Republican intransigence has led to the abrupt end of many federal COVID-19 relief measures, as Americans who lost their jobs wait for something productive to come out of Congress. Although House Democrats passed a $3 trillion package, the Heroes Act, in May, Senate Republicans have proved unable to write their own bill, instead outsourcing negotiations to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who is known to be an uncompromising negotiator.

This past Friday, Democratic negotiators compromised by lowering the cost of their proposal down to $2 trillion, which Mnuchin called a “nonstarter.” Later that day, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders in response which are not only insufficient but arguably unconstitutional.

Despite all this, in interviews with Democratic officials and discussions about the spending impasse, mainstream media journalists keep putting the onus on the Democrats to “make further amends to meet Republicans halfway,” setting up false equivalencies where everyone should “come off of your two sides so that you can get something done,” because “the bottom line here is that both Congress and the president, Democrats and Republicans, are failing to compromise.” Those questions ignore months of the Republicans’ consistent inability to respond to the crisis.