German public opinion on Israel-Palestinian conflict shifts after Hamas attack, new polling shows

Before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people, most Germans thought Israelis were slightly more responsible than Palestinians for the conflict between them. But new polling shows that the recent violence has changed public opinion in Germany.

The survey of over 3,000 people was conducted both before and during Hamas’ attacks and Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, and captured Germans’ attitudes changing in real time as the violence unfolded. 

“Just completely randomly, that survey coincided with the recent Hamas attack,” said Anselm Hager, a political scientist and Humboldt University professor who conducted the online poll. He and his co-author, Miguel Pereira, were surveying German attitudes on antisemitism at the time, including a question asking respondents to rank on a 10-point scale: “Who do you think is more to blame for the Israel-Palestine conflict?” where a zero indicated that “Israelis are entirely to blame,” a five indicated that both sides were equally responsible, and a 10 indicated that “Palestinians are entirely to blame.” 

Hager told Blue Marble that the data has not yet been peer-reviewed and to not overinterpret the results. But he and Pereira decided to share their findings on X (formerly Twitter) to help audiences understand how public opinion was changing in “a chaotic situation,” Hager said.

Recent polling shows a snapshot of public sentiment in Germany from before the latest Israel-Hamas war. Polling from YouGov this summer found that 17% of Germans sympathized more with the ”Israeli side” and 15% sympathized more with the “Palestinian side.” Twenty-six percent sympathized with “both sides” equally while nearly half (43%) was unsure. 

Last year, polling from an independent German research group found that about one-third of Germans agreed that “what the state of Israel is doing to the Palestinians today is in principle no different than what the Nazis in the Third Reich did to the Jews.” Forty percent disagreed and one-quarter said they did not know. 

In Hager’s survey, just before the Oct. 7 attack, Germans said Israelis were slightly more responsible for conflict with Palestinians – scoring 4.5 on the 10-point scale. 

There was a one-point jump immediately after the attack — to about 5.5 — meaning the German public thought Palestinians were slightly more responsible. 

Hager said that people’s attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are usually “fairly stable” and would be hard to change. 

“So a one-point jump — that’s a lot,” Hager said. 

That’s also true in the U.S., where polling over two decades from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has found little change in support for Israel and Palestinians over time. 

“Few people say it’s entirely Israel, it’s entirely Palestine,” Hager said. 

In response to the Oct. 7 attack, Israel declared war on Hamas and dropped at least 6,000 bombs on Gaza, killing thousands of residents.

During Israel’s bombing campaign, German public opinion blaming Palestinians for conflict continued to harden among Germans aged 24 and over. 

“If anything, the effect is stronger now,” said Hager. 

Attitudes shifted most among left-leaning Germans and older Germans, but the opinions of younger respondents aged 18-24 did not change: They continue to hold Israelis slightly more responsible than Palestinians. Among Germans over age 24 however, public opinion continued trending toward blaming Palestinians even as Israel escalated its bombing campaign in Gaza after Hamas’ attack.

Overall, Hager’s research has found that when German politicians see polling, they change their rhetoric to match public opinion. 

“Politicians listen to the polls,” Hager said. 

Lama El Baz contributed to reporting and data analysis for this story. 

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What to do when you don't know what to say — about Gaza, the Israel-Hamas War, or anything else

Since the recent war broke out in Israel and the Palestinian territories, students, universities, politicians, and companies have taken to social media to condemn the violence and express concern for those killed and injured.

Some have received pushback for what they have said. Others have received pushback for what they have left unsaid. Many more have sat in a mix of grief, rage, and confusion asking, “What do I say at a time like this?”

It is understandable to want to engage in what is going on in the world. In recent years, social media has become the primary vessel to do so. But pausing can be just as important as publishing.

“I think it's completely unrealistic to think that we ought or even could be adequately informed about everything,” Mónica Guzmán, author of “I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times” told Blue Marble. “It is very good, as an internal sort of self-awareness, to recognize when we have more questions about an issue than we have answers.”

Guzmán isn’t saying that we should log off, or even take a position of silence. Rather, she says that social media should be a starting point for engaging in global issues. She offers up the idea of ‘containment’— a more intentional “Can we take this offline?” — as a step toward more productive conversations.

