shutdown

WASHINGTON — President Trump is showing little urgency to broker a compromise that would end the government shutdown, even as Democrats insist no breakthrough is possible without his direct involvement.

Three weeks in, Congress is at a standstill. The House hasn’t been in session for a month, and senators left Washington on Thursday frustrated by the lack of progress. Republican leaders are refusing to negotiate until a short-term funding bill to reopen the government is passed, while Democrats say they won’t agree without guarantees on extending health insurance subsidies.

For now, Trump appears content to stay on the sidelines.

He spent the week celebrating an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal he led, hosted a remembrance event for conservative activist Charlie Kirk and refocused attention on the Russia-Ukraine war. Meanwhile, his administration has been managing the shutdown in unconventional ways, continuing to pay the troops while laying off other federal employees.

Asked Thursday whether he was willing to deploy his dealmaking background on the shutdown, Trump seemed uninterested.

“Well, look, I mean, all we want to do is just extend. We don’t want anything, we just want to extend, live with the deal they had,” he said in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. Later Thursday, he criticized Democratic health care demands as “crazy,” adding, “We’re just not going to do it.”

Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that Democrats must first vote to reopen the government, “then we can have serious conversations about health care.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune echoed that approach before leaving for the weekend, saying Trump is “ready to weigh in and sit down with the Democrats or whomever, once the government opens up.”

Thune said he’d also be willing to talk, but only after the shutdown ends.

“I am willing to sit down with Democrats,” Thune posted on social media Friday.

“But there’s one condition: End the Schumer Shutdown. I will not negotiate under hostage conditions, nor will I pay a ransom,” he added.

Frustration is beginning to surface among rank-and-file Republicans, with bipartisan conversations breaking out on the Senate floor as members look for ways to move things forward. Still, even those Republicans admit little happens in Congress without Trump’s direction.

Leaving the Capitol on Thursday, GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski said, “We’re not making much headway this week.” For things to progress, Murkowski acknowledged Trump may need to get more involved: “I think he’s an important part of it.”

“I think there are some folks in his administration that are kind of liking the fact that Congress really has no role right now,” she added. “I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.”

Trump has not been slowed by the shutdown

While Congress has been paralyzed by the shutdown, Trump has moved rapidly to enact his vision of the federal government.

He has called budget chief Russ Vought the “grim reaper,” and Vought has taken the opportunity to withhold billions of dollars for infrastructure projects and lay off thousands of federal workers, signaling that workforce reductions could become even more drastic.

At the same time, the administration has acted unilaterally to fund Trump’s priorities, including paying the military this week, easing pressure on what could have been one of the main deadlines to end the shutdown.

Some of these moves, particularly the layoffs and funding shifts, have been criticized as illegal and are facing court challenges. A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the administration from firing workers during the shutdown, ruling that the cuts appeared politically motivated and were carried out without sufficient justification.

And with Congress focused on the funding fight, lawmakers have had little time to debate other issues.

In the House, Johnson has said the House won’t return until Democrats approve the funding bill and has refused to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva. Democrats say the move is to prevent her from becoming the 218th signature on a discharge petition aimed at forcing a vote on releasing documents related to the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

So far, the shutdown has shown little impact on public opinion.

An AP-NORC poll released Thursday found that 3 in 10 U.S. adults have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of the Democratic Party, similar to an AP-NORC poll from September. Four in 10 have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of the Republican Party, largely unchanged from last month.

Democrats want Trump at the table. Republicans would rather he stay out

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries have said Republicans have shown little seriousness in negotiating an end to the shutdown.

“Leader Thune has not come to me with any proposal at this point,” Schumer said Thursday.

Frustrated with congressional leaders, Democrats are increasingly looking to Trump.

At a CNN town hall Wednesday night featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, both repeatedly called for the president’s involvement when asked why negotiations had stalled.

“President Trump is not talking. That is the problem,” Sanders said.

Ocasio-Cortez added that Trump should more regularly “be having congressional leaders in the White House.”

Democrats’ focus on Trump reflects both his leadership style — which allows little to happen in Congress without his approval — and the reality that any funding bill needs the president’s signature to become law.

This time, however, Republican leaders who control the House and Senate are resisting any push for Trump to intervene.

“You can’t negotiate when somebody’s got a hostage,” said South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who added that Trump getting involved would allow Democrats to try the same tactic in future legislative fights.

Trump has largely followed that guidance. After previously saying he would be open to negotiating with Democrats on health insurance subsidies, he walked it back after Republican leaders suggested he misspoke.

And that’s unlikely to change for now. Trump has no plans to personally intervene to broker a deal with Democrats, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. The official added that the only stopgap funding bill that Democrats can expect is the one already on the table.

“The President is happy to have a conversation about health care policy, but he will not do so while the Democrats are holding the American people hostage,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Thursday.

A product of the Congress Trump has molded

In his second term, Trump has taken a top-down approach, leaving little in Congress to move without his approval.

“What’s obvious to me is that Mike Johnson and John Thune don’t do much without Donald Trump telling them what to do,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.

His hold is particularly strong in the GOP-led House, where Speaker Mike Johnson effectivelyowes his job to Trump, and relies on his influence to power through difficult legislative fights.

