Happy Wednesday, Democrats, and a blessed Yom Kippur. Welcome back to our #TrumpCheck series, the LACDP’s weekly newsletter that holds the Trump administration accountable for its lies, deception, and self-serving actions.
Last week, we reported on what it meant for a potential government shutdown and the factors leading up to it. At 12:00 AM this morning, October 1, 2025, the federal government shut down.
Republicans are blaming Democrats, and Democrats are blaming Republicans. Finger-pointing isn’t unusual in national politics, but the lengths being taken today are a new level.
There is a lot of misinformation about what a government shutdown actually means for jobs, publicly-funded services, and the future of the US government. Today, we are here to debunk some of the fact versus fiction about what this government shutdown means for us all, and what MAGA has to gain from it.
In a post on X last night, Speaker Mike Johnson said that “Democrats have officially voted to CLOSE the government. Results: Moms and kids now lose WIC nutrition. Veterans lose health care and suicide prevention programs. FEMA has shortfalls during hurricane season.”
FACT: Trump’s legislative agenda and budget put women, children, veterans, and FEMA funding in harm’s way long before any government shutdown did.
According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research center, Trump’s budget bill cut fruit and vegetable food assistance for low-income women and children by nearly $1.4 billion. Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) totaled $187 billion in funding cuts and have left millions of people without food assistance.
In terms of VA care, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal said last week that Trump cuts are “cruel, reckless missteps [that] are threatening and degrading VA health care” [while the VA disseminates partisan finger-pointing at congressional Democrats as the cause for the shutdown].
As for FEMA, employees within the agency have been flagging the issues over budget cuts for months. In August, more than 180 current and former employees “published a letter warning that debilitating cuts to the agency charged with handling federal disaster response risks a catastrophe like the one seen after Hurricane Katrina.”
Trump cannot stop blaming the Democrats for the shutdown. A new White House webpage titled Democrats Betray Americans with Government Shutdown says that “Democrats have officially brought on a full-blown government shutdown — engineered by the Radical Left lunatics who control their party.”
FACT: In April 2011, Trump said of a government shutdown that, “I hear the Democrats are going to be blamed, and the Republicans are going to be blamed. I actually think the President would be to blame,” in an appearance on The Today Show.
He went on to describe that “If there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the President of the United States.”
It seems that, for once, Trump is right. The public seems to agree. New polling shows that Republicans are facing far more of the blame for the government shutdown than Democrats.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the Democrats refused to keep the government open over health care to illegal aliens and now have jeopardized critical health care programs for American citizens.” Speaker Johnson, VP Vance, and the Senate Republicans X account circulated information claiming the same thing, including boosting a White House page titled, Democrats Shut Down Government Over Free Healthcare for Illegals.
FACT: As explained by NBC, “Undocumented immigrants cannot sign up for Affordable Care Act coverage and are not eligible for Medicaid coverage. That is not legal now, and Democrats are not looking to change that.”
If the Democrats aren’t trying to create free healthcare for undocumented immigrants, then who really shut down the government?
Even when the government is shut down, we will continue our work organizing and fighting the MAGA regime.
Join us, Democrats. Voting is the #1 tool that Americans have against MAGA. The next step in standing up to the Trump administration is setting the record straight; correcting misinformation is a job for us all. If you had this email forwarded, you can sign up for the #TrumpCheck newsletter here.
Stay safe, stay strong, and keep up the good fight, Democrats.
We’ll be back at defending the truth next week. Until then, stay tuned to our social media channels, linked below, for updates on the LACDP’s fight against Trump.
In Solidarity,
Team LACDP
