Shutdown standoff not about whether Democrats or GOP ‘win or lose,’ says Sen. Warnock

VPM | By Leila Fadel and Obed Manuel

Published October 3, 2025 at 10:40 AM EDT

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., speaks as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. appears before a Senate Finance Committee hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on September 04 in Washington, D.C.

Updated October 03, 2025 at 15:14 PM ET

Georgia Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock says the federal government shutdown is not about whether Republicans or Democrats “win or lose.”

Leaders of both parties remained steadfast in their positions after the shutdown began Wednesday: Democrats want to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that millions rely on and undo health spending cuts from President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Republicans say they want to negotiate the subsidies after reaching an agreement to fund the government.

Warnock told Morning Edition that Georgians in rural areas have expressed concerns about losing access to health care. He said a small business owner told him she decided to close her business because paying for health insurance would be too expensive without ACA subsidies.

The senator told NPR’s Leila Fadel that the White House should “stop acting like these are pieces on a chessboard. These are people’s lives.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democrats for the shutdown during an interview with Morning Edition, saying they picked a “partisan fight” over healthcare spending at the “ninth hour.”

Leavitt also defended the Trump administration’s plans for permanent layoffs during the shutdown. She said President Trump planned to meet with the Office of Management and Budget to decide what agencies are essential and which ones “do not align with the administration’s ‘priorities and values.'”

The White House singled out Warnock and fellow Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in a post on X, saying their votes in the Senate left military service members without pay at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia and hurt businesses around it. The federal government employs more than 100,000 people in Georgia, according to the state’s Department of Labor.

Warnock defended his recent votes, saying he “voted to keep the government open a few times this week,” referring to a Democrat-backed plan that would have funded the government, extended ACA subsidies and repealed cuts to health care programs. “Why don’t they come down to Georgia and look into the faces of the people that I’m seeing?”

As a pastor, Warnock said he’s “hoping against hope” that GOP members will come to negotiate and realize that federal cuts to health care spending will hurt their own constituents.

“They’re betting that I care more about these people in Georgia who are losing their jobs and who are struggling with health care than they do. And sadly, that appears to be the case,” Warnock said. “I hope they’ll center the people and then we have a chance at getting the public policy right.”

Ally Schweitzer edited the digital and radio versions of this story. Nia Dumas produced the radio version.

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Leila Fadel

Leila Fadel is a host of Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.

As a national correspondent, Fadel consistently reported on the fault lines of this divided nation. She flew to Minneapolis in the midst of the pandemic as the city erupted in grief and anger over the killing of George Floyd. She's reported on policing and race, on American Muslim communities and on the jarring inequities the coronavirus laid bare in the healthcare system. Her "Muslims in America: A New Generation" series, in collaboration with National Geographic, won the prestigious Goldziher Prize in 2019.

Previously, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought listeners to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.

She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.

Before joining NPR, Fadel covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.

Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

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