She spoke with Blue Marble’s Christina Colón about the pressure to belong, the limitations of social media platforms, and how we can have more mindful conversations.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Mónica Guzmán: What we have to say becomes one of the most important things about who we are. A lot of folks have put into their Twitter [now X] profiles, or wherever they are, statements about what they believe and what they don't believe. And I think it feels like that's what we need to do in order to be anything in these spaces. It's closely tied to having a sense of identity, which at its core is about finding a sense of belonging.

Who are your people and who are not your people is a question that you're constantly negotiating when you're on social media. And the way to do that is to put your statement, put your stuff out there, and then maybe respond or judge everyone else's.

Christina Colón: This gets at the question of, ‘What do we do when we want to say something and we want to let people know who we are, but we don't feel informed enough about an issue to put something out there?’ How do we approach those moments?

I think what it takes to gain that perspective and confidence that you don't have to have a statement or an opinion on everything, and you don't have to feel like something is wrong with you if you are not informed enough on every single thing, is to spend some time off those platforms where you can reconnect to the moment, your setting, the people who are around you, and you feel the primacy of that presence.

You live in your own head. And in your own head, you're constantly being queried. You're constantly being put on the stand. What do you believe? Where do you stand? What do you do now? I think that it is very good as an internal sort of self-awareness to recognize when we have more questions about an issue than we have answers.

I would say that a lot of us miss recognizing that we feel the pressure to just belong. And so we feel the pressure to just say, to just repost, to just agree or disagree reactively, rather than say, ‘Well, I don't know a lot about this. What do I need to unlearn? Where can I go to ask some questions?’

But the other challenge is that even if you do that, it's not just about information. It's about concern, worry, hope, emotion. And we all have this radar, these gut senses, that we either like or don't like [something]. We cringe or we lean into issues. And you don't need to be informed for that reaction to come up. And sometimes that reaction is enough. And that's when we get rage, we get fear, we get all these things. So it also takes some mindfulness: 'I have this feeling, I have this revulsion to this. Let me get curious about where that comes from.'

That's a way of being informed as well.

And how do we approach those conversations when they are emotional — and for very good reasons. How do we know how to get in those spaces and have meaningful conversations? How do we know how to open those doors and not create more divisiveness or hostility in those moments?

The first thing is to check the context. So if you're coming into an Instagram or a TikTok comment thread, keep several things in mind. One is, if you comment, if you say something into this, it's public. Whatever you're saying and whatever people are saying back has this mass audience of indeterminate size – a sort of panopticon. And if your concern is belonging and coming off smart or morally right, then in those kinds of exposed spaces – especially where people cannot witness the listening of others – then what we do is we perform our perspectives instead of explore our perspectives. It's a theater.

Now, if what you want is to approach it productively, that can mean many things. But if part of your definition is, ‘I want to explore, along with somebody else, the questions that I have and sort of test my views against theirs and see what we can learn,’ an open, exposed space is not a great place to do that.

What I would do is encourage you to increase what I call ‘containment.’ The containment of a conversation is the degree to which it is contained to the people actually participating in it. If you're going back and forth with someone on one thread, but it's part of a larger conversation, which is part of this other post, it's so uncontained you don't know who is listening. That other person is not going to be candid and neither are you. So how useful is that really? Turn up the containment. Reach out to that person and say, ‘Hey, can we get on the phone? Can we go to a DM?’

And then the other that I'll mention is the context on social media is often asynchronous, which is a beautiful, incredible thing. It scales our conversation, our ability to have lots of conversations. But you don't have to answer right now. What will that do? Well, if we're having a stressful conversation, I'll be stressed out about what you're gonna say for an hour while I wait. I'm not there in presence with you to witness how you might struggle with what you'll say. And so we just stretch out this anxiety. And is it worth it? Is that really what we want to do?

Just because it starts on social media doesn't mean it has to stay on social media. And it probably shouldn't. Take it offline. Take it somewhere where the full toolbox of human communication can serve you.

How do you signal to someone on social media that you are coming from a place of curiosity and exploration? That you want to take this offline?

