As things stand, the government is set to run out of money on Sept. 30 and will start the new fiscal year on Oct. 1 with empty coffers. This would, under normal circumstances, be cause for moderate alarm and legislative scrambling to avert a painful shutdown. But coming as it does while President Donald Trump works to consolidate unprecedented executive power, the threat of a government shutdown takes on an added layer of significance and peril. So do the various options available to congressional Democrats desperate for a moment of political leverage. 

Democrats “face a choice,” said Ezra Klein at The New York Times. They can either join Republicans in funding a government that Trump is “turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance” or shut the government down. Republicans need at least seven Democratic senators to pass a budget, meaning the Democrats’ “leverage is slim,” said The Economist. Moreover, the “expectations of Democratic voters” may ultimately be “hard to meet.”

Senate Democrats “aren’t yet getting specific about what it will take to win their votes,” said Punchbowl News. Should they ultimately commit to shutting down the government, the notion that they will be in a stronger political position is a “fantasy they talk themselves into believing,” said Bloomberg. Instigating a shutdown for leverage has “never worked, and it never will.”

As the Trump administration moves forward with mass deportations and roving immigration enforcement squads, the president’s domestic agenda has begun encroaching on his diplomatic prospects, particularly regarding South Korea. Some 300 South Korean citizens were detained and ultimately allowed to leave the U.S. following a Department of Homeland Security raid on a Hyundai facility in Georgia. 

Coming only weeks after the U.S. and South Korea announced a new trade arrangement that was “hailed by both sides,” the Hyundai raid and detentions are a sign that Trump’s agendas have “crashed into each other,” said The Hill. The raid “sent shivers through Korean American businesses” and “sparked concerns” that joint U.S.-Korean projects are “being put on notice.” 

Many in South Korea are “balking” at what they see as the administration’s “bad-faith actions,” said The Washington Post. Some U.S. conservatives, meanwhile, allege that Korean companies are “taking part in a ‘bait-and-switch’” by promising jobs for Americans and then “illegally hiring their own nationals instead.”

South Korea is caught between Trump’s two key priorities, said Bloomberg: “re-industrialization and curbing immigration.” Though there are “no signs” that the incident will “undo the trade agreement and prompt Trump to hike tariffs” on Korea, it also makes companies “more reluctant to invest” in American businesses, thereby undermining Trump’s push to bring manufacturing to the U.S.

Extended absences and unexplained bruises have raised concerns about both his well-being and his administration’s transparency