As shutdown closes in on 35-day record, observers point to dysfunction in divided government

WASHINGTON — Election Day, America's celebration of civic participation, will also bring a dark milestone this year for the nation's government.

Barring a surprise breakthrough, the U.S. government shutdown will tie the longest federal closure ever on Tuesday, 35 days. One tick after midnight, it becomes the longest ever.

Nonpartisan American historians and political experts say the extended closure casts brutal light on the frailty of basic legislative processes in Washington, exacerbated in the era of President Donald Trump.

"America used to be the world's best advertisement for democracy," says H.W. Brands, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and author of over 30 books on U.S. history. "The government shutdown, amid the other Trump-related troubles, must frighten other countries away from democracy."

Questions underscored by this shutdown — based on interviews with historians and political scientists — touch on executive branch overreach and the role of Congress. Also, observers say the shutdown has reemphasized and magnified the ever-deepening, unbending partisan polarization among elected representatives.

Basic government functions and critical programs that Americans depend on for food assistance, heat, child care and health have become bargaining chips to get government simply functioning again.

The shutdown drags on as many of the 31,000 federal workers who live on Long Island are missing paychecks, thousands of low-income residents on the Island are at risk as federal food subsidies are running dry and some businesses are seeing government contracts frozen.

"My sense is that Americans are disgusted but resigned to these shenanigans as the new normal in American politics," says Donald Nieman, a history professor at Binghamton University. "There aren't any — let alone any serious — negotiations because polarization is so complete that there aren't even small groups within the Democratic or Republican party willing to broker a deal."

Quiet Congress

Increasing polarization in Washington is not a particularly new insight, or development.

But several experts emphasize that this shutdown is rooted in something far beyond a singular partisan or polarized fight — in this case, whether to add language about extending health care subsidies to a bill to reopen government.

The much broader picture, they say, is that it’s happening at a time when a president already has been actively undermining some of Congress’ fundamental constitutional powers, while Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and most of their majority party members, have remained largely docile.

There can be some criticism directed at Democrats, suggests Joshua Huder, of Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. But he says that's more tied to frustration in hearing them blame Republicans for the shutdown. 

"A continuation of government, as it's been operating in 2025, is a capitulation to President Trump's unprecedented power grabs," including as Trump attacks Congress' power of the purse, Huder said. Democrats should not "shirk responsibility," he says, for their deliberate strategy now of using a filibuster to combat violations of norms and constitutional principles by Trump and Republicans in 2025.

Since taking office for his second term in January, Trump and his administration have frozen or "clawed back" federal funds previously authorized by Congress, pushed to fire federal workers and dismantle federal agencies created by Congress and removed inspectors general who are supposed to conduct nonpartisan agency oversight.

But with the shutdown, the Republican House and Senate majorities and their leaders are now allowing "an entire branch of government" to be further "neutralized," argues Ray Smock, director emeritus at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education and a former House historian.

"For all practical purposes, this shutdown functions as a coup, with Trump making policy, deciding how money is spent, all with no Congressional oversight or investigations," Smock says.

House on hiatus

So unprecedented is this government agency shutdown — in ways beyond its duration — that the House has broken modern records of its own for not coming to work in Washington.

The House hasn’t voted since Sept. 19, with Speaker Mike Johnson saying repeatedly that because the chamber has already passed its bill to reopen government, there’s no reason to bring members back, and the onus is now on the Senate to get that measure through.

Even some rank-and-file House Republicans have privately expressed frustration at the House’s work stoppage, noting that even in a shutdown congressional hearings can proceed and there are more than 100 bills already approved by committees that could be voted on.

But only a few, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have vented publicly about having "no respect for the House not being in session." The House’s hiatus by Thursday will be the only time in the past five decades it will have been away from Washington for more than 40 days, outside of the summer or campaign season, according to a Wake Up To Politics analysis.

Paul Brace, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, says the shutdown "is symptomatic of the larger crisis we are in."

He and others cast Republican leaders as unwilling to make any move without Trump’s go-ahead, with Congress passing few bills beyond Trump’s huge package of tax and spending policies. That included not approving spending bills to keep agencies running into this new, current fiscal year.

Meanwhile, he said, Trump has set records for executive orders, unilateral directives regarding government functions.

"This government shutdown says so much about how dysfunctional American politics has become and how far we have drifted toward being governed by a strongman," says Nieman, from Binghamton University.

He adds that the behavior of congressional Republicans "is just an extension of how they've behaved since Jan. 20, ceding powers conferred on them by the Constitution over spending, taxes, tariffs, foreign policy, war and more to a president whom they fear."