When Republicans have withheld votes on Trump’s priorities in Congress, he’s called them on the phone or summoned them to his office to directly sway them. When that doesn’t work, he has vowed to unseat them in the next election. It’s led many Democrats to believe the only path to an agreement runs through the White House and not through the speaker’s office.

Democrats also want assurances from the White House that they won’t backtrack on an agreement. The White House earlier this year cut out the legislative branch entirely with a $4.9 billion cut to foreign aid in August through a legally dubious process known as a “pocket rescission.” And before he even took office late last year, Trump and ally Elon Musk blew up a bipartisan funding agreement that both parties had negotiated.

“I think we need to see ink on paper. I think we need to see legislation. I think we need to see votes,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “I don’t accept pinky promises. That’s not the business that I’m in.”

Both parties also see little reason to fold under public pressure, believing they are winning the messaging battle.

“Everybody thinks they’re winning,” Murkowski said. “Nobody is winning when everybody’s losing. And that’s what’s happening right now. The American public is losing.”

Cappelletti and Kim write for the Associated Press. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Oct. 17 (UPI) — The federal shutdown will last at least a few more days as the Senate expects to hold no votes until Monday. Meanwhile, lawmakers are questioning the legality of how the Trump administration plans to pay the military.

Senate Republican leader John Thune of South Dakota sent senators home for the weekend, so the government will stay closed. The Senate will return at 3 p.m. Monday.

Three Democrats have voted for the Republican bills to reopen the government, but five more are needed to reach the 60 votes needed to pass the stopgap funding bill.

Meanwhile, some Republican senators are questioning the legality of President Donald Trump‘s move to shift Defense Department funds to pay for military paychecks during the shutdown.

They say they’re glad the service members are getting paid, but aren’t sure where the funds are coming from and whether the money shift is legal.

Normally, the White House would need to ask Congress to reappropriate federal funding, then the Appropriations Committee must approve it before moving funds around.

Senators interviewed by The Hill say they aren’t aware of any requests. Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to use “all available funds” to ensure troops got their paychecks.

“That’s a concern of not just appropriators, it seems broader than that,” an unnamed Republican senator told The Hill.

The lawmaker said Republican colleagues have asked the administration for more information about exactly which funds are getting shifted and what legal authority the White House is using to justify its action.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she wants more information from the White House.

“We’ve been given two different explanations. One, is that it’s unobligated balances. One, is that it’s taken from certain research and technology programs. But we don’t have the specifics. We have asked for the specifics,” Collins said.

Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said: “I get that they say for the military pay for this pay period it comes out of … research and development technology [fund] but where? Is that taking it from projects that we have already identified? Maybe something’s really important to me. Where’s it coming from? We haven’t seen that,” she said.

On Wednesday, Trump signed a memo expanding his administration’s authority to repurpose unspent funds to pay service members during the shutdown.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said Trump’s reallocation of funds was, “probably not legal.” On Face the Nation on Sunday, he said the “White House’s understanding of United States law” was “pretty tentative to say the best.”

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge blocked the Trump administration Wednesday from firing thousands of government workers based on the ongoing federal shutdown, granting a request from employee unions in California.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued the temporary restraining order after concluding that the unions “will demonstrate ultimately that what’s being done here is both illegal and is in excess of authority and is arbitrary and capricious.”

Illston slammed the Trump administration for failing to provide her with clear information about what cuts are actually occurring, for repeatedly changing its description and estimates of job cuts in filings before the court, and for failing — including during Wednesday’s hearing in San Francisco — to articulate an argument for why such cuts are not in violation of federal law.

“The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” Illston said — which she said was not the case.

She said the government justified providing inaccurate figures for the number of jobs being eliminated under its “reduction in force” orders by calling it a “fluid situation” — which she did not find convincing.

“What it is is a situation where things are being done before they are being thought through. It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs,” she said. “And it has a human cost, which is really why we’re here today. It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

Illston also ran through a string of recent comments made by President Trump and other members of his administration about the firings and their intentionally targeting programs and agencies supported by Democrats, saying, “By all appearances, they’re politically motivated.”

The Trump administration has acknowledged dismissing about 4,000 workers under the orders, while Trump and other officials have signaled that more would come Friday.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said Wednesday on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that the number of jobs cut could “probably end up being north of 10,000,” as the administration wants to be “very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding,” and the shutdown provided that opportunity.

Attorneys for the unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, said that the figures were unreliable and that they feared additional reduction in force orders resulting in more layoffs, as promised by administration officials, if the court did not step in and block such actions.

Illston, an appointee of President Clinton, did just that.

She barred the Trump administration and its various agencies “from taking any action to issue any reduction in force notices to federal employees in any program, project or activity” involving union members “during or because of the federal shutdown.”

She also barred the administration from “taking any further action to administer or implement” existing reduction notices involving union members.

Illston demanded that the administration provide within two days a full accounting of all existing or “imminent” reduction in force orders that would be blocked by her order, as well as the specific number of federal jobs affected.

Elizabeth Hedges, an attorney for the Trump administration, had argued during the hearing that the order should not be granted for several procedural reasons — including that the alleged harm to federal employees from loss of employment or benefits was not “irreparable” and could be addressed through other avenues, including civil litigation.

