We are getting a government shutdown for Christmas! Or Hanukkah!

Here’s what happened and what might come next.

On Thursday night, a vote on a continuing resolution was taken, which some viewed as 1) a stunning rebuke to Donald Trump 2) raising fears of a shutdown.

The first claim is almost certainly incorrect, and the second is possibly wrong.

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The root of the conflict lies in the Republican House conference’s inability to unite behind ANY Continuing Resolution to fund the government. There are a handful of Reps that simply don’t vote for them. Ever. For anyone.

This is not a problem for the Democrats who do not have fiscal hawks in their ranks. It’s just a part of the game.

But Speaker Mike Johnson needs to pass a CR. So he has no choice but to negotiate with Democrats. But they know that he knows that they know he needed their support. Sensing leverage, Democrats demanded extensive concessions, transforming a slim resolution into a sprawling 1,500-page bill resembling an omnibus. Republican leaders, frustrated by being excluded from these negotiations, learned details of the bill from lobbyists who had inside knowledge.

The situation intensified when media narratives blamed Trump and Elon Musk for killing the bill. In reality, internal GOP dissension doomed the Quasibus CR as soon as the text hit the internet. It would have died when it went to a vote.

Did Trump and Musk accelerate its collapse and prevent a vote? Sure. But it woke up dead. It was never happening.

Trump’s Truth Social missives did set a new course, advocating for a clean continuing resolution with disaster relief and other GOP priorities while proposing a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling—a strategic move to avoid draining political capital on recurring debt ceiling battles. Specifically the Trump tax cuts which are a top priority in 2025.

House conservatives, especially fiscal hawks like Ralph Norman, Chip Roy, and Thomas Massie oppose eliminating the debt ceiling (a key Republican cudgel when Dems run things) unless there are other massive spending cuts to go along with them. Their resistance in the Rules Committee prevented the bill from advancing traditionally, forcing a long-shot vote requiring a two-thirds majority on Thursday night, which was never realistic.

GOP leadership permitted the vote anyway to gauge opposition and explore potential concessions.

To put simpler, the bill that failed last night was always meant to fail. The question was by how much and who would vote no. One GOP House staffer expressed to me that more rock ribbed conservatives that talk a big game about government spending voted to suspend the debt ceiling than he would have guessed.

Looking ahead, the bill will likely shrink more, possibly making the debt ceiling provision more palatable. If Johnson can flip one of the three hardliners on the Rules Committee, a party-line vote might succeed. Alternatively, a few Democrats might cross over, given the approaching holidays and the general desire to avoid a government shutdown.

However, if the government does shut down, the practical impact could be limited since most federal employees would still receive holiday paychecks. Political fallout, however, would be inevitable, with intensified pressure to strike a deal after the new year.

Despite the chaos, some GOP insiders view the vote as more promising than expected. Though 33 Republicans voted against the resolution, party leaders seem cautiously optimistic. If Trump and key Senate allies like J.D. Vance begin actively whipping votes, a slimmed-down resolution could pass. The next steps remain uncertain, hinging on whether enough conservatives can be persuaded to compromise in the days ahead.

Or we shut down and reload for the new year as Trump 2 begins as Trump 1 ended: messy.

Chapters & Timecodes

* [00:00:00] Introduction and Upcoming Topics

* [00:01:59] U.S. Government Shutdown and Congressional Infighting

* [00:12:02] Trudeau’s Political Crisis in Canada

* [00:49:19] Musa Al-Gharbi on U.S. Electoral Trends

I don’t think Kamala Harris will ever be president.

I don’t think she has a connection with Americans beyond a core Democratic base who can be easily woo’d by another shiny object. I think she would do best in the one-party state she came from and run for governor of California where she might even pass for the centrist she positioned herself as nationally.

But I may well be wrong. If I am Bill Scher will have told me otherwise.

He believes she enters our four-year cycle to select the next president as the most well positioned Vice President loser in recent American history.

Damning with faint praise? Maybe.

We discuss 2028 and everything we got wrong about the election in this chat!

Chapters:

00:00:00 - Introduction and Overview

00:03:06 - Bill Scher on 2024 Election Insights

00:15:01 - Trump’s Continued Popularity

00:40:02 - Trump’s Lawsuit Against Iowa Pollsters

00:45:02 - House GOP Budget Standoff

00:46:47 - AOC’s Leadership Challenge in Congress

00:50:09 Handicapping 2028 Contenders

I’m diving deeper into DeButts.

Yes friends, there’s been a crack in the DeButts case.

To recap, on December 3rd, Anna Navarro tweeted that Hunter DeButts, the brother-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, was pardoned. This is not true. There is no historical record of a Hunter DeButts connected to Woodrow Wilson, and Wilson certainly did not pardon him. Navarro later admitted this was incorrect, blaming a ChatGPT search result.

However, nobody could recreate the exact hallucination she posted, and the citation icons in her screenshot resembled an outdated ChatGPT interface.

Curious, I discussed this with Andrew Mayne, my co-host on The Attention Mechanism, a podcast about AI. I also asked listeners to try replicating Navarro’s prompt in ChatGPT. Shortly after, I received an email from a listener named Bret, who provided screenshots showing that while he got the same initial answers Navarro referenced—Bill Clinton pardoning Roger Clinton and Donald Trump pardoning Charles Kushner—Hunter DeButts was nowhere to be found.

Brett’s search led to a site called living.alot.com, which featured a listicle titled “Five Presidents and Governors Who Have Pardoned Family Members.” Interestingly, this article was last edited on the same day Navarro tweeted. My next move was to contact the article’s supposed author, Ron Winkler. However, the author photo appeared unmistakably AI-generated, suggesting the entire article was likely created by a generative AI model.

Investigating further, I found that living.alot.com is owned by Inuvo.com, an ad-tech company specializing in AI-driven marketing solutions. This suggested that the hallucination might not have come from ChatGPT itself but from living.alot.com, an AI-generated listicle site, possibly due to SEO optimization targeting AI-driven search engines. If ChatGPT search pulled from this listicle, it would explain the strange result Navarro saw.

Speculating further, it seems plausible that Inuvo.com, focused on generating ad revenue, might have tweaked its content after seeing traffic driven by the controversy to avoid being de-ranked or blacklisted by search algorithms. Bret’s recreation of almost the exact same search result strengthens this theory.

If anyone at OpenAI working on ChatGPT Search is reading, I recommend a hard look at de-ranking or blacklisting the alot.com suite of sites. The credibility of search-powered AI depends on filtering out such low-quality content.

In the end, the mystery of Hunter DeButts appears to be a hallucination generated by an ad-tech company leveraging AI-driven SEO tactics.

Navarro’s strange ChatGPT result wasn’t directly ChatGPT’s fault—it was fed a falsehood generated by a content-churning AI.

And with that, the Hunter DeButts saga is solved.

All’s well that ends well.

Chapters & Time Codes

* (00:00:00) Introduction: Media, Politics & New Ventures

* (00:01:20) Unmasking the Hunter DeButts Hoax

* (00:15:01) Political Shifts: Murkowski and Ocasio-Cortez

* (00:17:27) Government Shutdown Negotiations

* (00:20:26) Chris Cillizza