You can only use the tools at your disposal. [On] social media platforms, the number one thing is text. Take everything that your smile would have done for you and put it into text. You end up having to write a lot more words: ‘I know this is a really tough one. I think what I hear you saying is … I don't mean to press you if you don't want to answer this right now, but I am curious about what you have to say on this issue … I wonder if we could take this offline.’

A lot of folks, without meaning to, end up coming off kind of curt or short on social media because they're speaking as if they were on platforms where more of their gestures and their tone and their laughter and everything was doing work for them. But when all that is stripped away, you have to interpret all of that into words and put that in. And it can be awkward. But it’s not impossible.

Mónica Guzmán is the senior fellow at Braver Angels, the nation's largest grassroots cross-partisan nonprofit dedicated to political depolarization and the author of “I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.” She is also the host of “A Braver Way,” a podcast that seeks to equip people with the tools they need to bridge the political divide in their everyday lives.

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What's inside the aid convoy trying to get lifesaving supplies into Gaza?

President Biden announced while in Israel this week that Egypt has agreed to allow 20 trucks filled with humanitarian aid to enter into the Gaza Strip.

Over 100 trucks have been stationed outside of Gaza for days, unable to deliver supplies since Israel closed the borders on Oct. 7.

“Every hour these supplies remain on the Egyptian side of the border, more girls and boys, women, and men, especially those vulnerable or disabled, will die while supplies that can save them are less than 12 miles away," the World Health Organization said in a press statement earlier this week.

This is what's in the aid convoy, according to the UN, as illustrated by Elizabeth Sokolich.

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A journalism expert on the language of war and how to get trustworthy news

On Oct. 12, the BBC released a statement explaining why the publication doesn’t refer to Hamas as terrorists. “We don’t take sides. We don’t use loaded words like ‘evil’ or ’cowardly.’ We don’t talk about ‘terrorists,’” it reads. “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn — who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.”

The statement came after criticism from journalists, Jewish leaders, and members of the British government over the BBC’s coverage of Hamas’s attack on Israel. Since the attack began on Oct. 7, Hamas has killed more than 1,400 people and kidnapped 200. In response, Israel has killed more than 2,778 people in Gaza. These numbers do not include the more than 500 people killed in the Oct. 17 explosion at a hospital in Gaza.

A study published in the journal "Media, War, and Conflict" examined The New York Times’s coverage of the first and second intifadas, or Palestinian uprisings (December 1987-September 1993 and September 2000-February 2005, respectively) and found that references to Palestine were more negative in tone, whereas references to Israel were more neutral.

“The language journalists use must be accurate, precise, and verifiable,” says Aly Colón, the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He said that describing events, using as much detail as possible, is preferable to using language that may exaggerate or distort the intended meaning. “Show, don’t tell,” as the maxim goes.

Blue Marble spoke with Colón about language, how readers can get the most balanced coverage of a crisis like the Hamas-Israel war, and what “objectivity” means to him. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Do you feel that terms like “terrorist” or “terrorism” are always inappropriate for journalists to use?

It’s not the term necessarily that is a problem. But it’s how we apply the term. In what situations do we apply it, and does it describe clearly and accurately what it is that as journalists we want to report and have readers or viewers take in.

In general, I would say describe the event… The more clarity we have, the more details that we can use, the fuller the picture can be for our audience.

How can people ensure they’re getting balanced coverage of a crisis like this? 

Aly Colón, John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University
More people than I would want get attached to a particular publication. There’s not really anything wrong with that — if you trust the publication and they’ve done a good job. 

I do something a little more specific when I can, although there are publications that I follow. I read or scan around 15 or 18 news sites from one end of the spectrum to the other. I do that because, “Am I only getting the information that particular publication or website wants to convey on its own?”

When I find certain types of either websites or publications that I have repeatedly seen to be pretty accurate… I will usually and almost always read them or listen to them. Does it mean I don’t listen to others? No.

I’m also what I would call a byline reader. If I see a reporter on a regular basis and she gets it, and I can see that she is really concrete and concise and able to convey what I need to know, then when I see her byline, I read it.

