LUCAS VASQUEZ: Hello and welcome to another episode of In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota. I’m your new host from the Minnesota Daily, Lucas Vasquez.
Over the past few weeks, the nation has been watching as the longest government shutdown in American history unfolds in Washington D.C. As this drags on, Students at the U and Minnesotans statewide are starting to feel its effects.
To help us make sense of it all, I recently sat down with two political science professors from the University of Minnesota: Kathryn Pearson, who specializes in congressional studies and Paul Goren, who specializes in public opinion.
Today, we’re going to use their insights to understand not just what is happening, but why it’s happening, and what it means for all of us. First things first, however, how does a government even shut down? Pearson suggests that it begins with something called appropriations bills.
KATHRYN PEARSON: So every year Congress is supposed to pass and the president is supposed to sign 12 annual appropriations bills that fund federal agencies, that pay federal employees and that provide money for the services that federal agencies provide. These 12 appropriations bills constitute about a quarter of the overall federal budget.
It’s the discretionary funds that Congress is in charge of. It does not include things like Medicare and Medicaid and interest on the national debt, but it does include a lot of really important priorities. And so this year, on October 1 the House and Senate had not agreed on any appropriations bills and the president had not signed any into law.
None of the appropriations bills have been passed, and so the House of Representatives passed another continuing resolution to keep the government funded through November 21 with just Republican support. And then the Senate needed 60 votes to do so, Republicans voted for it. Most Democrats uh, did not, and so the Senate could not pass their version. And so the federal government shut down on October 1.
VASQUEZ: So, in sum a failure to agree on spending bills leads to a shutdown. But what makes this shutdown unlike others we have seen in the past? Pearson pointed out some key differences.
PEARSON: Well, at the heart of this shutdown is Democrats in the House and Senate are not voting for this continuing resolution because subsidies for the Affordable Care Act are set to expire on December 31 and Democrats want to work with Republicans to extend those subsidies, and Republicans will not do that.
They say they will not do that until the government is open again. But Democrats are saying, you know, we won’t open the government again until we work out an agreement on extending these subsidies. So the two parties are locked in on different positions and there really hasn’t been a lot of negotiating. And so that’s a big difference, um, between now and past shutdowns. So, you know, there’ve been shutdowns in the past. There were a couple in the 1990s, one when Obama was president then the longest one when Trump was president in 2018 and 2019.
But in all of those cases the president was negotiating with Congress like there was movement, but we were just not seeing any movement. The president is engaged in sort of foreign policy and just telling Republicans, “Don’t negotiate.” And so there hasn’t been a lot of negotiating and it really is causing people to wonder how long the shutdown will go on, and I think people are concerned that it may be a very long time.
VASQUEZ: Another key difference she mentioned is that this is a full government shutdown. In previous shutdowns, some appropriations bills had been approved, resulting in only a partial shutdown. For instance, during the shutdown in President Trump’s first term, he was able to redirect Pentagon funds to pay military personnel.
He was able to do this because the defense appropriation bill had already been approved, ensuring that the military continued to receive pay. In contrast, this complete shutdown that we are seeing today has created a far less flexible environment. This raises concerns about the lack of progress in negotiation and over how long it might continue.
So now we have a full shutdown, with a deep partisan divide about healthcare and an administration who won’t encourage negotiation. This is truly something we have never seen before. But with all of this happening in Washington there is still another dynamic that plays a heavy role and that is the American public’s opinion. Goren says it comes down to one main thing, party identity.
PAUL GOREN: So what we usually see with government shutdowns is, public opinion research shows that people oppose the government shutdown when they can blame the other party. And then they accept the government shutdown when it’s being administered by maybe the president of their party.
So Democrats disapprove of the current government shutdown because it’s happening under unified Republican control. In the past, I’ve seen public opinion evidence, which shows that when the Democratic Party has unified control of the government or a democratic president then Democrats now approve and Republicans disapprove of. So it’s, it’s mainly filtered through the lens of people’s party ID. If you can blame the other party, then you’ll do that.
