Jeffries

Oct. 24 (UPI) — U.S. House Democratic Party leader Hakeem Jeffries on Friday endorsed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor, 11 days before the Nov. 4 election.

Jeffries hasn’t issued a public statement but his endorsement was confirmed in a statement to The New York Times, with sources telling USA Today and Politico about the House minority leader’s plans.

Early voting begins Saturday.

Mamdani, who was born in India and raised in Uganda, is attempting to become the city’s first Muslim mayor.

Jeffries, who serves Brooklyn in New York, had held off endorsing Mamdani, who is a state assembly member serving Queens since 2020.

The state’s two U.S. senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, haven’t endorsed Mamdani.

Mamdani has been endorsed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letita James.

Also, he has been backed by New York Reps. Jerry Nadler, Adriano Espaillat and Yvette Clarke. Two other House members, Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman, have said they don’t plan to endorse in the election.

And New York Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs said he doesn’t plan to endorse him.

In the June 24 primary, Mamdani, 34, defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 67, and Mayor Eric Adams, 65. His opponents then chose to run as independents, but Adams dropped out on Sept. 28 and endorsed Cuomo on Thursday.

Mamdani is favored to defeat Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, 71, a Guardian Angels founder and radio show host. President Donald Trump has pressured Sliwa to drop out to give a better chance for Cuomo over Mamdani, whom he has labeled as a Communist.

Jeffries told The New York Times said they have had “areas of principled disagreement,” including Israel’s war in Gaza, but agreed on other matters, such as the desire to retain New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

“Zohran Mamdani has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who do not support his candidacy,” Jeffries wrote.

“In that spirit, I support him and the entire citywide Democratic ticket in the general election.”

Jeffries first met with Mamdani in July in Brooklyn before the primary. They met again in August.

Jeffries had said he was focused on the federal government shutdown rather than the New York City race.

“Stay tuned,” he told reporters this week in Washington. “I have not refused to endorse. I have refused to articulate my position, and I will momentarily, at some point, in advance of early voting.”

Jeffries has questioned how Mamdani would implement his policies and combat antisemitism and gentrification.

“We’ve got to figure out moving forward how we turn proposals into actual plans so that he is successful if he becomes the next mayor, because we need the city to be successful,” Jeffries told CNN last month.

Jeffries noted that his district, which includes historically Black communities, has “been subjected to gentrification and housing displacement.”

Mamdani has sharply criticized Israel and the war in Gaza, which Mamdani describes as genocide.

During Wednesday’s debate, he said: “I look forward to being a mayor for every single person that calls the city home. All 8.5 million New Yorkers, and that includes Jewish New Yorkers who may have concerns or opposition to the positions that I’ve shared about Israel and Palestine.”

Hundreds of rabbis had signed a letter criticizing him.

And powerful real estate and finance industries have donated millions of dollars to political action committees opposing his candidacy.

WASHINGTON — A man whose convictions for storming the U.S. Capitol were erased by President Trump’s mass pardons has been arrested on a charge that he threatened to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Christopher P. Moynihan is accused of sending a text message on Friday noting that Jeffries, a New York Democrat, would be making a speech in New York City this week.

“I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan wrote, according to a report by a state police investigator. Moynihan also wrote that Jeffries “must be eliminated” and texted, “I will kill him for the future,” the police report says.

Moynihan, of Clinton, N.Y., is charged with a felony count of making a terroristic threat. It was unclear if he had an attorney representing him in the case, and efforts to contact him and his parents by email and phone were unsuccessful.

Moynihan, 34, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for joining a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In January, he was among hundreds of convicted Capitol rioters who received a pardon from Trump on the Republican president’s first day back in the White House.

Jeffries thanked investigators “for their swift and decisive action to apprehend a dangerous individual who made a credible death threat against me with every intention to carry it out.”