When it’s possible, have a wide distribution of sources you can follow. And then identify particular reporters, journalists that over time you have seen they’ve been right there bringing the information in a way that has been reliable, confirmed, and true. Most journalists, I think, desire to do that. Some are just a lot better than others.

Given that people have very stubborn beliefs, and they go to outlets where they can have those justified and reinforced, how important do you think “objectivity” is to readers?

Here’s what I’m going to say, which is not the common thread. I don’t believe in objectivity. I just think it’s impossible. And I think the use of objectivity was probably a good thing in a way. It was, in my view, always a standard that you aspire to because objectivity means you don’t know anything. 

What I tell people is usually we have a leaning, and we need to know which way we lean and how far we lean. It’s human to have that. And we need, in recognizing that, [to determine] how we can amplify our understanding, increase it. So we’re closer to the center of what’s going on.

So for me, I think we should see objectivity as an aspirational thing and with a responsibility on our part to recognize that we’re not objective. But we can really work hard to bring as much information as we can to fill the picture up more.

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Providing electricity to 750 million people could help fight climate change, not exacerbate it

After decades of steady progress, the number of people without access to electricity increased in 2022. 

That’s according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which found that 80% of people worldwide who don’t have electricity live in sub-Saharan Africa. In Chad and the Central African Republic, only about 1 in 20 have access to electricity.

Achieving universal access to energy by 2030 is one of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Is it possible to provide electricity to nearly three-quarters of a billion people without substantially increasing emissions and exacerbating climate change? 

Blue Marble spoke with Gianluca Tonolo, who helps lead the IEA’s Modern Energy Outlook team. Part of his job is developing forecasts to determine how energy access could impact climate emissions.

“All our scenarios that achieve global climate goals – even net zero emissions by 2050 – includes the achievement of universal access to electricity and clean cooking,” Tonolo told Blue Marble. 

Expanding electrification “will not undermine climate goals,” he said. 

Adding 750 million electricity consumers could actually reduce emissions. 

A jolt for rural economies 

Electrification can improve people’s health and stimulate the local economy. But poverty is the chief obstacle — even more so than access to the grid. 

Recent crises, including the pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, have made affording electricity even more difficult, according to the IEA. Both sparked economic crises that increased costs and disrupted energy supply chains. 

Without electricity, rural communities are locked out of the modern economy. Families rely on candles, kerosene stoves, or open fires — even though smoke fumes harm children’s health, Tonolo explained. And when it’s dark, students often can’t study at night and shops have to close at sunset.

Tonolo also describes electrification as a ladder. The first step for a newly electrified community is typically adding simple lighting, maybe for just two hours a day. A few lamps for a few hours each day can start to change the picture: Children can study after school, shops can stay open longer and earn more money, which in turn stimulates the local economy. 

Next, households might buy a radio or a phone and charger. Consumers climb up the ladder and start buying higher energy services: a refrigerator to reduce food waste; a fan to stay cool in the heat; and maybe a television. 

But here’s the problem: Even if 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa without access to electricity were connected to the grid for free tomorrow, half of them wouldn’t be able to afford enough electricity to power a few lights, a phone charger, and a small radio. 

On the ladder’s second rung, only 5% would be able to afford powering a fan, a TV, and a few more light bulbs. The next step up includes running a refrigerator, but almost none of the 600 million people would be able to pay their electric bill.

“They cannot afford the electricity that’s on the other end,” Tonolo said.

Expanding energy access could reduce emissions 

The lack of electricity isn’t just holding back rural economies. It could also be contributing to climate change. 

To be clear, developing countries are responsible for a tiny percentage of global emissions, even though they often bear the brunt of its impacts. Still, expanding energy access and electrification could lead to big net reductions in emissions. 

When households rely on open fires and charcoal to cook, they emit lots of methane and chop down trees for firewood, contributing to deforestation. Tonolo’s team found that switching to electricity or even using liquified petroleum gas would reduce carbon emissions by 1.5 gigatons by 2030. That’s roughly the same amount of CO2 emitted by planes and ships in 2022 combined. 

