The Government Shutdown Will Be as Painful as Biden Wants It to Be

‘For all practical purposes for D.C., the federal government has been shut down since March 9, 2020,” the D.C. Policy Center’s Yesmin Sayin said recently as the prospect of a government shutdown loomed ever larger. “So, it really doesn’t matter as much.”

That quote forms the basis of Politico’s Capital City columnist Michael Schaffer’s latest piece. For residents of the District and the surrounding suburbs, the remote-work lifestyle ushered in by the pandemic ensures that a government shutdown will have few practical consequences in the lives of all but non-essential federal employees. It’s possible that Washingtonians might not even notice the shutdown, Schaffer notes, which bodes ill for Democrats who hope to make a Republican-induced work stoppage as visible as possible:

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.

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‘For all practical purposes for D.C., the federal government has been shut down since March 9, 2020,” the D.C. Policy Center’s Yesmin Sayin said recently as the prospect of a government shutdown loomed ever larger. “So, it really doesn’t matter as much.”

That quote forms the basis of Politico’s Capital City columnist Michael Schaffer’s latest piece. For residents of the District and the surrounding suburbs, the remote-work lifestyle ushered in by the pandemic ensures that a government shutdown will have few practical consequences in the lives of all but non-essential federal employees. It’s possible that Washingtonians might not even notice the shutdown, Schaffer notes, which bodes ill for Democrats who hope to make a Republican-induced work stoppage as visible as possible:

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.