“Unfortunately, our brave men and women in law enforcement are being forced to spend their time keeping our communities safe from these violent individuals who should never have been pardoned,” Jeffries said in a statement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the case during a news conference on Tuesday and said he did not know any details of the threat against Jeffries.

“We denounce violence from anybody, anytime. Those people should be arrested and tried,” said Johnson, a Louisiana Republican.

The New York State Police said they were notified of the threat by an FBI task force on Saturday. Moynihan was arraigned on Sunday in a local court in New York’s Dutchess County. He is due back in the Town of Clinton Court on Thursday.

Dutchess County Dist. Atty. Anthony Parisi said his office is reviewing the case “for legal and factual sufficiency.”

“Threats made against elected officials and members of the public will not be tolerated,” Parisi said in a statement on Tuesday.

On Jan. 6, Moynihan breached police barricades before entering the Capitol through the Rotunda door. He entered the Senate chamber, rifled through a notebook on a senator’s desk and joined other rioters in shouting and chanting at the Senate dais, prosecutors said.

“Moynihan did not leave the Senate Chamber until he was forced out by police,” they wrote.

In 2022, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper convicted Moynihan of a felony for obstructing the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Moynihan also pleaded guilty to five other riot-related counts.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

Oct. 21 (UPI) — A Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump was again arrested following an alleged threat to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Christopher P. Moynihan, 34, was arrested over the weekend by New York State Police after he allegedly sent text messages on Friday to an unidentified associate in which he threatened the life of Jeffries, D-N.Y.

“Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan was quoted in a legal complaint filed by prosecutors in Duchess County.

Jeffries, 55, gave remarks Monday in Manhattan at the Economic Club of New York.

On Sunday, Moynihan was charged with a class D felony of making a terroristic threat.

“Even if I am hated he must be eliminated. I will kill (Jeffries) for the future,” he wrote.

Moynihan was arraigned in Clinton, a Hudson Valley town some 50 miles east of Syracuse, and remanded to a Duchess County facility “in lieu of $10,000 cash bail, a $30,000 bond, or an $80,000 partially secured bond,” according to state police.

He pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges and declared guilty in August 2022 of obstructing an official government proceeding on Jan. 6, 2021 after Trump’s false declaration that he won the 2020 election.

The Jan. 6 insurrection injured more than 140 Capitol police officers and caused damage to the historic complex to the tune of millions of dollars and delayed 2020’s electoral college count in Congress.

Moynihan, said to be among the first to breach Capitol police barricades to enter the building, is one in a string of Trump-pardoned convicted criminals to later be re-arrested on newer charges.

According to court records, Moynihan has a long history of drug use and petty crimes.

In February 2022, Moynihan was sentenced 21 months in jail until pardoned by Trump along with nearly 1,600 Capitol rioters almost immediately after Trump reassumed office.

Moynihan’s investigation was initiated via the FBI part of a growing trend of threats against U.S. lawmakers.

Meanwhile, U.S. Capitol Police said last month the number of threat investigations this year rose past 14,000, which was higher than the total number of cases in 2024.

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) visited three Black churches in Los Angeles on Sunday morning to campaign for California’s redistricting effort, which could add five or six Democratic representatives to his ranks.

Amid a congressional deadlock over healthcare subsidies that has left the government shut down for more than two weeks, the minority leader returned to the Golden State to campaign for Proposition 50. The ballot measure would give his party more power against Republicans, who Jeffries said have refused to negotiate in the shutdown and otherwise.

“This is trouble all around us,” Jeffries told the congregation at First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles in West Adams — after poking fun at President Trump’s 2016 gaffe misspronouncing a book of the Bible. “Folks in the government who would rather shut the government down than give healthcare to everyday Americans. Wickedness in high places. And now they want to gerrymander the congressional maps all across the country to try to rig the midterm elections.”

The packed congregation — most wearing pink to support Breast Cancer Awareness Month — were receptive to his message.

“This is a way of trying to keep things equal,” said Kim Balogun, who was in Sunday’s crowd. “A level playing field.”

