Schumer Shutdown Collapses. Winners & Losers. Carville: We’ll Pack the Court. Mamdani and Grade Inflation. Trump’s Pardons. And More

We thought it might drag on and ruin the holidays. But last night the Schumer Shutdown collapsed (and probably with it Chuck Schumer’s political future). Fox Digital reports:

The Senate took a massive step forward on its way to reopening the government on Sunday, with a group of Senate Democrats caving and joining Republicans in their bid to pass a revamped plan to end the shutdown.

Eight Senate Democrats crossed the aisle to mark the first step in the GOP’s quest to end the shutdown. Many of the lawmakers that splintered from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were among those engaged in bipartisan talks over the last several weeks.

An extension of enhanced subsidies for ObamaCare was the sticking point for the Dems. They didn’t succeed and at most will get an agreement to debate health care and the subsidies (which is long overdue anyway). Progressive Democrats erupted. Senator Bernie Sanders hailed the deal as “a very bad night.” Here is the breakdown on who crossed the aisle:

Seven Democrats and one Democrat-affiliated independent — Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Angus King of Maine — voted alongside 52 Republicans to break the filibuster on the spending package, which includes three spending bills to fund SNAP benefits, veterans programs and congressional operations through Sept. 30, 2026.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the only GOPer to vote no.

Last night’s 60-40 vote was only the first step, but barring an unexpected development in the House, the shutdown is ending. USA TODAY publishes a list of its shutdown end winners and losers. Moderate Democrats headed the winners, while “Republicans (kind of)” made it into both winners and losers. The Dems did win on one point—mass firings will be reinstated. This establishes the Dems as the party of choice for redundant workers.  

Powerline’s John Hinderaker thinks he knows what broke the Dems’ intransigence; The New York Times has six takeaways from the Senate deal to end the shutdown, including “Trump’s pressure tactics worked, even as voters blamed his party.” The radical lefty Daily Kos (remember him?) calls the eight sensible Dems who helped end a pointless shutdown “Vichy Democrats” and demands that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer must be replaced.

No Autopen Required. President Trump yesterday granted pardons to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and more than seventy others tied to an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election:

The full list of those pardoned, each of the president’s co-defendants who faced charges related to the 2020 “fake electors” plot, was posted to X just before 11 p.m. by Trump’s “clemency czar,” attorney Ed Martin..

Martin shared the pardon document in a reply to his May 26, 2025, post that read “No MAGA left behind.”

The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland has a good piece on why President Trump issued the pardons—they were for “citizens targeted by lawfare.”

Meanwhile, President Trump, who bestrides the tiny Daily Musts like a colossus, is floating the notion of a tariff rebate of $2,000 for citizens as the legality of his tariffs is being scrutinized by the Supreme Court.  An editorial in the steadfastly anti-tariffs Wall Street Journal says he’s doing this to blunt the harm tariffs are (in the opinion of the editors) doing to the economy:

This is a teaching moment for a high school logic class. Start with the contradiction that Mr. Trump can both pay a tariff rebate and pay down the national debt. The annual federal budget deficit is roughly $1.8 trillion even with tariff revenue, so paying a rebate would add to the national debt, not reduce it.

New Wrinkle in Class Warfare: “Grade Inflation Produced Mamdani’s Proletariat” is the headline on Allysia Finley’s column this morning in the Wall Street Journal. Unemployable college grads blame capitalism, but the real culprit is higher-ed subsidies, Finley argues:

Palantir CEO Alex Karp attributed Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York mayor to a reverse class warfare: “I think the average Ivy League grad voting for this mayor is highly annoyed that their education is not that valuable, and the person down the street who knows how to drill for oil and gas, who’s moved to Texas, has a more valuable profession.”

It’s understandable that grads might feel indignant about employer demands after having earned stellar GPAs for little effort and mediocre work. A recent Harvard report found that A’s account for about 60% of grades, compared with 25% two decades ago. Some 80% of grades awarded at Yale in 2023 were A’s or A-minuses.

It almost requires an effort to get a C…. Parents and students who pay $80,000 a year expect high marks in return…. Mr. Mamdani’s supporters are rightly angry that the value of their degrees and earnings have declined. Instead of blaming their woes on capitalism or Israel, they ought to be protesting big government and greedy colleges.

In the same vein, you might enjoy Helen Raleigh’s “Mamdani’s Vast Support Among the College-Educated Tells Us All We Need to Know about Higher Ed” at the Federalist.

Meanwhile, Renu Mukherjee notices something interesting about the racial make-up of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s voters in City Journal, and Santiago Vidal Calvo in the same journal observes that the Mayor-elect’s minimum wage hikes will have a devastating effect on young workers, while—oh dear—Roger Simon says Mamdani reminds him of somebody (thanks to Real Clear Politics for noticing Simon’s opus)

I knew Zohran Mandani reminded me of someone as I watched his victory speech on election night. Only minutes in, I realized who it was — Benito Mussolini, Il Duce himself.

A hardened leader determined to transform not just the city that had elected him but the entire country had replaced the sweetness and light, ain’t-I-cute-and-charming candidate of the campaign trail. Instead, he suddenly evinced the tough, take-no-prisoners swagger of Mussolini.

What little attempt he made at post-election reconciliation was less than half-hearted. As if to rub it in the faces of those who were not his followers, he intoned in Arabic, a mere twenty-four years after 9/11, “ana minkum wa alaikum,” which apparently translates to something like “I am of you and you are of us.” I wonder who he wasn’t including. …

Meanwhile, New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin practically begs Washington Republicans not to punish New York for electing Mamdani:

As awful as the mayoral election outcome was for sensible New Yorkers, misguided Washington Republicans plan to use the results as a club to further punish the city.

If they succeed in hitting Gotham with enormous financial penalties for electing socialist radical Zohran Mamdani, the GOP wackos will end up penalizing all 8 million New Yorkers, including the 1 million who rejected Mamdani to vote for other candidates.

The efforts also could turn Mamdani into a martyr, which would boost his popularity and inspire far-leftist copycat candidates across America.

Another unintended consequence of the daffy congressional effort could be the death of the election chances of one of their own.

That would be firebrand Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has announced that she is running for Governor of New York.

I’ve noticed that many Republicans are very ho-hum about Tuesday’s election results (“they were all blue states anyway” is the line). James Carville’s predictions for 2028 might shake them up: The Dems will win, and a Democratic president and Senate will pack the Supreme Court.

Just For Fun. The New York Times did a big interview with Greg Gutfeld—there was a day we’d have said that such treatment by the New York Times meant you’d arrived. But Gutfeld arrived long ago with his 3 million late-night viewers. Speaking of late night, Sasha Stone dubs Jimmy Kimmel and his wife “the monsters of late night.” And huge kudos to Sidney Sweeney, who shows she can handle smug media hacks any time of the day or night.