Not that markets care (Tuesday’s stock selloff had nothing to do with whether the US has a functioning legislature and everything to do with who said what about the AI bubble), but the funding lapse in D.C. will become the longest on record as of Wednesday.

Another pointless attempt — the 14th, if you’re furloughed and keeping track from the couch in your living room — to pass a stopgap measure failed Tuesday, as doomed exercises are wont to do.

That means Donald Trump’s guaranteed to break his own record for longest government shutdown. This one will be 36 days as of mid-week.

As a reminder you scarcely need: The previous record was set in 2019, when Trump held out for over a month in a petulant dispute over the border wall.

It’s crucial that Americans consider the distinct possibility that for Trump this is just another in a series of exercises aimed at normalizing the abnormal.

I’ve been at pains these last four weeks to emphasize that autocrats thrive in states of exception — periods when, for whatever reason, business as usual is suspended. Trump’s insistence on engineering emergencies is strategic: Emergencies justify unilateral action and other manifestations of ad hoc policymaking outside the normal processes.

The most glaring example of that so far in Trump’s second term is the Supreme Court’s growing reliance on the shadow docket, which the conservative majority’s using to “temporarily” rule on matters of critical importance in lieu of a process that normally plays out over a period of months or even years.

It’s a very simple strategy. Trump conjures an emergency which in turn compels the Court to rule expeditiously. The Court’s in his pocket, so those rulings tend to go his way. The result: The conservative majority has de facto allowed Trump to govern as an autocrat in the interim period between now and… well, between now and whenever, for lack of a more concise way to put it.

The shutdown’s just another example of a co-equal branch of government — in this case Congress — abdicating to Trump who’s by now mastered the dark art of stringing together emergencies to legitimize one-man rule. While I assume the shutdown will end eventually, it’s notable that Mike Johnson demonstrated virtually nothing in the way of interest last month in breaking the impasse, prompting critics to wonder if he’s complicit in an effort to undermine the very chamber he leads.

As the shutdown was poised to enter its 36th day, Trump suggested on TruthSocial he’s prepared to simply ignore the lower courts. “SNAP benefits… will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government,” he said. “[N]ot before!”

Karoline Leavitt subsequently walked back her boss’s remarks, but Trump’s post, as stated, looked like open defiance of a federal court order demanding the administration pay food stamp benefits out of a backup reserve which holds roughly $5 billion.

Without going into the details, nearly 50 million Americans are at risk of losing some or all of the money they depend on to eat. Although Trump claimed it’d be his “honor” to pay the benefits if only the courts would “clarify” how the administration can do so “legally,” his own Justice Department argued before a judge that the SNAP situation doesn’t constitute an emergency and as such can’t be a rationale for draining reserve funds.

It’s funny: This is an administration that sees emergencies everywhere. Trade deficits are an emergency requiring the unilateral imposition of tariffs, immigration’s an emergency requiring the possible suspension of habeas corpus, drug boats in the Caribbean are an emergency justifying US military strikes and inner-city crime’s an emergency justifying the presence of troops in the streets. Yet somehow, food assistance for 42 million people isn’t an exigency.

If you didn’t know any better, you might be inclined to ask if Trump’s weaponizing hunger.