Washington set to reopen

On November 10, 2025, the United States Senate has passed legislation to reopen the government, bringing the longest shutdown in history closer to an end.

However, this move has not come without controversy and backlash, notably from the Democratic Party itself.

The Senate’s critical vote

The Senate vote, 60-40, came after a critical group of 8 Senate Democratic centrists reached a deal with Senate Republican leaders and the White House to reopen the government in exchange for a future vote on extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.

In the beginning of October 2025, the US federal government had shut down due to disputes and disagreements between Democrat and Republican lawmakers regarding government funding, especially with regards to extending health care tax credits, also known as Affordable Care subsidies (which the Democrats have been pushing to include in a funding measure).

Today, however, the longest shutdown in US history, which exceeded 41 days, is set to end as a major breakthrough has been reached, thus bringing the costly stalemate to a near end. The legislation will now be sent to the House of Representatives as its members return from recess (which began in mid-September 2025).

As for the health care dilemma, a future vote in December has been promised, which would aim to resolve the issue before the subsidies’ expiration on January 1, 2026.

Internal Democratic ‘betrayal’

While Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana praised the aforementioned Democrat senators, saying they “decided to put principle over their personal politics,” the Democratic Party had other thoughts.

As soon as news spread that several Democrat lawmakers broke ranks and supported the GOP in their proposed legislation, some of the most prominent figures in the party voiced their critics, labeling the 8 senators’ move as “betrayal” and “pathetic.” According to the latter’s point of view, their decision has been driven by necessity to reopen the government, after the GOP refused to budge; and it is this issue, particularly, which caused the backlash. Democrats believed that the senators should not have yielded, especially as parties that have previously forced government shutdown have never actually achieved the policy outcome they were demanding (such as the case with the Republicans against Obama’s health care law in 2013 and Trump’s border wall in 2019).

This internal rift in the Democratic party is just one among numerous others. Just recently, the party split regarding the nomination of Zohran Mamdani to New York City’s mayoral elections, leading Andrew Cuomo to run independently.