Conservative attorney George Conway on October 27, 2025

The ongoing government shutdown is showing no sign of ending anytime soon, with the House of Representatives still out of session and President Donald Trump in Asia until the end of the month. But conservative attorney George Conway suggested a strategy Democrats could employ to reopen the government and get an edge over Republicans.

During a Monday interview with The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, Conway brought up the shutdown as part of a discussion about the legal ramifications of the Trump administration's boat strikes off the coast of South America, which officials argue —without evidence — are packed full of illegal drugs to be smuggled into the United States. He told Longwell that the strikes clearly violated both U.S. and international law, and that there was no legal justification for what he said amounted to the government "committing murder."

"What they do is they just basically decide if we don't like something and the president wants to do harm to somebody, you just lump them in with the worst possible descriptor," Conway said. "... You use rhetoric to describe a reality that doesn't exist. And then you pretend there's a legal rationale for acting on that alternative reality that doesn't exist, that is a figment of your imagination and your own mendacious rhetoric ... This is what the Trump administration does in any number of contexts."

Conway then pivoted to the negotiations over the shutdown. Democrats have refused to budge on their calls to extend expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that will run out at the end of 2025, while Republicans have refused to accommodate anything other than the Republican-written continuing resolution that funds the government — without an extension of the ACA tax credits. Conway slammed the Republican majorities in Congress as "docile and servile and non-functional," and suggested this is where Democrats had an opening.

"Congress is the one who has the power to authorize the actual conduct of war and funds the military," Conway said. "So what [Democrats] should be doing is refusing to allocate money for any of this."

"I think the reasons they have listed are ... good and sufficient, but it should be that we're running an illegal operation, all sorts of illegal operations under the guise of the U.S. government, and federal funds that we vote for as legislators should not be used for those purposes," he added. "So that's the way you stop this."

Watch the segment below:

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