Additionally, she argued that federal employment claims should be adjudicated administratively, not in district court; and that the reduction in force orders included 60-day notice periods, meaning the layoffs were not immediate and therefore the challenge to them was not yet “ripe” legally.

However, Hedges would not discuss the case on its actual merits — which is to say, whether the cuts were actually legal or not, which did not seem to sit well with Illston.

“You don’t have a position on whether it’s OK that they do what they’re doing?” Illston asked.

“I am not prepared to discuss that today, your honor,” Hedges said.

“Well — but it’s happening. This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation, and you’re not even prepared to address whether that’s legal, even though that’s what this motion challenges?” Illston said.

“That’s right,” Hedges said — stressing again that there were “threshold” arguments for why the case shouldn’t even be allowed to continue to the merits stage.

Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the unions, suggested the government’s positions were indefensible and directly in conflict with public statements by the administration — including remarks by Trump on Tuesday that more cuts are coming Friday.

“How do we know this? Because OMB and the president relentlessly are telling us, and other members of the administration,” Leonard said.

Leonard said the harm from the administration’s actions is obvious and laid out in the union’s filings — showing how employees have at times been left in the dark as to their employment status because they don’t have access to work communication channels during the shutdown, or how others have been called in to “work without pay to fire their fellow employees” — only to then be fired themselves.

“There are multiple types of harm that are caused exactly right now — emotional trauma. That’s not my word, your honor, that is the word of OMB Director Vought. Let’s cause ‘trauma’ to the federal workforce,” Leonard said. “And that’s exactly what they are doing. Trauma. The emotional distress of being told you are being fired after an already exceptionally difficult year for federal employees.”

Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which is co-counsel for the unions, praised Illston’s decision in a statement after the hearing.

“The statements today by the court make clear that the President’s targeting of federal workers — a move straight out of Project 2025’s playbook — is unlawful,” Perryman said. “Our civil servants do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful and a threat to everyone in our nation.”

Illston asked the two parties to confer on the best date, probably later this month, for a fuller hearing on whether she should issue a more lasting preliminary injunction in the case.

“It would be wonderful to know what the government’s position is on the merits of this case — and my breath is bated until we find that,” Illston said.

After the hearing, during a White House news conference, Trump said his administration was paying federal employees whom “we want paid” while Vought uses the shutdown to dismiss employees perceived as supporting Democratic initiatives.

“Russell Vought is really terminating tremendous numbers of Democrat projects — not only jobs,” Trump said.

Several airports in California have refused to play a video featuring U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for delays due to the federal government shutdown.

The video, playing for travelers waiting in Transportation Security Administration security lines at airports across the country, comes as the government entered a third week of a shutdown after Congress failed to reach an agreement on funding legislation.

“It is TSA’s top priority to make sure you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible while we keep you safe,” Noem says in the video. “However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government and because of this many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay.”

Officials at multiple airports in California say they are not playing the video at their locations. They include: John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Hollywood Burbank Airport, San Diego International Airport, San José Mineta International Airport, Sacramento International Airport, Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport and San Francisco International Airport.

Officials from Los Angeles International Airport did respond to questions on whether the video was being played there.

Some airport officials have refused to play the video, calling it inappropriate. On Tuesday, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation called for Noem to be investigated for possibly breaking the Hatch Act by asking airports to play the video.

“Recent reports indicate DHS is using taxpayer dollars and federal assets to produce and air a video message featuring Secretary Noem, in her official capacity, making political attacks against Democratic Members of Congress,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) wrote in a letter addressed to the Office of Special Counsel and reviewed by The Times. “This message is not just false; it appears to violate the prohibitions contained in the Hatch Act.”

The act, according to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, is to “ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion,” as well as protect federal employees from political coercion at work.

Noem’s video was received by airports on Thursday and was followed up by a verbal request from DHS officials to play it at security checkpoints, multiple airport officials told The Times.

The reasons the video is not being shown for California fliers varies.

In Orange County, airport spokesperson AnnaSophia Servin said that Homeland Security requested, to the airport’s director, that the video be played, but a final decision has not yet been made. In Burbank, political messaging is prohibited, officials said. In San José, an airport spokesperson said there have been no shutdown impacts and therefore no reason to play the video.

At San Francisco International Airport, officials determined that the video wasn’t helpful.

“SFO limits messaging at our security checkpoints to information intended to help passengers be prepared to go through the security screening process,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Any content, whether in video or print form, which does not meet this standard, will not be shown.”

When The Times asked Homeland Security officials to respond to airports not playing Noem’s video, spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin responded with Noem’s video statement blaming Democrats.

But California airports aren’t the only locations choosing not to play Noem’s message.

Airports in Oregon, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix, Seattle have also opted not to play it.

“We did not consent to playing the video in its current form, as we believe the Hatch Act clearly prohibits use of public assets for political purposes and messaging,” said Molly Prescott, a spokesperson for the Port of Portland, which manages Portland International Airport, said in a statement.

Oregon law also prohibits public employees from politicking on the job.

“We believe consenting to playing this video on Port assets would violate Oregon law,” she said.