For many of its members, First AME is more than just a church. As the city’s oldest African American congregation, it has been at the forefront of the fight for civil rights since its founding in 1872.

“This is family,” said Toni Scott, a retired special-education teacher who has been with First AME for 52 years. “As one of the church’s previous ministers used to say, ‘This is a hospital. People are sick; we come to be healed,’” she said.

When news reached L.A. that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison, South African immigrants and anti-apartheid activists flocked to the church, anxiously awaiting the first sights of Mandela walking free. During the 1992 riots, First AME was a bastion of hope amid a sea of chaos.

“We thank you, God, for bringing us through dark times and chaotic times,” the Rev. Charolyn Jones said to the congregation on Sunday, “knowing that our church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was born out of protest.”

For Jeffries, the first Black person to lead a major political party in Congress, the West Coast trip amid a congressional impasse was important.

“The African American churchgoing community has always been the foundation of the Black experience in the United States of America,” Jeffries said, who also visited the congregations of Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in South L.A. and Resurrection Church of Los Angeles in Carson. “It’s an honor and a privilege to spend time worshiping at Black churches here with Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove to reinforce the message of the importance of voting yes on Proposition 50.”

The state’s redistricting effort, Proposition 50, is part of a national fight over control of the U.S. House of Representatives, instigated by President Trump. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House, but in June, Trump began pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps to yield five more likely GOP seats.

In response, Newsom proposed California temporarily depose of its independent redistricting commission, led by 14 citizens, to redraw the state’s maps and add five Democratic seats, effectively canceling out Texas’s move.

The Democratic-controlled state Legislature quickly produced redrawn maps and scheduled a Nov. 4 special election to put them up for a vote. Mail-in ballots are already in the hands of voters.

California Republicans, including former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, have slammed the initiative as a “big scam.” Schwarzenegger called Democrats hypocritical, arguing that while they call Trump a “threat to democracy,” they want to “tear up the Constitution of California” and “take the power away from the people and give it back to the politicians.”

Jeffries noted that California was letting its citizens ultimately decide — unlike some Republican-led states.

“We said from the very beginning that we want to find bipartisan common ground whenever possible, but unfortunately, Republicans, from the beginning of this presidency, have adopted a take-it-or-leave-it, go-at-it-alone strategy,” he said, which is part of why, he added, Proposition 50 is so important.

In the current shutdown, Democrats said they will not vote for a funding bill unless it extends tax credits in the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire for many Americans at the end of the year and reverses cuts to Medicaid that Republicans passed in July’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

If the ACA credits expire, premiums would on average more than double for Americans on the enhanced tax credit, one health policy research firm found. But Republicans point out they come with a price: The Congressional Budget Office estimates they would cost the government $350 billion over the next decade.

The bill, which is now law, will cut Medicaid spending by $793 billion, the CBO estimated, and lead to 7.8 million Americans losing their insurance.

On the government shutdown, Richard Balogun, a member of Sunday’s First AME congregation, thinks fighting for healthcare is a worthwhile cause.

“Isn’t it amazing that in England, Australia … you can have national healthcare? Maybe you don’t get treated within the first hour, but you get treated,” he said. In America, “you have to ask yourself sometimes, if I’m going to the emergency room, can I afford that thousands of dollars I’m going to have to pay? That should not be the case in this country.”

A government shutdown has consequences: 2.3 million civilian federal employees are going without pay — roughly 750,000 of whom are furloughed. When the employees are back-paid after the government reopens, that’ll correspond to roughly $400 million of taxpayer money spent every day of the shutdown to pay employees who were not working, the CBO estimates.

Beyond National Park closures and air travel delays, food programs for low-income families could run dry without a funding bill. The Women, Infants and Children Program (WIC) can see effects as soon as one week after a shutdown, the CEO of the National WIC Assn. said. Meanwhile, SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) could also run out of funding further down the line.

