The President of the United States has still been unable to negotiate with Democrats and the rest of the government in the 24th day of the government shutdown. This shutdown is now the longest in United States history, and nearly 800,000 government workers are still going without pay.

Regardless of the shutdown, government workers are still maintaining debate among one another. The halt of the government primarily comes from the inability to solve issues over the Southern Border, and the debate will not be able to be solved while the government is still closed. Morale seems low in government and the state of the nation is somewhat confusing and people are yearning to see some changes.

In November, dozens of normally Republican-heavy districts across the United States flipped to the Democrats in the House of Representatives. The Senate still remains mostly Republican, yet Democrats gained some hope out of the wins in the House of Representatives. Since Donald Trump has been able to do mostly what he pleases in the first two years of his presidency, the new House is hoping to make the President’s job much harder and with much more opposition.

In fact, some of the new faces of the new United States Congress are some of the more radical members in government that have been seen in a long time. These cases of extreme leftists can be seen as a backlash to the wins and actions from the extreme right and Trump’s closest allies in the first two years of the President’s term. Some of these new Democrats include Rashida Tlaib, Sharice Davids, Deb Haaland, Ayanna Pressley, Antonia Delgado, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and many others. The new faces of Congress make the scene much more diverse with more representation of diverse religion, racial background, and generally more women in government now than ever before.

Particularly among representatives newly elected, people such as Ocasio-Cortez are significantly more radical on the left than what has been seen in the past. Ocasio-Cortez has already called out the president many times and is a self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist”. Among the new members elected into Congress are many new ideas as to how to thwart Trump’s agenda and to begin arguing for the ideals of the modern Democratic party. Some of the ideas proposed by the new Democrats include an end to the electoral college, harsher ethics rules, raising of taxes, combatting climate change, defending Obamacare, tougher gun laws, and a complete opposition to Trump’s promised Southern Border Wall.

The new opposition and many faces willing to do anything to stop Trump’s agenda has already proven to put the government in a strange place. Checks and balances are an important piece of United States government, and if the only way President Trump knows how to deal with such opposition is a government shutdown, then the American people have a tough road ahead. It is obvious that continued government shutdown helps nobody in the situation and does not solve any problems. In fact, it seemingly only hurts the average citizen, while big names in government play tough politics at one another. Only time will tell how the government continues to act in the face of a long government halt, and hopefully politicians can put their differences aside in order to spare the negative effects that a shutdown has on the American people.