Officials in New York also pushed back against airing the video.

“It is inappropriate, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the values we expect from our nation’s top public officials,” New York’s Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins said in a statement. “The [Public Service Announcement] politicizes the impacts of a federal government shutdown on TSA Operations, and the County finds the tone to be unnecessarily alarmist.”

According to the Homeland Security website, more than 61,000 TSA employees continue to work despite a lapse in appropriations, and a lack of a paycheck to employees.

WASHINGTON — Entering the third week of a government shutdown, Democrats say they are not intimidated or cowed by President Trump’s efforts to fire thousands of federal workers or by his threats of more firings to come.

Instead, Democrats appear emboldened, showing no signs of caving as they returned to Washington from their home states Tuesday evening and, for an eighth time, rejected a Republican bill to open the government.

“What people are saying is, you’ve got to stop the carnage,” said Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, describing what he heard from his constituents, including federal workers, as he traveled around his state over the weekend. “And you don’t stop it by giving in.”

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said the firings are “a fair amount of bluster” and he predicted they ultimately will be overturned in court or otherwise reversed. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, speaking about Republicans, said the shutdown is just “an excuse for them to do what they were planning to do anyway.” And Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York said Wednesday that the layoffs are a “mistaken attempt” to sway Democratic votes.

“Their intimidation tactics are not working,” added House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “And will continue to fail.”

Democratic senators say they are hearing increasingly from voters about health insurance subsidies that expire at the end of the year, the issue that the party has made central to the shutdown fight.

Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said that the impact of the expiring health insurance subsidies on millions of people, along with cuts to Medicaid enacted by Republicans earlier this year, “far outweighs” any of the firings of federal workers that the administration is threatening.

Republicans, too, are confident in their strategy not to negotiate on the health care subsidies until Democrats give them the votes to reopen the government. The Senate planned to vote again Wednesday and Thursday on the Republican bill, and so far there are no signs of any movement on either side.

“We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said earlier this week.

Moderate Democrats aren’t budging

In the first hours of the shutdown, which began at 12:01 a.m. EDT Oct. 1., it was not clear how long Democrats would hold out.

A group of moderate Democrats who had voted against the GOP bill immediately began private, informal talks with Republicans. The GOP lawmakers hoped enough Democrats would quickly change their votes to end a filibuster and pass the spending bill with the necessary 60 votes.

But the bipartisan talks over the expiring health care subsidies have dragged on without a resolution so far. Two weeks later, the moderates, including Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Gary Peters of Michigan, are still voting no.

“Nothing about a government shutdown requires this or gives them new power to conduct mass layoffs,” Peters said after the director of the White House’s budget director, Russell Vought, announced that the firings had started on Friday.

D.C.-area lawmakers see advantages to shutdown

Another key group of Democrats digging in are lawmakers such as like Kaine who represent millions of federal workers in Virginia and Maryland. Kaine said the shutdown was preceded by “nine months of punitive behavior” as the Republican president has made cuts at federal agencies “and everybody knows who’s to blame.”

“Donald Trump is at war with his own workforce, and we don’t reward CEOs who hate their own workers,” Kaine said.

Appearing at a news conference Tuesday alongside supportive federal workers, Democratic lawmakers from Maryland and Virginia called on Republicans to come to the negotiating table.

“The message we have today is very simple,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. “Donald Trump and Russ Vought stop attacking federal employees, stop attacking the American people and start negotiating to reopen the federal government and address the looming health care crisis that is upon us.”

Thousands are losing their jobs, and more to follow

In a court filing Friday, the White House Office of Management and Budget said well over 4,000 federal employees from eight departments and agencies would be fired in conjunction with the shutdown.

On Tuesday, Trump said his administration is using the shutdown to target federal programs that Democrats like and “they’re never going to come back, in many cases.”

“We are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with and they’re never going to open again,” he said.

On Capitol Hill, though, the threats fell flat with Democrats as they continued to demand talks on health care.

“I don’t feel any of this as pressure points,” Jeffries said. “I view it as like the reality that the American people confront and the question becomes, at what point will Republicans embrace the reality that they have created a health care crisis that needs to be decisively addressed?”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., held firm that Republicans would not negotiate until Democrats reopen the government.

The firings, Thune has repeatedly said, “are a situation that could be totally avoided.”

Jalonick and Groves write for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Oct. 15 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate is expected to vote Wednesday afternoon on a measure that would fund the government, and President Donald Trump said he plans to release a list Friday of “Democratic” programs he’s eliminated.

Today’s vote will be the 10th Senate vote to open the government, which has now been shut down for 15 days. Democrats and Republicans are still at odds on bills to reopen.

The ninth vote on Tuesday to fund the government until Nov. 21 failed 49-45 with six senators absent. To pass, it needs 60 votes.

Trump’s list of cut programs is scheduled to be released Friday.

“We are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with, and they’re never going to open up again,” Trump said. “We’re able to do things that we’ve never been able to do before. The Democrats are getting killed.”

Though Trump has made funding available for service members to get their next paychecks, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., said it’s a temporary measure.

