This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.What did last week’s elections tell us about how the Democratic Party can win in the future? Probably a lot less than we’re going to learn this week. Last night’s Senate deal to end the government shutdown—which brought together Republican senators and seven Democrats, plus one independent who caucuses with Democrats—is the real fork in the road.One major debate has been whether the party should tack left—call it the Zohran Mamdani strategy, after the New York mayor-elect—or hew to the center, like Virginia Governor-Elect Abigail Spanberger. But the more important question is strategic rather than ideological: Are Democrats willing to adopt new methods to respond to the novel challenge posed by Donald Trump?The eight senators who moved to end the shutdown were not. Their decision has set off a round of recriminations in the party and fury from its base. The reasons are no surprise. Democrats shut the government down in large part as a response to anger from their backers, who wanted to see more fight. Now a faction of the party has surrendered. Not only that, it surrendered at a time when Democrats appeared to be winning politically. Polls consistently showed that Americans blamed Republicans more for the closure, and Trump himself said last week that “the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans” in Tuesday’s elections. Trump’s own approval rate has sunk further too.Perhaps most damningly, the deal, assuming that it survives a few more votes in the coming days, lets Trump and the GOP off the hook with very little to show for it. Most of what it does is restore things to what they were: It would fund all of the government through January, keep a few key programs funded through most of 2026, provide back pay to government employees, and reverse layoffs for some federal workers.What is new is a promise to hold a vote on extending expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, the ostensible reason that Democrats closed the government. But another reason the government was shut down was that Democrats rightly don’t believe promises that Trump or his congressional allies make. Now one of those flimsy vows is all they may get.This split that the shutdown has exposed does not cleanly map onto any left-right axis. The Democratic defectors included Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire—one of the most conservative members of the caucus, according to a site that tracks legislation and voting records—and Dick Durbin, one of the more liberal. Those who remained opposed to a deal ran the spectrum from Mark Warner, a moderate who has often struck bipartisan deals, to Elizabeth Warren, a progressive icon. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer both blasted the deal; Schumer’s No. 2 in the caucus, Durbin, joined it. (One takeaway here is that Schumer was unable to keep his caucus united. Calls for his ouster as leader, including from at least one prominent House Democrat, came quickly.)Perhaps the most salient characteristic uniting the renegades is that they are not running for reelection in 2026. Two are retiring, and six have terms that expire later. That means they’re more insulated from voter anger than their colleagues are. (Senator Tim Kaine, one of them, suggested that the group is taking the heat for other senators who favored a cave but didn’t want to do so publicly.) The half dozen who expect to stick around longer may also be more eager, as my colleague Jonathan Chait wrote, to preserve the filibuster, which Trump was demanding Republicans eliminate.They had other reasons for caving too. Democrats were facing pressure from the largest union of federal-government employees, traditionally a close ally. They were warily watching chaos in the air-travel system. And the Trump administration’s moves to inflict pain by cutting off SNAP benefits in whole or in part seems to have worked on these Democrats—even though an appeals court last night affirmed a decision ordering the White House to pay out the benefits in full.One of Trump’s strongest cards in this shutdown is that he doesn’t appear to care if he is politically unpopular or if Americans suffer because of his hard-nosed tactics. As a result, the breakaway group also seems to have worried that waiting longer wouldn’t achieve any Democratic goals—just give the president more time to exact cruelty.“I understand that not all of my Democratic colleagues are satisfied with this agreement,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen, one of the defectors, told reporters last night. (Her own daughter, a House candidate, was one such critic.) “But waiting another week or another month wouldn’t deliver a better outcome. It would only mean more harm for families in New Hampshire and all across the country.”No one can disagree that the shutdown has caused pain for Americans, but many of Trump’s policies are about causing pain. He’s systematically dismantling civil liberties, undermining checks and balances, attacking the rule of law, eroding the election system, and using federal power to punish ordinary citizens for their votes. The shutdown was a rare chance for Democrats, relegated to the minority, to have the leverage to try to force policy concessions that would stop or slow that. In voting to end the shutdown, the eight senators carried the day, but their method seems unlikely to carry the Democratic Party.One of the burdens of elected office is sometimes having to make the least bad choice: to balance two options that both involve suffering and decide which one would do the most good for the most people. Seven Democrats concluded that the best option was a swift reopening, but it’s tough to buy their argument that more Americans are better off this way.Related:Senate Democrats just made a huge mistake, Jonathan Chait argues.Why this shutdown is so dangerousHere are three new stories from The Atlantic:Nick Miroff: Why ICE officers maskThe third Red ScareThe paradox of James WatsonToday’s NewsThe Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging Mississippi’s law that allows a grace period for mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day. If the Court rules against the law, the decision could affect similar legislation in many states ahead of the 2026 elections.President Donald Trump pardoned Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and other allies accused of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, turning down a petition from the former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds.DispatchesThe Weekly Planet: What will climate change do to America by mid-century? Vann R. Newkirk II explores the country’s future dead zones.The Wonder Reader: Isabel Fattal examines the dreams and limits of the suburbs.Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening ReadIllustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The AtlanticWhy I Am ResigningBy Mark L. WolfIn 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life. However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved.My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticCaitlin Dickerson: Hundreds of thousands of anonymous deporteesWhat actually changed in 1776The costs of instant translationYair Rosenberg: Blaming foreigners for American failings won’t fix them.The ideal that underlies the Declaration of IndependenceCulture BreakWill Heath / NBCWatch. This week’s Saturday Night Live (streaming on Peacock). James Austin Johnson’s monologues as Donald Trump have become an ideal format for the recent onslaught of political news, Erik Adams writes.Explore. Twenty-five years after the premiere of MTV Cribs, Kim Hew-Low examines the show’s influence on a now-pervasive genre: the house tour.Play our daily crossword.PSStaff writer Caity Weaver is on a quest to find the best free restaurant bread in all of America and wants to hear from you! Which is your favorite? Fill out this form, or drop Caity a note at cweaver@theatlantic.com.— The editorsRafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.