Washington rep on shutdown: ‘Everything is on’ Republicans

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) said on Sunday that “everything is on” Republicans as the government shutdown drags on.

“On the one hand, Democrats want credit for shutting the government down in order to get health insurance subsidies that you talk about that are obviously important and consequential, but on the other hand, they say it’s Republicans who have shut the government down,” NewsNation’s Chris Stirewalt said to DelBene on “The Hill Sunday.”

“So, is this a credit for Democrats or blame for Republicans? Sort out the difference between those two messages,” he added.

“You know, Republicans have shut the government down. They’re in charge of the House, the Senate. They have the White House. They are the ones who need to lead to find a path forward. Everything is on them. They run everything in the House,” DelBene responded. 

“We haven’t been in session for a month because Speaker Johnson refuses to put the House in session,” she added, referring to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Asked for comment, Trump spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the White House “didn’t want the Democrats to shut down the government — the Administration wanted a straightforward and clean CR to keep the government open, the exact same proposal that Democrats supported just 6 months ago and 13 times under the Biden Administration.”

Since the start of the shutdown, the Trump administration has axed or frozen funding that had been approved in the past for projects in Democratic-leaning states; threatened to hold back furloughed workers’ back pay; undertaken more strikes on alleged drug boats while giving limited information to lawmakers; and reappropriated tariff funds that were imposed without the backing of Congress.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) shared an artificial intelligence-generated video featuring Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) appearing to praise the government shutdown — based on an actual quote, but not in the way the video shows.

“Every day gets better for us,” Schumer says in the video on the social platform X, which shows an AI-created depiction of Schumer.

—Updated at 4:31 p.m. EDT