“If the Democrats continue to vote to keep the government closed as they have done now so many times, then we know that U.S. troops are going to risk missing a full paycheck at the end of this month,” Johnson said at his daily press conference.

Democrats are holding out for healthcare subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans recently cut from the appropriations bill, and approval for Medicaid funding. Millions of Americans are expected to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket when the subsidies expire at the end of the year.

The longest shutdown lasted 35 days in December 2018 and January 2019. Johnson said that “we’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history unless Democrats drop their partisan demands.”

As the partial government shutdown grinds on, with no end in sight, Catherine Cortez Masto stands ready to end it right now.

The lawyerly senator from Nevada is one of just two Democrats to repeatedly vote with Republicans and Maine’s independent senator, Angus King, to have the federal government up and running.

She’s not only bucking her Senate colleagues with her contrarian stance, but also placing herself squarely at odds with the animating impulse of her party’s political base: Stop Trump! Give no quarter! Now is the time! This is the fight!

Cortez Masto evinces not a flicker of doubt.

“I have been very consistent about the cost of a shutdown and the impact to Americans and the fact that I believe we need to work in a bipartisan way to find solutions to what we’re seeing right now, which is this looming healthcare crisis,” Cortez Masto said from Washington.

“And I think we can do that by keeping the government open. I don’t think we should do it by swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another.”

Unlike the Democrats’ other defector, Pennsylvania’s quirky Sen. John Fetterman, Cortez Masto hasn’t developed a reputation for partisan heresy, or antagonized party peers by playing footsie with President Trump and the MAGA movement.

Despite her temporary alliance with the GOP, she’s unstinting in her criticism of the president and the Republican stance on healthcare, the issue at the heart of the shutdown fight.

“Of course we need to stand up to Trump’s attacks on our families and our country,” she said. “I’ve been one of the most vocal opponents of Trump’s disastrous trade and tariff policies.”

Her split with fellow Democrats, she suggested, is not over ends but rather means.

It’s entirely possible, Cortez Masto insisted, to keep the government open for business and, at the same time, work through the parties’ differences over healthcare, including, most imminently, the end of subsidies that have kept insurance costs from skyrocketing.

It comes down to negotiation, trust and compromise, which in Cortez Masto’s view, is still possible — even in these rabidly partisan times.

“That’s what Congress is built on,” she said. “Congress is built on compromise, working together across the aisle to get stuff done. I still believe in it.”

Although she noted — with considerable understatement — “there are those in the administration and some of my colleagues” who disagree.

Not to mention a great many Democratic activists who believe anything short of jailing Trump and dispatching the entire GOP-run Congress to a far-off desert island amounts to cowardly capitulation.

Nevada, where Cortez Masto was born and bred, is a state that was Republican red for a very long time before turning blue-ish for a while, starting under Barack Obama in 2008. It went back to red-ish under Trump in 2024.

Cortez Masto, a former state attorney general, was first elected to the Senate in 2016, replacing the onetime Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, after the Democrat retired.

Six years later, when she sought reelection, Cortez Masto was widely considered Democrats’ most endangered incumbent. She was not nearly as powerful or prominent as Reid had been. Inflation was raging, and Nevada was still suffering an economic hangover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her opponent was a middling Republican, Adam Laxalt, a failed gubernatorial candidate and one of the architects of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. He also seemed to harbor a soft spot for the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.

Still, Cortez Masto barely beat him, winning by fewer than 10,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast. In retrospect, the result could be seen as a harbinger of Trump’s success in carrying the state after twice losing Nevada.

Cortez Masto next faces reelection in 2028, which is politically ages away. By then, the shutdown will be long forgotten. (And presumably long over.)

Her focus, she said, is the here and now and, especially, the shutdown’s economic effect at a time Nevada is already feeling the negative consequences of Trump’s trade and immigration policies. Las Vegas, which runs on tourism, has experienced a notable slump, and Cortez Masto suggested the shutdown only makes things worse.

That, however, hasn’t deterred Nevada’s other U.S. senator, Jacky Rosen, who has repeatedly voted alongside nearly every other Democrat to keep the government shuttered until Republicans give in.

“Nevadans sent me here to fight for them,” Rosen said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Not to cave.”

Asked about the fissure, Cortez Masto responded evenly and with diplomacy. “She’s a good friend.… Our goal is to fight for Nevada and we are doing it,” she said. “We both are doing it in different ways.”

So, negotiation. Bipartisanship. Compromise.

What makes Cortez Masto think Trump, who’s run roughshod over Congress and the courts, can be trusted to honor any deal Democrats cut with Republicans to reopen the government and address the healthcare crisis she sees?

“Well, that’s the rub, right? We know what he’s doing,” she replied. He’s “flouting the law when it comes to … taking the role of legislators and appropriating funds at his own whim…. So, of course, no, you can’t trust him.

“But he is there. What you got to figure out is how you work together with Republican colleagues to get something done.”

Cortez Masto noted, dryly, that Congress is, in fact, a separate branch of government with its own power and authority. Republicans have ceded both to Trump and if they really want to solve problems, she said, and do more than the president’s bidding, they “need to come out and do bipartisan legislation to push back on this administration.”

“We’ve got to govern,” Cortez Masto said. “We’ve got to work together.”

