The Shutdown We Need

The fight should be for the Constitution

I could not more agree—Claire.

By Robert Zubrin

“I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president.”

—Donald Trump, August 27, 2025

The good news is that Democrats in Congress have been forced by their base to try to draw the line against Trump. The bad news is that they have drawn the wrong line.

The Democrats have shut down the government unless subsidies to Obamacare, enacted during the Covid epidemic, are extended. No matter what one thinks of the merit of these programs, this is absurd.

America is not facing a healthcare crisis. America is facing a Constitutional crisis.

As a result of the election of Donald Trump, the rule of law has broken down in the United States. Thousands of convicted criminals who engaged in violence to support Trump’s efforts to prevent the certification of the 2020 election have been released. Those who prosecuted them have been fired and threatened with prosecution. Unidentified men, wearing masks and driving unmarked vehicles, are snatching immigrants—or alleged immigrants—off the streets and even from courts of law, then whisking them off without due process to hellhole prisons in foreign lands.

The FBI is raiding the homes of Trump’s critics, such as former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton. In some cases, his critics have faced outright terror tactics: Last February, for example, the January 6 thugs whom Trump released from jail threatened to bomb a conference in Washington, DC, where Bolton was speaking.

In the past several months, Trump has threatened to pull the broadcast licenses of two major television networks because their coverage was unfavorable to him. He has called for the White House to take over the Federal Reserve system. In direct violation of his oath of office, Trump refuses to enforce laws duly enacted by Congress, such as the TikTok ban.

Trump is undertaking further actions outside of his legal powers, including capriciously imposing or ending massive tariffs (a power assigned under the US Constitution to Congress), and deploying to unwilling states, putatively for law enforcement, the National Guard (usurping the power of state governments), and even US Army and Marine forces (outright illegal).

Trump has also gone out of his way to alienate America’s allies, for example by threatening to annex Canada and Greenland. This undermines the system of collective security that is the basis of America’s defense. Not only that, Trump is now threatening to prosecute those who warned he would collude with America’s enemy, Vladimir Putin, even though he did, in fact, openly collude with Russia by organizing Republicans to block arms aid to Ukraine during the Biden years, and has clearly—if unsuccessfully—attempted to collude directly and personally with Putin since retaking the presidency. In addition, Trump is conducting wrecking operations against virtually all of America’s instruments of soft power, including USAID, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty, as well as America’s scientific powerhouses, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, the Center for Disease Control, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA.

In support of these usurpations, Trump has organized a massive demagogic political machine that is vigorously organizing a nationwide mob using the claim that as America’s elected president, Trump represents “the will of the people,” whose power must not be constrained by other branches of government, established custom, or the law itself.

In short, since retaking office, Trump has mounted an all-out assault on Constitutional government, the rule of law, freedom of speech, free enterprise, free trade, American science, and the defense of the Free World. Compared to these issues, Obamacare is irrelevant. America was a free country before Obamacare, it was a free country after Obamacare, and it can remain free with or without Obamacare. It cannot remain free without its Constitution.

During the 2024 election, Democrats warned voters that “democracy is on the line.” Those warnings proved entirely correct. But it now appears these warnings were issued only for electoral advantage. Democracy was of no more real importance to the Democrats than any other issue they could exploit to win a few votes—and considerably less important than those that might win them more votes. Thus the Democrats now oppose Trump not to save American democracy, but to mollify their base. Forget the Constitution: The focus groups say Obamacare’s the ticket, so that’s the hill on which they’ll take their stand.

The Democrats’ refusal to defend the Constitution marks them as oath-betrayers nearly as putrid as the Republicans who are assisting Trump in assaulting it. As French Foreign Minister Talleyrand once said about Napoleon’s summary execution of a rival, this fecklessness is worse than a crime. It is a mistake.

By making their shutdown demand a standard partisan issue, the Democrats allow Trump to define the fight in standard right-versus-left terms. He will, infallibly, rally his majorities in Congress accordingly. This is a battle the Democrats cannot win.

Consider what might be accomplished if the Democrats were instead to attach a rider to the Continuing Resolution approving it with the stipulation that no funds may be expended enforcing tariffs that have not been explicitly approved by Congress. This would put Republicans in a real bind, because those who rejected such a resolution would have to explain why they find Article I of the Constitution unacceptable. By taking such an approach, the Democrats might well win, scoring a massive victory for America and for themselves in the process. By defending the Constitution, the Democrats could do well by doing good.

Will they take such a virtuous and potentially fruitful approach? It seems doubtful. Their behavior suggests that the Democrats are indifferent to the magnitude of the issues at stake; or worse, they hope to take advantage of the dictatorial powers Trump has arrogated to himself when next they take office. Nevertheless, one must hope that they act properly to save the republic. If they do not, then those who would save it must cast aside their illusions and begin organizing a patriotic political party that will.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” are the inalienable rights demanded in America’s founding declaration. Trump threatens them all. Liberty—not diktats from a ruler who claims unlimited power by virtue of a putative popular or divine mandate—is what we must have. We can only have it under a constitutional government with due process and rule of law. Life requires effective national defense, which in this day and age means collective security alongside our Free World allies. If we are to pursue happiness, we must have the freedom to engage in enterprise as we will, which includes the ability to trade with anyone in the world and do business without fear of delicensing, expropriation, or arbitrary tariff taxation by a demagogic dictator.

So there is the three-point program for the Patriotic Party. Constitutional government, free enterprise, and the defense of the Free World. Many Americans are now sitting on the sidelines, mourning the death of American democracy. If they were to rally to launch such a movement, it could grow like wildfire and prevail.

I do not wish to make light of the difficulties of such a course. But nothing worthwhile is ever easy. The republic must be saved. If the Democrats continue to default, there is no alternative.

Dr, Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer and author. His latest book is The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet (Diversion Books, 2024).