VASQUEZ: But do Americans view shutdowns as a real crisis or just as political shenanigans and theater? Goren suggests it’s usually the latter.
GOREN: I think most Americans most of the time view it as theater. And very few government shutdowns last long enough to start having a major impact on people.
VASQUEZ: But Goren was quick to add that this shutdown is unique. We’re well past a month now, as of today, November 7, 2025 the government has been shut down for a record number of 37 days and the effects are starting to be felt. And as the shutdown drags on and effects start to hit the general public, opinions start to change.
GOREN: The current government shutdown is an exception. I think we’re coming up on a month already. So usually most people see it as theater, especially if the shutdown is resolved within a few days, or even a couple of weeks.
But, when it tends to drag on for a long time, like the current government shutdown, and people may start to feel loss of government benefits or inconvenience from the government shutdown. Then it becomes more than theater and it’s actually affecting people’s lives and that can influence their opinions.
VASQUEZ: The reality of this is that the effects of the shutdown are being felt by millions of Americans nationwide. One group that is feeling its effect the most are federal workers. Half of whom are currently working without pay. And with the expectation of back pay, which has historically been a given in the past, now up in the air, who’s to say how long federal workers are willing to work without pay.
PEARSON: So there are 1.4 million federal employees who are currently not being paid, and about half those federal employees are still showing up to work every day because their agencies have determined that they are “essential” and then the other half are furloughed and not able to go to work.
In every shutdown, federal employees have received back pay. Congress actually passed a law that President Trump signed during the last, the most recent shutdown, codifying that. But despite that legislation President Trump and other executive branch officials have been saying that some federal employees may not receive back pay.
And there have actually been competing bills in the Senate that would only pay, you know, federal workers who are currently working. Um, those have not passed, but there is concern among federal employees that some will be paid back pay, some won’t. And that is just incredibly stressful and demoralizing for federal employees.
VASQUEZ: Despite this, the Trump administration has found the funding to pay certain federal employees during this shutdown.
PEARSON: What is unusual about this shutdown is that actually during the shutdown President Trump has actually fired some federal employees, which has not happened before in the past. CDC workers and then also, we talked about military personnel, but President Trump in the administration has found money for some federal employees, for example, like ICE employees that the president really favors.
And so it’s this situation where the administration is sort of picking and choosing among federal employees in a way that we have not seen in the past.
VASQUEZ: The impact is also felt far beyond just government offices. According to an article from the New York Times, transportation officials’ are planning on slashing air traffic by 10 percent at 40 major airports across the country. This is largely because of the loss of air traffic controllers who are not coming to work because they aren’t getting paid. With the holidays just around the corner this will impact families nationwide.
PEARSON: So air traffic controllers are all essential workers. So they need to show up at their jobs every day, but they are not being paid. And this is a demanding job and they’re not being paid. And so many air traffic controllers are taking on second jobs or third jobs so they can get a paycheck. As we saw in the last shutdown, they’re beginning not to show up to work because they’re not being paid, and it’s just a really insecure job.
VASQUEZ: Pearson commented that even in our own backyard we are starting to feel the consequences of the shutdown.
PEARSON: If federal agencies can’t be working on federal research, whether that’s processing grants and applications or giving out money for federal research that they have promised universities. So the federal research component is huge. I also think about students who may be on some of the programs that have either ended or set to end, such as SNAP benefits, which the USDA and president have said will be out of money on November 1.
VASQUEZ: Goren also flagged the ending of SNAP benefits as a potential tipping point in public opinion.
GOREN: The supplemental nutritional assistance program, SNAP benefits are gonna run out and it’s being fought over in the courts today. But if people who depend on substantial government benefits like that, or Medicaid or other kinds of government services, or just even, even help in social security offices for senior citizens. And those services are increasingly unavailable or those resources are not available.