Wouldn’t that be something.

Days before the Trump administration was supposed to file its response to a California lawsuit challenging its targeting of gender-affirming care providers, attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge to temporarily halt the proceedings.

Given the federal shutdown, they argued, they just didn’t have the lawyers to do the work.

“Department of Justice attorneys and employees of the federal defendants are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including ‘emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,’” they wrote in their filing Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown.

The district judge presiding over the case, which California filed in federal court in Massachusetts along with a coalition of other Democrat-led states, agreed, and promptly granted the request.

It was just one example of the now weeks-old federal shutdown grinding to a halt important litigation between California and the Trump administration, in policy battles with major implications for people’s lives.

The same day, in the same Massachusetts court, Justice Department attorneys were granted a pause in a lawsuit in which California and other states are challenging mass firings at the U.S. Department of Education, after noting that department funding had been suspended and it didn’t know “when such funding will be restored by Congress.”

The same day in U.S. District Court in Central California, the Trump administration asked for a similar pause in a lawsuit that it had brought against California, challenging the state’s refusal to provide its voter registration rolls to the administration.

Justice Department attorneys wrote that they “greatly regret any disruption caused to the Court and the other litigants,” but needed to pause the proceedings until they were “permitted to resume their usual civil litigation functions.”

Since then, the court in Central California has advised the parties of alternative dispute resolution options and outside groups — including the NAACP — have filed motions to intervene in the case, but no major developments have occurred.

The pauses in litigation — only a portion of those that have occurred in courts across the country — were an example of sweeping, real-world, high-stakes effects of the federal government shutdown that average Americans may not consider when thinking about the shutdown’s impact on their lives.

Federal employees working in safety and other crucial roles — such as air traffic controllers — have remained on the job, even without pay, but many others have been forced to stay home. The Justice Department did not spell out which of its attorneys had been benched by the shutdown, but made clear that some who had been working on the cases in question were no longer doing so.

Federal litigation often takes years to resolve, and brief pauses in proceedings are not uncommon. However, extended disruptions — such as one that could occur if the shutdown drags on — would take a toll, forestalling legal answers in some of the most important policy battles in the country.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has sued the Trump administration more than 40 times since January, has not challenged every request for a pause by the Trump administration — especially in cases where the status quo favors the state.

However, it has challenged pauses in other cases, with some success.

For example, in that same Massachusetts federal courthouse Oct. 1, Justice Department attorneys asked a judge to temporarily halt proceedings in a case in which California and other states are suing to block the administration’s targeted defunding of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.

Their arguments were the same as in the other cases: Given the shutdown, they didn’t have the attorneys to do the necessary legal work.

In response, attorneys for California and the other states pushed back, noting that the shutdown had not stopped Department of Health and Human Services officials from moving forward with the measure to defund Planned Parenthood — so the states’ residents remained at imminent risk of losing necessary healthcare.

“The risks of irreparable harms are especially high because it is unclear how long the lapse in appropriations will continue, meaning relief may not be available for months at which point numerous health centers will likely be forced to close due to a lack of funds,” the states argued.

On Oct. 8, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani denied the government’s request for a pause, finding that the states’ interest in proceeding with the case “outweighs” the administration’s interest in pausing it.

Talwani’s argument, in part, was that her order denying a pause would provide Justice Department officials the legal authority to continue litigating the case despite the shutdown.

Bonta said in a statement that “Trump owns this shutdown” and “the devastation it’s causing to hardworking everyday Americans,” adding that his office will not let Trump use it to cause even more harm by delaying relief in court cases.

“We’re not letting his Administration use this shutdown as an excuse to continue implementing his unlawful agenda unchecked. Until we get relief for Californians, we’re not backing down — and neither are the courts,” Bonta said. “We can’t wait for Trump to finally let our government reopen before these cases are heard.”

Trump and Republicans in Congress have blamed the shutdown on Democrats.

Oct. 14 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday failed for the eighth time to pass legislation that would end the government shutdown that is now two weeks old.

A Republican-backed bill that would temporarily fund the government through Nov. 21 failed on a 49-45 vote, requiring 60 votes to advance under Senate rules.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote against the bill. On the other side of the aisle, Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus King of Maine voted in favor of the bill.

The vote means that the shutdown will extend into its 15th day on Wednesday with no clear offramp.

Democrats have demanded that extensions of health insurance subsidies be included in any funding deal. Tens of millions of Americans are expected to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket after the subsidies expire at the end of the year.

During a floor speech Tuesday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chastised President Donald Trump for meeting with Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei to offer a $20 billion bailout for his nation’s struggling economy.

“This Argentina bailout is a slap in the face to farmers and working families worried about keeping healthcare,” he said. “If this administration has $20 billion to spare for a MAGA-friendly foreign government, they can’t turn around to say we don’t have the money to lower health care costs here at home.”

During a press availability earlier that day, Senate majority leader John Thune, R-S.D., blamed any pain from the shutdown on Democrats, demanding that they agree to fund the government before negotiating on healthcare subsidies.

“This is outrageous what they are doing,” he said. “They ought to be ashamed.”

Thune called Schumer “checked out” and said the end will come from working with enough “reasonable Senate Democrats.”

