It has now been longer than a month since the United States government shut down. The clock keeps ticking as we wait for a solution from the highest offices in the country. The fiscal year began on Oct. 1, and ever since, Capitol Hill has been locked in a meticulously performative stalemate. 

At this rate, we are one day away from surpassing the 35-day record under the first Trump administration: the longest in U.S. history. The two incidents form a striking parallel in President Donald Trump’s refusal to capitulate over a sustained period. 

However, this time, the negotiations are no longer centered on funding immigration and border security, but on the budget deadlocks triggered by partisan disparagement. 

There have now been 13 separate votes by Democrats against reopening the government, as the party waits for Trump and the Republican Party’s cooperation. The parties’ dueling press conferences and televised bargaining sessions obscure a darker truth: Both have found a perverse comfort in the theater of blame. Legislators seem to enjoy testing each other’s patience more than governing.

This tug-of-war is closely tied to local elections: the New York mayoral race, among many other key races today. These scrambling contests hinge on both parties’ ability to spin narratives, somehow reorienting people’s anger into electoral loyalty.

The people who feel the sharpest edge of this slow collapse are clearly not sitting in the chambers of Congress. There are millions of beneficiaries who rely on ordinary federal government functions to survive another week. The shutdown’s effects trickled down to Transportation Security Administration agents, National Institutes of Health postdoctoral researchers, Social Security processors, NASA technicians and more. 

This weekend, I walked around the barren streets of Washington, D.C., where exquisite attractions such as the Smithsonian Museums have sealed their doors, while trash and waste pile up in public parks with no one responsible for cleanup afterward. Even my flight back to Los Angeles was hit by wave after wave of delays, reflecting shortages of air traffic controllers at airports. 

These changes are subtle yet noticeable, and I couldn’t help but question how anyone could ignore the vicious truth. 

We are all susceptible to the cascading impacts of the cutbacks. Even as California residents, we are not shielded from the immediate threats of losing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

Normally, for every dollar the federal government provides for CalFresh, our state must provide $2. Gov. Gavin Newsom released $80 million of state funds to offset delays in SNAP benefits, as well as mobilizing the National Guard and California Volunteers to support food banks, but at the current pace, the fiscal allocations reserved for food resources will run dry within a few days.

Despite Gov. Newsom’s militant approach of suing the federal government and deploying the National Guard to assist food banks, CalFresh benefits are inevitably going to be delayed. In fact, of the 42 million Americans who rely on the Department of Social Services’ food, more than 13% of the recipients are from California. 

Many low-income college students will feel the hit more acutely. The fallout will hit our communities in ways our institutions are not prepared to handle. Nonprofits and food pantries alone are not enough to meet the demands of anxious citizens.  

On top of juggling between part-time jobs, tuition debt and rent insecurity, some students on financial aid now face the additional pressure of losing hundreds of dollars per month that goes into food expenses. 

Yesterday, Trump announced he will be providing reduced benefits to SNAP, providing a partial concession while there is still no clear end date to the shutdown in sight. 

Given the scale of the struggles students may face in the next few weeks, the shutdown is not just a distant notion in the Capitol: People’s health and wellness will be in serious jeopardy. The financial stress of paused paychecks, alongside the continuous, cruel excuses from the highest office in the country, is causing our economy to crumble from the bottom up. 

When food insecurity becomes an aftermath of the funding freeze, history will not remember which party won the bipartisan war; it’ll remember the thousands of constituents who shouldered the burden of a petty two-party duel. The true essence of this debacle is absurd and sinister: The fragile Congressional self-interest of both parties erodes the social infrastructures of basic needs. 

The solution to this active bargain is not complicated: We have to put aside the bipartisan self-indulgence. Lawmakers must pass a funding bill to fulfill their legal obligations to keep the programs running and stop treating the federal budget as their theatrical battlefield. After we properly address this procedural failure, we will be ready to discuss the larger, far more existential question of legislative incapacities.