In addition, rural communities are often using green technology to expand electricity access. Solar-powered “mini-grids” can’t reach very far. They only cover a few households or businesses, but these standalone systems can provide clean energy for households and essential services in remote locations. 

Household appliances that use electricity also are much more efficient than they used to be. In addition to reducing emissions, more efficient appliances means that smaller solar panels become more viable solutions for rural communities trying to expand access. It also becomes cheaper to use electricity each month, too. 

“Greenhouse gas emissions savings completely compensate and go beyond the additional emissions from access to electricity,” Tonolo said.

The IEA estimates that it would take about $25 billion each year to provide universal access to modern energy. That’s about 1% of global investment in the energy sector, including both renewable energy and fossil fuels. 

“What we are spending for extracting oil, producing electricity, doing all these things… what if we spend 1 percent more? We can electrify all people — 750 million today — that don’t have access to electricity in the world.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the International Energy Agency (IEA) as part of the United Nations.

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College students are speaking out and protesting Israel-Hamas war

In short: Israel declared war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it launched an attack on Israeli soil on Oct. 7, taking at least 100 hostages. The attack comes after months of heightened tensions due to Israel’s ongoing treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and recent violence at a site sacred to both Jewish and Muslim people. In the U.S., student groups across the country have voiced their stances on the matter, including a statement signed by 34 Harvard University groups holding Israel responsible for the violence. The statement faced backlash both from the university’s former president and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

What’s going on in Israel?

Hamas launched an attack on Israeli soil on Oct. 7 and took at least 100 hostages.

What is Hamas?

Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, “is a militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, a 25-mile-long, densely populated enclave of more than 2.1 million people.” Hamas, which won elections in Gaza in 2006, doesn’t recognize Israel’s existence and wants to replace it with a Palestinian state. The U.S. designated the group a terrorist organization in 1997.

Hamas said the attack was in response to “Israeli attacks on women,” Israeli police raids on a sacred mosque in Jerusalem, and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.

How long has Israel occupied Gaza?

Israel has occupied Gaza since 1967 and has imposed a blockade on the region, regulating movement in and out. The Israeli government has also maintained a policy of land confiscation, where land is taken from Palestinians and given to Israeli settlers, since the start of the occupation. Human Rights Watch has called Gaza an “open-air prison.”

 

Israel responded to the attack by retaliating with airstrikes and declared war on Hamas. Israel also sealed off Gaza from any incoming food and water, as well as cutting off electricity for the region’s 2 million Palestinian residents, half of whom are under the age of 19.

An Israeli military official said Hamas had “opened the gates of hell” into Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known,” and that “the enemy will pay an unprecedented price.”

The death toll on both sides combined is at least 1,600.

What happened at Harvard?

After the fighting broke out in Israel, 34 Harvard University student groups issued a statement blaming Israel for the violence.

“The apartheid regime is the only one to blame,” the statement read. “Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years. From systemized land seizures to routine airstrikes, arbitrary detentions to military checkpoints, and enforced family separations to targeted killings, Palestinians have been forced to live in a state of death, both slow and sudden.”

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The statement – signed by multiple Palestinian and Muslim student groups, Harvard Jews for Liberation, and the African American Resistance Organization – was condemned by former Harvard president Lawrence Summers and Democratic and Republican federal lawmakers alike, many of them alumni of the university.

Harvard’s current president, Claudine Gay, condemned the Hamas attack.  

What’s happening on other campuses across the U.S.?

Campuses across the country have seen groups organize events after the fighting broke out, including a vigil in support of Israel at the University of Vermont and multiple events in support of Palestinians being organized by local chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine.

There also have been several other events in the news:

International students in Israel were also killed in the fighting, and three Northeastern University students were safely evacuated from Israel.  

U.S. college campuses have become a hot spot on the issue of Israel and Palestinians. In 2021, the last time there was a flare-up of violence between Hamas and Israel, student groups supporting both Palestinians and Israel issued statements and organized events.

Those supporting Israel say that the statements and protests cause an uptick in “antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric,” while those who support Palestinians say that Palestinian voices are often silenced, and many receive death threats.

Antisemitism is on the rise in the U.S. and antisemitic incidents increased by 36% from 2021 to 2022. There is an ongoing debate over whether criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic.