Senators last voted on funding legislation on Thursday before heading into a long break coinciding with Monday’s bank holiday. With no action on the issue in several days, lawmakers in both chambers — and within the Trump administration — have used the time to trade criticisms over who’s to blame for the shutdown, which has left about 750,000 federal workers furloughed or working without pay.

In addition to furloughs, the Trump administration has begun carrying out mass firings, including 1,446 employees at the Justice Department and another 1,200 at the Department of Health and Human Services, USA Today reported.

The Trump administration said it’s working to make sure active-duty military service members receive their next paychecks Friday by repurposing about $8 billion Congress had appropriated for other areas of the Defense Department. President Donald Trump took to Truth Social over the weekend to announce he ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th.”

Johnson held a news conference Tuesday morning at the Capitol and said Trump had “every right” to repurpose the funds.

“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid, bring it,” Johnson said.

Romina Boccia, the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, told The Hill on Monday that it is legal for Congress to repurpose un-obligated funds, but for the administration to do so unilaterally “is likely illegal.”

“An un-obligated balance does not give the administration the right to use the money as it wishes,” Boccia said. “If Congress wants to ensure that America’s troops will be paid during the ongoing government shutdown, Congress should pass a bill that authorizes funding to pay the troops.”

Doing so would require a vote by the House, which is on recess for the rest of the week. Johnson has said he will not call House members back to Washington, D.C., early.

At the heart of the deadlock are subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums set to expire in the new year.

Schumer has said Senate Democrats wouldn’t support the stopgap legislation unless Republicans back extending the subsidies.

The Trump administration has said it’s against extending the ACA subsidies, falsely claiming undocumented immigrants are benefitting from it. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for health insurance under the ACA, the federal healthcare.gov website states.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — Some airports around the country are refusing to play a video with a message from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in which she blames Democrats for the federal government shutdown and its impacts on TSA operations because of its political content.

Airports in Las Vegas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix, Seattle and more say the video goes against their airport policy or regulations that prohibit political messaging in their facilities.

Various government agencies, in emails to workers and on websites, have adopted language that blames Democrats for the shutdown, with some experts arguing it could be in violation of the 1939 Hatch Act, which restricts certain political activities by federal employees.

The shutdown has halted routine operations and left airports scrambling with flight disruptions. Democrats say any deal to reopen the government has to address their healthcare demands, and Republicans say they won’t negotiate until they agree to fund the government. Insurance premiums would double if Congress fails to renew the subsidy payments that expire Dec. 31.

In the video, Noem says that TSA’s “top priority” is to help make travel pleasant and efficient while keeping passengers safe.

“However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay,” she continues.

The Transportation Security Administration falls under the Department of Homeland Security. Roughly 61,000 of the agency’s 64,130 employees are required to continue working during the shutdown. The Department said Friday that the video is being rolled out to airports across the country.

A DHS spokeswoman responded to a request for comment restating some of the message from Noem’s video.

“It’s unfortunate our workforce has been put in this position due to political gamesmanship. Our hope is that Democrats will soon recognize the importance of opening the government,” spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.

The Harry Reid International Airport, in Las Vegas, said it had to “remain mindful of the Hatch Act’s restrictions.”

“Per airport regulations, the terminals and surrounding areas are not designated public forums, and the airport’s intent is to avoid the use of the facility for political or religious advocacy,” the statement said.

Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins said the county north of New York City won’t play the video at its local airport. In a statement, he called the video “inappropriate, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the values we expect from our nation’s top public officials,” and said its tone is “unnecessarily alarmist” as it relates to operations at Westchester County Airport.

“At a time when we should be focused on ensuring stability, collaboration and preparedness, this type of messaging only distracts from the real issues, and undermines public trust,” he said.

Even in red states, airports weren’t showing the video for various reasons. Salt Lake City International Airport wasn’t playing the video because state law prohibits using city-owned property for political purposes, said airport spokesperson Nancy Volmer.

The airport in Billings, Mont., “politely declined” even though it has screens that could show the video with audio, assistant aviation director Paul Khera said Tuesday.

“We don’t want to get in the middle of partisan politics,” Khera said. “We like to stay middle of the road, we didn’t want to play that video.”

Gomez Licon writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Rio Yamat in Las Vegas and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colo. contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is making this government shutdown unlike any the country has ever seen, enabling his budget office a rare authority to pick winners and losers — who gets paid or fired — in an unprecedented restructuring across the federal workforce.

As the shutdown enters its third week, the Office and Management and Budget said Tuesday it’s preparing to “batten down the hatches” with more reductions in force to come. The president calls budget chief Russ Vought the “grim reaper” who’s seized on the opportunity to fund Trump’s priorities, paying the military while slashing employees in health, education, the sciences and other areas with actions that have been criticized as illegal and are facing court challenges.

“Pay the troops, pay law enforcement, continue the RIFs, and wait,” OMB said in a social media post.

With Congress at a standstill — the Republican-led House refusing to return to session and the Senate stuck in a loop of failed votes to reopen government as Democrats demand health care funds — the White House’s budget office quickly filled the void.