Republicans blame Democrats for shutting down the government over their healthcare concerns, but Jeffries pinned it on Republicans, who’ve refused to negotiate.

To Scott, the pink her congregation was wearing to support breast cancer survivors only emphasized the importance of access to healthcare. (Jeffries sported a pink tie.)

“More people need to know what’s going on, so just having him go from church to church, mostly in the Black neighborhoods — that’s where we have the most people: in our churches,” Scott said. “Some may hear the word, see something on fake news, but we know in the church you’re going to hear truth.”

WASHINGTON — Halfway through President Trump’s inaugural White House meeting this term with congressional leadership days before a government shutdown, the red hats appeared on the president’s desk.

“Trump 2028,” they said, situated across from the seated lawmakers, Vice President JD Vance and several untouched Diet Cokes.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries leaned over to Vance, a potential 2028 contender, and quipped, “Hey, bro, you got a problem with this?”

The room chuckled in response.

“It was the random-most thing in the world, because we’re sitting there, we’re having a serious conversation, and all of a sudden these two red hats appear,” Jeffries recalled later at the Capitol.

“It was all so unserious,” the New York Democrat said, describing a roving cameraman capturing the moment. “We were there for serious reasons that it wasn’t really a big part of, you know, the discussion. It was theatrics.”

The moment was vintage Trump — grabbing the attention and seeking to throw negotiators off their game — but it also underscored the president’s disregard for Congress, a coequal branch of the government, and in particular his opponents across the political aisle.

From historic first meeting to viral trolling

What was once considered a historic occasion — the president of the United States convening his first “big four” meeting of congressional leaders from the House and Senate — was reduced to another viral souvenir of Trump trolling his opponent.

And after the more than hourlong session, the president failed to strike a deal with the leaders to prevent a federal government closure.

“We don’t want it to shut down,” Trump said at the White House the next day, hours before the midnight deadline.

This wasn’t just a routine meeting of the president and congressional leadership. It was the first time Trump had gathered the leaders of Congress, more than eight months into his presidency — and the first time he and Jeffries had officially met.

But more surprising was how little came from it.

Healthcare funds

During the White House meeting, Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer laid out their arguments for saving healthcare funding as part of the shutdown talks.

Trump said very little, doing more listening than talking, the leaders said.

“He didn’t seem to know about the healthcare premiums going up so much,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

With the Republican leadership, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the conversation ranged across their views of the healthcare situation.

“Lively,” Thune (R-S.D.) later said.

The discussion included the Democrats’ demands to ensure subsidies to help people buy private insurance on the exchanges run by the Affordable Care Act are made permanent. The subsidies were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic and are set to expire at year’s end, which would cause premiums to skyrocket, nearly doubling in some cases.

The conversation also touched on the new rural hospital fund that is important to Republicans, set up under Trump’s big bill as a way to compensate for its cuts to Medicaid healthcare providers.

Johnson (R-La.) said Trump showed “strong, solid leadership. He listened to the arguments.”

Trying to catch the president’s attention

This is the best the Democrats could have hoped for — to have an airing before the president that began to turn the dial toward their demands. And it is what the GOP leaders had tried to avoid as each party tries to blame the shutdown on the other.

Johnson had suggested Trump back out of an initial meeting with the Democrats — after the president had agreed to one — arguing it would be a “waste of time.”

But Trump relented, and granted them Monday’s closed-door Oval Office session.

The Democrats have been here before. During Trump’s first term, the president repeatedly negotiated deals with the Democrats — “Chuck and Nancy,” as he called Schumer and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi — to fund the government, raise the debt limit and achieve other goals.

Those bargains Trump made frustrated his party’s lawmakers.

Republicans, aware of that history, are trying to steer the conversation in a different direction, saying they would leave the door open to discuss the healthcare issue with Democrats later — once the government has reopened. They also took issue with the characterization of Trump as unaware of the depth or magnitude of the healthcare situation.

“I’m highly skeptical the president was hearing about it for the first time,” Vance said afterward.

