issues that are not directly related to the budget is a frequent practice that congressional Republicans engage in.

“Republicans frequently try to do things that are not directly related to the appropriations process,” Kogan said. “There are tons and tons and tons and tons of unrelated riders on every appropriations bill all the time and they have no problem with that.”

“They frequently use the leverage they have,” Kogan added. “For example, in every debt ceiling negotiation, they try to change the budget…and equivalently, in 2013, they told Democrats, ‘unless you end the ACA, we will shut down the government.’ And they shut down the government.

Simply put, Kogan explained, they agree to the same thing as Democrats when it comes to something they like.

“The real problem behind this was they didn’t want to extend the ACA subsidies,” Kogan said.