Former President Donald Trump is reportedly pushing to make the nightmare that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has worked to avoid come true.
NBC News reports that "Donald Trump is pressuring Republicans to shut down the government at the end of this month if Congress doesn’t pass a GOP-backed proposal to establish new election rules nationwide."
Given that Democrats control both the Senate and the White House at the moment, there is no conceivable way that Republicans could jam through a controversial, partisan piece of voting legislation with little more than a month to go before the 2024 presidential election takes place, thus making a government shutdown almost inevitable.
Regardless, Trump has gone public with his calls for a government shutdown, going so far as to tell Monica Crowley that "I would shut down the government in a heartbeat if they don’t" get the Democratic Senate and President Joe Biden to sign off on the election legislation.
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The hardline House Freedom Caucus, who have never been shy about pushing for policies that lead to government shutdowns, is also in favor of the strategy, reports NBC.
"It’s a risky strategy that could lead to a shutdown on Oct. 1 if Democrats don’t relent — and they are unlikely to," NBC adds. "Republicans have been blamed in the past for instigating shutdowns by demanding passage of provisions they cannot pass through the normal process."
Trump in 2019 oversaw the longest shutdown of the federal government in history of America when he refused to sign any government funding bill that did not contain money to pay for his long-promised, never-delivered wall along the United States-Mexico border.