One Republican not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and granted anonymity to do so said Schumer’s suggestion that Trump didn’t know about the subsidy problem was exaggerated.

So far in his second term, the president has been able to accomplish his priorities either on his own, with executive actions and the Elon Musk-led cuts that tore through federal offices, or with a compliant Congress passing his signature tax breaks and spending cuts bill, known as the “Big Beautiful Bill Act,” that is also fueling his mass deportation agenda.

But Washington doesn’t run on the White House alone, and Congress is not a majority-takes-all institution — traditionally, at least. Turning most bills into laws generally has required the give-and-take of bipartisan compromise, particularly in the Senate, and particularly when it comes to the annual appropriations needed to keep government running.

Then came the sombrero taunts

Hours after the lawmakers left the meeting, Trump’s team posted a fake video that showed Jeffries adorned in a sombrero with a faux mustache standing beside Schumer outside the White House. It was widely seen as racist.

“When I was practicing law, there was a Latin phrase that was always one of my favorites,” Jeffries said back at his office at the Capitol. “Res ipsa loquitur. It means: The thing speaks for itself.”

“We had a full airing of our positions on Monday, which should have set the baseline for a follow-up conversation from the administration to try to reignite a meaningful bipartisan path toward funding the government,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the president’s behavior subsequent to the White House meeting deteriorated into unhinged and unserious action.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has abruptly canceled this week’s planned meeting with congressional Democratic leaders, refusing to negotiate over their demands to shore up health care funds as part of a deal to prevent a potential federal government shutdown.

In a lengthy Tuesday social media post, Trump rejected the sit-down the White House had agreed to the day before. It would have been the first time the Republican president met with the Democratic Party’s leaders, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, since his return to the White House.

“I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive,” Trump wrote in the post.

The president complained the Democrats “are threatening to shut down the Government of the United States” unless the Republicans agree to more funding on health care for various groups of people he has criticized. Trump did not close the door on a future sit-down with the Democratic leaders, but he warned of a “long and brutal slog” ahead unless Democrats dropped their demands to salvage health care funds.

Earlier Tuesday, Schumer and Jeffries had issued a joint statement saying that after “weeks of Republican stonewalling” the president had agreed to meet in the Oval Office. But after the Republican president canceled the meeting, the Democratic leaders accused him of throwing a tantrum and running away. Jeffries posted on X that “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

“Donald Trump just cancelled a high stakes meeting in the Oval Office with myself and Leader Schumer,” Jeffries wrote on X. “The extremists want to shut down the government because they are unwilling to address the Republican healthcare crisis that is devastating America.”

In a post on X directed at Trump, Schumer said Democrats will sit down and discuss health care “when you’re finished ranting.”

Schumer said Trump “is running away from the negotiating table before he even gets there” and would “rather throw a tantrum than do his job.”

With Congress at a stalemate, the government is headed toward a federal shutdown next week, Oct. 1, if the House and the Senate are unable to approve the legislation needed to fund offices and services into the new fiscal year. Lawmakers left town amid the logjam, and they are not due back until Sept. 29.

Trump has been unafraid of shutting down the government and, during his first term, was president over the nation’s longest federal closure, during the 2018-19 holiday season, when he was pushing Congress to provide funds for his long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The president insisted over the weekend that essential services, including for veterans, would remain open.

Republicans, who have the majority in both the House and the Senate, have been trying to avoid a shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson led passage late last week of a temporary funding measure, which would have kept government offices running into November while talks get underway.

That’s the typical way to buy time during funding fights, but the measure failed in the Senate. Democrats refused to support the stopgap bill because it did not include their priorities of health care funds. A Democratic proposal, with the health care money restored, was defeated by Senate Republicans.

Schumer and Jeffries have demanded a meeting with Trump to work out a compromise, but the Republican president has been reluctant to enter talks and instructed GOP leaders on Capitol Hill not to negotiate with the Democrats.