In 2021, Palestine Legal, a group that provides legal aid to those who support Palestinians, took on 280 cases defending supporters from suppression of their views. This is a 31% increase from 2020. More than half of these incidents happened on college campuses across the country.

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Government shutdowns are rare in other countries – so why are they more common in the US ?

In short: The U.S. government averted a shutdown after lawmakers in Congress reached a temporary, 45-day deal to extend a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. This would have been the eleventh time the government has shut down since 1981 – meaning hundreds of thousands of federal workers wouldn’t have gotten paid, food assistance programs would have been left without funding, and housing assistance for people with low incomes could have been at risk.

Which countries have had government shutdowns?

No other country has had a government shutdown like the U.S., where important services grind to a halt due to lack of funding. But Northern Ireland came close.

Why does a government shut down?

Typically, a government shutdown means that the legislative branch of the government failed to pass a budget. Government-funded services eventually run out of money without a budget for the new fiscal year.

In 2017, Northern Ireland’s government collapsed after Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness resigned. His party announced it wouldn’t replace him, the executive branch of the government subsequently collapsed, and Northern Ireland’s assembly didn’t sit in session for the next three years.

In those three years, the British government had to pass a budget for Northern Ireland to ensure its services didn’t run out of funds.

Back for more

Northern Ireland is in that same boat again. The country’s conservative party, the DUP, pulled out of the executive branch in February 2022 to protest against Britain’s trade deal with the European Union.

But a bill passed by the assembly just before the DUP left the executive branch will act as a stopgap measure and allow the assembly to carry on without an executive for at least six months.

Belgium has also gone without a government for long periods. But unlike the U.S., funding keeps coming in because until a new budget is passed, the old budget stays in effect. This is the case for many European countries.

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How have other countries prevented government shutdowns?

For most of its existence, Britain’s parliamentary system has made a government shutdown virtually impossible.

How does a parliamentary system work?

In a parliamentary system, the party that holds the majority in the legislative branch chooses the head of government. If there are more than two parties represented in the legislative branch, sometimes multiple parties will have to form a coalition to gain the majority.  

If parliament doesn’t reach a majority when it is first elected, or on a major bill, it is fairly easy to call a new election and start over with new parliamentarians who could potentially reach a majority.

And a 2011 bill made it much more difficult to call these elections, leaving Britain more prone to a shutdown. But parliament repealed the law in 2022, reducing the possibility of a shutdown again after a group of lawmakers threatened a “Trump-style shutdown” in 2019.

In Australia, which has a similar parliamentary system, “budgets have to be passed or else the government is usually forced to resign or Parliament gets dissolved.” New Zealand, Bangladesh, and Canada all have similar systems.

What's next for the government shutdown?

On Sept. 30, President Joe Biden signed a bill that keeps the government open for 45 more days, until Nov. 17. During this time, the government will be fully funded and include $16 billion in disaster relief funds. One White House official told Politico that the stopgap budget avoids “any version of the deep cuts to essential domestic programs that were proposed in the past few days.”

But the 45-day measure – coming just a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Biden at the White House to advocate for more support – did not include aid for Ukraine.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has provided more than $75 billion in humanitarian, financial, and military assistance. While most of the aid is war-related, some also goes to refugees and independent radio journalists.

A bill passed by the House giving $300 million in aid to Ukraine is with the Senate, Punchbowl News reports, and could be one way the U.S. continues to provide aid to Ukraine.  

The stopgap measure is also just that – a temporary fix that doesn’t protect the U.S. from another shutdown.

“We’re going to be right back in this place in November,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said on CNN.

One way the U.S. government could prevent shutdowns indefinitely is to enact an automatic continuing resolution, which many European countries have, where if Congress can’t pass a budget, the current budget remains.  

This has been done before. In September 2013, then-President Barack Obama passed an automatic continuing resolution that ensured many members of the U.S. military kept getting paid during a government shutdown.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner proposed a law in 2021 that would enact an automatic continuing resolution for the government called the Stop STUPIDITY Act. In the wake of the most recent potential shutdown, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has proposed a similar bill.

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