Unless you are a federal worker or flying from a U.S. airport, you may be forgiven for not realizing the federal government remains paralyzed in a partial shutdown. But both Democrats and Republicans hope you are paying attention – and blaming the other party for the standoff. It’s that old Spider-Man meme in action.  

With no resolution in sight, each side has tried to maximize the impasse to score political points – and in the case of the Trump White House, use it as a pretext to lay off thousands of government employees.  

This week marked the ninth vote in the U.S. Senate in which Democrats refused to give Republicans the necessary votes to pass a stopgap funding bill that would have ended the shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his party want Republicans to agree to extending healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and passing some other healthcare fixes.  

Democrats seem to be confident that it’s President Donald Trump who will ultimately own the shutdown. And Reuters/Ipsos polling so far backs that up.

Trump may have invited some hard feelings by using the shutdown as an excuse to greenlight the firing of more than 4,000 government workers, gutting what he has called “Democrat-oriented” federal agencies. The White House budget director, Russell Vought, has said that as many as 10,000 workers could be let go. However, a federal judge in California on Wednesday blocked the administration from firing any further workers while she determined whether the layoffs may be illegal.  

In a bid to turn up the heat, Trump on Friday plans to release a list of “Democrat programs” that he says will be scrapped. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said this week that the shutdown is costing the economy $15 billion a week in output.  

But not all the pressure is on the Democrats. This week, the head of a U.S. airline trade group urged an end to the shutdown, citing increasing risk to commercial aviation because of the pressure on air traffic controllers, who are facing staffing shortages and working without pay. 

The U.S. Department of Transportation said last week that more than half of the flight delays in the United States were caused by air traffic controller staffing issues. Major airports have seen ground stops that have snarled air traffic and frustrated passengers. 

The Trump administration has gone so far as to release a video to run in airports featuring Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, pinning the blame for the shutdown on Democrats while telling travelers that security screeners are working without pay.  

Democratic candidates have tried to leverage the shutdown to their advantage – no one more so than former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who is running for governor of Virginia. Spanberger, whose state is home to thousands of federal jobs, has accused Trump of “escalating chaos by unleashing mass firings on Virginia’s federal workers.” 

(Some Republicans such as Senator Susan Collins, who is up for reelection next year, have also criticized the layoffs.)  

In New Jersey, Democratic U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill, who is running for governor, blamed Trump for freezing billions of federal funding for the long-gestating project to build new rail tunnels connecting her state to New York. “It’s despicable that the president of the United States is costing us so much money and attacking our economy,” she said at a recent event. 

Both Spanberger and Sherrill are trying to tie their Republican opponents to Trump, contending they are in lockstep with his policies. Not to be outdone, a political action committee operated by the Senate’s top Republican, John Thune, is running TV ads in Washington and New York (media markets adjacent to Virginia and New Jersey respectively) that blame Democrats for the shutdown. 

But if the shutdown lingers much longer, it may be hard for Trump to escape the blame. After all, there’s no well-known saying that “the buck stops” with the Senate minority leader. 

Follow Reuters/Ipsos polling on the president's approval ratings here.

Trump is unhappy that Spain isn’t trying hard enough to pay its share of shared defense costs to NATO, but the Spanish government seems to be taking his threats to levy new tariffs in its stride. "The defense spending debate is not about increasing spending for the sake of increasing it, but about responding to real threats," Spain's Economy and Trade Ministry said.