The Chuck Schumer Shutdown has begun. Republicans should not panic. They should continue insisting on a clean continuing resolution. This is what the American people want. Republicans should have faith in them.

So far, the messaging between President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, the Senate leader, John Thune, and Speaker Mike Johnson has been about perfect.

They have kept up the chorus: They have passed a clean continuing resolution to fund government through the House, and they want to pass the same bill through the Senate.

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, has a much more complicated message. He voted to close the government. He did so to force the Republicans to agree to add billions (some estimate trillions) of dollars in more spending.

The left-wing base of the Democratic Party is furious at Mr. Schumer over his performance in the previous spending negotiation. Their hatred and fear of Mr. Trump is so great that they need the psychological release of fighting — even if it is self-destructive.

In the next few days, Mr. Trump and the Office of Management and Budget director, Russ Vought, are going to show the Democrats just how destructive this fight is going to be. They will begin shrinking the parts of government that liberals value most. 

Mr. Vought has been thinking and planning for this fight ever since the Trump team was driven into the wilderness after the 2020 election. I worked with him at the America First Policy Institute for four years as he studied how to dramatically reduce the size of government.

In a shutdown, the president has much wider discretion over whom to furlough and whom to fire. In the next few days, key left-wing elements of the federal government are going to start getting pink slips.

Ironically, the Schumer shutdown strategy may enable Mr. Vought to trim the federal workforce far more than Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency did. As layoff notes start going out, Democratic senators will almost certainly break ranks and start voting to reopen the government. 

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the first to support reopening the government. Now Senator Angus King of Maine (an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats) and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada have joined the team.

It is hard to understand why the Democratic senators from Virginia and Maryland would vote against a clean continuing resolution. Their states have the largest number of federal employees who could lose their jobs.

Watching the debate between Republicans who want to open the government and Democrats who insist on closing it reminds me of the historic 1858 debates between Republican Abraham Lincoln and his Democratic opponent, Senator Stephen Douglas, in Illinois.

Douglas was a brilliant orator and a great trial lawyer. Lincoln had a totally different speaking style that relied heavily on facts and logic (he had studied Euclidean geometry in the 1850s to improve his ability to make his arguments based on models of clear thought). 

The core of the debate was over whether slavery should be expanded in new states that were being established in the American West. Lincoln was unequivocally against expanding slavery. Douglas dodged the issue and said white residents in the new states should decide. The common saying was that Douglas was the best lawyer with a bad case, and Lincoln was the best lawyer with a good case.

Today, like Lincoln, Republicans have a simple, clear case to make. They have passed a clean continuing resolution in the House. They want to open the government. 

Once the government is open, they will be glad to debate with Democrats over their issues. This simple, positive case allows Mr. Johnson to stay calm, pleasant, and factual in interview after interview.

The Democrats are carrying the burden of Douglas’s tradition. They say they want to open the government — but they also want to fight Republicans over new spending. Specifically, they are pushing for things that Americans don’t want.

First, America’s New Majority Project has reported that the American people strongly oppose closing the government. In a poll released in September, 76 percent of Americans said it was important to keep the government open. Since Democrats are closing it, they must slide past this fact.

Second, Democrats are trying to strip out popular provisions from the One Big Beautiful Bill. These rules are much more popular than Democrats or the media want to acknowledge. 

Work requirements for able-bodied adults who receive Medicaid or food stamps are popular. America’s New Majority Project found 69 percent support them. 

Further, 67 percent of Americans support strengthening verification measures to eliminate fraud in Medicaid — and ensuring that states can’t spend any Medicaid dollars on illegal immigrants. Democrats want to get rid of these provisions.

Third, the Democrats are trying to expand a Covid-19 era health care funding scheme — which was always meant to be temporary. It is a blatant handout to insurance companies. The pandemic is over. We don’t need to keep spending money on it.  

The Democrats are presently yelling “health care” and hoping no one focuses on the details. Naturally, their allies in the left-wing press are obliging.

Because the president, vice president, speaker, and Senate majority leader have all mastered the arguments that will work, they can calmly identify, undermine, and destroy the inaccuracies and charades.

Who knows how long the shutdown will last? It just depends on how much pain the Democrats want to inflict on Americans. Republicans don’t need to give an inch. They have a winning hand they can play to the end.