Thursday’s scheduled meeting would have potentially set up a showdown at the White House, reminiscent of the 2018 funding fight when Trump led an explosive public session with Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Democrats are working to protect health care programs. The Democratic proposal would extend enhanced health insurance subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, plus reverse Medicaid cuts that were included in Republicans’ big tax breaks and spending cuts bill enacted earlier this year.

Republicans have said the Democrats’ demands to reverse the Medicaid changes are a nonstarter, but they have also said there is time to address the health insurance subsidy issue in the months ahead.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y,. and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., were supposed to meet with President Donald Trump this week to prevent a government shutdown, but Trump cancelled the meeting Tuesday. File Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 23 (UPI) — President Donald Trump canceled a planned meeting with Democratic congressional leaders to prevent a government shutdown Tuesday.

Trump planned to meet this week with the two as a Sept. 30 funding deadline to keep the government open nears. He was expected to meet with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Thursday.

But Tuesday, he posted on Truth Social that he’d canceled the meeting because he didn’t like the list of Democrats’ demands, which he painted as “Radical Left Policies that nobody voted for– High Taxes, Open Borders, No Consequences for Violent Criminals, Men in Women’s Sports, Taxpayer funded ‘TRANSGENDER’ surgery, and much more.”

Earlier Tuesday, Jeffries and Schumer said in a statement they planned to use the meeting to “emphasize the importance of addressing rising costs, including the Republican healthcare crisis. It’s past time to meet and work to avoid a Republican-caused shutdown,” they said.

Republicans want a “clean” seven-week stopgap spending bill, while Democrats introduced a measure that would keep the government open for four weeks while attaching other demands, Politico reported.

In a post on X, Jeffries responded to the cancellation by saying, “Trump Always Chickens Out,” referring to the acronym TACO, which he coined. He added that “extremists want to shut down the government because they are unwilling to address the Republican healthcare crisis that is devastating America.”

One of the biggest sticking points is healthcare. Democrats are demanding any resolution include an extension of the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Schumer said on X, “Happy New Year, Mr. President [referring to Rosh Hashanah]. When you’re finished ranting, we can sit down and discuss healthcare.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Tuesday that if a meeting happened, he would insist on attending.

“If there’s a meeting, I will certainly be there,” Johnson said. “But I’m not certain that the meeting is necessary.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., left, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Saturday demanded that President Donald Trump meet with them to prevent a federal government shutdown. File Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 20 (UPI) — Democratic Party leaders Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer on Saturday demanded that President Donald Trump meet with them to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

The Senate on Friday failed to pass a House-approved budget extension, which Jeffries and Schumer, both of New York, say means the president must deal with them to prevent a shutdown.

“It is now your obligation to meet with us directly to keep the government open and address the Republican health care crisis,” they said in a joint letter to Trump on Saturday.

“We do not understand why you prefer to shut down the government rather than protect the health care and quality of life of the American people,” they wrote.

Jeffries and Schumer are the minority party leaders in the Senate and House, respectively, and have insisted that the fiscal year 2026 budget include an extension of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.

The subsidies are scheduled to expire, along with the fiscal year 2025 budget, on Oct. 1.

Jeffries and Schumer said Republican leaders in the House and Senate have repeatedly refused to negotiate to overcome a potential Senate filibuster by Democrats, which would require 60 votes, NPR reported.

Senate Democrats proposed an alternative budget extension bill on Friday, which also failed to muster enough votes.

Jeffries and Schumer said a government shutdown could occur because Republicans refuse to talk with Democrats on the matter.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Friday denied excluding Democrats from budget negotiations.

“The House has just passed a short-term, clean, non-partisan continuing resolution to fund the government for a few additional weeks while we continue bipartisan work on appropriations bills,” Thune, R-S.D., said on the Senate floor.

He said congressional Democrats voted 13 times to shut down the federal government during the Biden administration and won’t “gain political points from shutting down the government over a clean, non-partisan continuing resolution.”