“You know what I’ll say: Yes, if we don’t get what we want, one way or the oth­er — whether it’s through you, through a mil­i­tary, through any­thing you want to call — I will shut down the gov­ern­ment. Absolute­ly… I will take the man­tle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.”

— Don­ald Trump, Decem­ber 11th, 2018

The #Trump­Shut­down is here.

The Nar­cis­sist-in-Chief — egged on by his rabid base and his nev­er hap­py legion of right wing media com­men­ta­tors — has made good on his threat to shut down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment (at least the part of it that can be closed for busi­ness), though he’s not accept­ing the blame like he promised he would only a few days ago.

It’s the third time dur­ing the last two years that Repub­li­cans have failed to keep the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment open despite con­trol­ling both hous­es of Con­gress and the pres­i­den­cy. They have the pow­er, but they sure don’t seem to want the respon­si­bil­i­ty that goes with it. Paul Ryan, in par­tic­u­lar, seems resigned and indif­fer­ent, with his major­i­ty gone and his speak­er­ship about to end.

Like the House Hostage-Tak­ing Cau­cus did five years ago, Trump is try­ing to use Amer­i­ca’s pub­lic agen­cies as hostages to coerce Democ­rats into vot­ing against their val­ues. This time, though, the objec­tive is fund­ing for the stu­pid wall that Trump and his min­ions want to build on the bor­der with Mexico.

“[Indi­vid­ual Num­ber One] has dou­bled down on a tem­per tantrum of epic pro­por­tions,” said Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee.

“The lev­el of dis­rup­tion and destruc­tion he has wrought with his fix­a­tion on build­ing a use­less wall is stag­ger­ing. He has divid­ed fam­i­lies and trau­ma­tized chil­dren, sowed xeno­pho­bia and divi­sion through­out the nation, and for the third time this year will force a shut­down of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that will have real con­se­quences for mil­lions of fam­i­lies this hol­i­day season.”

“Because of Don­ald Trump, hun­dreds of thou­sands of fed­er­al employ­ees will be fur­loughed or forced to work with­out pay over the holidays.

“For­tu­nate­ly, in Wash­ing­ton State, we will be able to min­i­mize impacts to state pro­grams and ser­vices in the short-term”

“But our state should not be left respon­si­ble for con­tin­u­ing impor­tant ser­vices that are a fed­er­al respon­si­bil­i­ty — includ­ing pro­grams such as food inspec­tion, sex­u­al assault and domes­tic vio­lence pre­ven­tion, crime vic­tim sup­port, and basic food assis­tance for women, infants and chil­dren across Washington.”

“This is not about bor­der secu­ri­ty. This is about a man who puts the opin­ions of a few ultra-far-right cable news com­men­ta­tors above the good of the nation he was elect­ed to serve. Don­ald Trump may not have to deal with the con­se­quences of his capri­cious and self­ish gov­ern­ment shut­down, but we the peo­ple do.”

“I’m proud that we live in a state where Ore­go­ni­ans have stood up for their val­ues and sent a clear mes­sage that ours is a wel­com­ing and inclu­sive state, a place where all Ore­go­ni­ans have access to qual­i­ty, afford­able health­care, and where envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment work hand-in-hand,” said Ore­gon Gov­er­nor Kate Brown. “As we enter the hol­i­day sea­son, I call on our incom­ing con­gres­sion­al lead­ers to look ahead and coun­ter­bal­ance the polit­i­cal games from the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion that have dom­i­nat­ed 2018.”

“Ore­gon is focused on con­tin­u­ing to deliv­er essen­tial ser­vices to our fam­i­lies, and is eval­u­at­ing resources that could be used if nec­es­sary. Ten­ta­tive­ly, the state cal­cu­lates that if the shut­down lasts two to three weeks, the cash flow impacts on the state can be man­aged. In the mean­time, the Depart­ment of Admin­is­tra­tive Ser­vices will con­tin­ue to work with state agen­cies to iden­ti­fy addi­tion­al gaps and devel­op con­tin­gency plans for a longer gap in funding.”

“This shut­down is tru­ly absurd, and would not have hap­pened if [Don­ald] Trump had sim­ply ignored the eleventh hour taunts of a hand­ful of con­ser­v­a­tives and instead moved for­ward with the Sen­ate’s bipar­ti­san bill,” lament­ed Wash­ing­ton’s senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray in a statement.

“On behalf of fam­i­lies in Wash­ing­ton state and across the coun­try who are now left won­der­ing when they’ll get their next pay­check or when their gov­ern­ment will be ful­ly func­tion­ing, I’m urg­ing Repub­li­cans to work with us to do the right thing and re-open the gov­ern­ment as quick­ly as possible.”

“Ear­li­er this week, Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats in Con­gress were ready to pass leg­is­la­tion that would keep the gov­ern­ment open,” not­ed U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, [Don­ald] Trump – in an effort to appease hard­line con­ser­v­a­tives and Fox – chose to sab­o­tage this deal and demand $5 bil­lion to fund a waste­ful bor­der wall that won’t make us any safer. House Repub­li­cans have now embraced Pres­i­dent Trump’s desire to shut down the government.”

“The shut­down will result in rough­ly 800,000 fed­er­al employ­ees being fur­loughed or work­ing with­out pay, just in time for the holidays.”

“They include for­est ser­vice fire­fight­ers, Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion agents, and TSA employ­ees. New home and small busi­ness loans will stop, many nation­al parks will close, and the IRS won’t be able to issue tax refunds. Our farm­ers will also take a hit as Farm Ser­vice coun­ty offices will close and much-need­ed aid from the Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture will cease.”

The appro­pri­ate course of action now is for con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans to join Democ­rats in pass­ing a bill to reopen the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, sans fund­ing for a wall, and force Trump to veto it. Then Con­gress should over­ride the veto.

It’s high time our orig­i­nal branch of gov­ern­ment reassert­ed itself and act­ed in the best inter­ests of our coun­try, since our exec­u­tive branch has been hijacked by a failed busi­ness­man who is more inter­est­ed in enrich­ing him­self than governing.