As the federal shutdown enters its second week with little sign of letting up, Democrats have increasingly framed health care, specifically the extension of health care subsidies enacted under President Joe Biden, as their main condition for helping the Republican majority reopen the government. But while Democrats see health care as an issue that “resonates with a majority of Americans,” it’s also “one of the most intractable issues in Congress,” said The Associated Press. Accordingly, a “real compromise” is “unlikely to be easy or quick.”

For Democrats, the “high-stakes standoff” of a government shutdown is also a chance to use affordable health care to “win back support from some of the working-class supporters who have drifted away from them,” said NPR. Republicans, on the other hand, are “outwardly exuding confidence that the approach will not find traction” even as research shows “80% of all premium tax credits benefited enrollees in states Trump won.” 

And not all Republicans have rejected their Democratic colleagues’ demands outright either. Despite stressing partisan opposition to the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, “I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will double if the tax credits expire this year,” said MAGA firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on X. “Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this.”

While a health care compromise could be the way out of this shutdown, “timing is the issue,” said Yahoo Finance. The White House has made conflicting gestures toward negotiating with Democrats, with investors and market watchers increasingly wondering “how long” it will take for the lawmakers to “even come to the table.”

Two of the Democrats’ highest-profile figures are threatening to leave the bipartisan National Governors Association, and possibly even work to disband the group, over the Trump administration’s ongoing use of National Guard troops to occupy Democrat-led cities. On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, both long rumored to be potential 2028 presidential candidates, each separately warned the NGA that they would pull out of the national body if the group did not condemn President Donald Trump’s troop deployments. Other Democratic governors may join them, warned Newsom. 

All governors, regardless of party, should “denounce this infringement of state sovereignty” and “unequivocally tell the federal government that it’s unacceptable to deploy troops from one state to another” over that state’s objections, Newsom said in a letter to the group. While officially nonpartisan, Newsom’s letter “plainly targeted Republican governors of the group,” said Politico. By “overriding governors to deploy military assets into another state against another governor’s will,” the White House is abandoning the “foundational principles that have protected our Republic for nearly 250 years,” said Pritzker in his own letter to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), who chairs the NGA. 

“Unlike the bipartisan group,” the Democratic Governors Association has “denounced Trump’s move,” said The Washington Examiner. But the bipartisan NGA “does come together on occasion” to speak out on issues that “impact all states,” such as the government shutdown, said the San Francisco Chronicle. The governors’ dual efforts come amid “pushback from state and local officials” against the Trump administration’s deportation operation, particularly in and around Chicago.

It’s the latest company to capitulate to Trump’s demands