Then I think public opinion is gonna shift in a way that that disapproval of the shutdown is going to rise. And then the Democrats and the Republicans will start blaming each other.
VASQUEZ: The blame game, in congress especially, is fueling the American partisan divide. But who might walk away with the toll of responsibility for this shutdown in the eyes of the public?
GOREN: It might be a hard sell for the Republican party since they have unified control of the government. And people don’t really know that much about who controls government, but they, they can get a sense if Republicans control everything, it’s their fault.
Democrats will make that argument. Republicans will try to blame it on Democrats, but I think the Republican party could get beat up a bit moving forward.
VASQUEZ: But do shutdowns actually hurt politicians come election time? With midterm elections happening just next year voters may consider the shutdown when they take to the ballot booths, but Goren suggests that maybe that isn’t the case.
GOREN: The public has a short term memory on many things. And so if this shutdown is resolved in two days or even two weeks, um, that’s gonna, you know, happen about 11 months before the next election. And, and so I don’t think, you know, people are really gonna focus on what happened 11 months ago.
They’ll be focusing on, you know, what’s going on, what’s happening to my pocketbook, uh, economic condition of the country, you know, a few months before the election.
If a shutdown like this happens right before an election though, because that would be in that short term window, people would remember. And then, and then the blame game might have political consequences.
VASQUEZ: Nowadays social media and news outlets are becoming more and more partisan and because of this it can be tricky to distinguish between what’s fact and what is just party rhetoric.
PEARSON: Well, you know, compared to, say, the 1995, 96 shut down when most Americans were receiving their information about the shutdown from the same sources.
Today Republicans are receiving their information from Republican leaning sources. Democrats are receiving their information from Democratic leaning sources. And so, you know, it’s easy for the two parties to talk past each other and for Americans to really sort of shut out the perspective of the party that they disagree with.
VASQUEZ: The latest polls to come out of CBS show us that only about 37% of Americans are very concerned about the shutdown, this is only up 9% since it was asked earlier in the shutdown on October 9. In contrast 59% of the democratic base approve of how their party is handling the shutdown, while the republicans show a bit more of a solid backing with a 71% approval rating.
The question now is, who are the moderates backing through this shutdown. But how do we measure public opinion to determine these things, and when we do, how accurate does it tend to be? Goren argues that in terms of accuracy polling tends to be pretty good.
GOREN: I mean, there’s questions about the accuracy of polls more generally, but the, the best high quality polls, gold standard public opinion polls usually ask questions very straightforward. You know, which side do you blame more for the current government shutdown or the current government impasse, the Democrats or Republicans?
And those are standard questions. They work well, and what they usually find is, you know, again, there’s a strong partisan divide, what matters is the people who are sort of independent are only leaning slightly toward one party or another.
That’s kind of where marginal public opinion is and is 70% of independence, if it goes from 50% of independence blaming one side to 70%, that’s when that becomes politically consequential and, and these standard public opinion polls can identify those people pretty accurately.
VASQUEZ: So where does all of this leave us? We have a full government shutdown, driven by a deep partisan divide over policy, with real consequences for millions of Americans and students here at the U. The public opinion is largely partisan, but could shift as the pain becomes more widespread. And while the political fallout might be minimal if it ends soon, the strain on our systems and our citizens is very real and felt right now.
Will Republicans and Democrats come to the drawing board and look for compromise? Will federal workers receive backpay? Will this shutdown play a role in next year’s midterm election? Who’s to say. Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts on our webpage at mndaily.com. I know I’ll definitely be thinking about this in the weeks to come.
That is all I have for you today folks. This episode was written by me, Lucas Vasquez, and produced by Ceci Heinen. Thanks for listening and as always if you have any questions, comments or concerns, don’t be afraid to send us an email at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you.
My name is Lucas Vasquez and I’ll catch you next time on In The Know. Until then have a great rest of your day!!