From Project 2025 to the White House

Vought, a chief architect of the conservative Project 2025 policy book, is reshaping the size and scope of federal government in ways similar to those envisioned in the blueprint. It is exactly what certain lawmakers, particularly Democrats, feared if Congress failed to fund the government.

Trump’s priorities — supporting the military and pursuing his mass deportation agenda — have been kept largely uninterrupted, despite the closures. But employees in health, education, the sciences and other federal departments are among those being laid off. As many as 750,000 workers are being furloughed.

“Donald Trump and Russ Vought and all of their cronies are using this moment to terrorize these patriots,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., standing with federal workers Tuesday outside the White House budget office.

Van Hollen said it’s “a big fat lie” when Trump and his budget director say that the shutdown is making them fire federal workers. “It is also illegal and we will see them in court,” Van Hollen said.

Shutdown grinds into a third week

Now on its 14th day, the federal closure is quickly becoming among the longest government shutdowns. Congress failed to meet the Oct. 1 deadline to pass the annual appropriations bills needed to fund the government as the Democrats demanded a deal to preserve expiring health care funds that provide subsidies for people to purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday said he has nothing to negotiate with the Democrats until they vote to reopen the government.

The Republican speaker welcomed OMB’s latest actions to pay some workers and fire others.

“They have every right to move the funds around,” Johnson said at a press conference at the Capitol. If the Democrats want to challenge the Trump administration in court, Johnson said, “bring it.”

Typically, federal workers are furloughed during a lapse in funding, traditionally with back pay once government funding is restored. But Vought’s budget office announced late last week the reductions in forces had begun. More than 4,000 workers received layoff notices over the weekend.

Military pay, deportations on track

At the same time, Trump instructed the military to find money to ensure service personnel wouldn’t miss paychecks this week. The Pentagon said over the weekend it was able to tap $8 billion in unused research and development funds to make payroll.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her agency was relying on Trump’s big tax cuts law for funding to make sure members of the Coast Guard, which falls under the department, are also paid.

“We at DHS worked out an innovative solution to make sure that didn’t happen,” Noem said in a statement. Thanks to “the One Big Beautiful Bill,” she said, “the brave men and women of the US Coast Guard will not miss a paycheck this week.”

In past shutdowns, the Office of Management and Budget has overseen agency plans during the lapse in federal fundings, ensuring which workers are essential and remain on the job. Vought, however, has taken his role further by speaking openly about his plans to go after the federal workforce.

As agencies started making their shutdown plans, Vought’s OMB encouraged department heads to consider reductions in force, an unheard of action. The budget office’s general counsel, Mark Paoletta suggested in a draft memo that the workforce may not be automatically eligible for back pay once government reopens.

‘Grim reaper’ replaces Elon Musk’s chainsaw

Trump posted an AI-generated video last week that portrayed Vought dressed with cloak and dagger, against the backdrop of the classic rock staple “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”

“Every authoritarian leader has had his grim reaper. Russell Vought is Donald Trump’s,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer, the senior Democrat from Maryland.

Hoyer compared the budget chief to billionaire Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw earlier this year as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s slashing of the workforce “Vought swings his scythe through the federal government as thoughtlessly,” he said.

In many ways, the “Big, Beautiful Bill, Act” as the law is commonly called, gives the White House a vast new allotment of federal funding for its priority projects, separate from the regular appropriations process in Congress.

The package unleashed some $175 billion for the Pentagon, including for the Golden Dome missile shield and other priority projects, and another $175 million to Homeland Security largely for Trump’s mass deportation agenda. It also included extra funds for Vought’s work at OMB.

Trump’s big bill provides billions

Certain funds from the “big bill” are available to be used during the shutdown, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“The Administration also could decide to use mandatory funding provided in the 2025 reconciliation act or other sources of mandatory funding to continue activities financed by those direct appropriations at various agencies,” according to CBO.

The CBO cited the Department of Defense, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of Management and Budget as among those that received eligible funds under the law..

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Oct. 13 (UPI) — Members of the U.S. Coast Guard will continue to get paid despite the government shutdown, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said they had found “an innovative solution” to ensure no paychecks are owed to those protecting America’s seas.

Noem did not explain the solution to pay the Coast Guard amid the political stalemate that has seen hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed.

“The brave men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard will not miss a paycheck this week as they continue to carry out their critical homeland security and military missions,” Noem said in a Monday statement.

The federal government shut down on Oct. 1 as Congress failed to pass an appropriations bill to keep it funded into the new year.

Democrats said they will only support a bill that extends and restores Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, arguing that failing to do so would raise healthcare costs for some 20 million Americans.

Republicans, who control the House, Senate and the presidency, are seeking a so-called clean funding bill that includes no changes. They argue that the Democrats are fighting to provide undocumented migrants with taxpayer-funded healthcare, even though federal law does not permit them from receiving Medicaid or ACA premium tax credits.

Coast Guard paychecks are paid by the Department of Homeland Security, while military troops are paid by the Department of Defense.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump said he was directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID” on time.

“We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS,” he said in a statement on his Truth Social platform, while blaming the Democrats for the government shutdown.

“The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy,” he said.

The Department of Defense will reportedly use about $8 billion of research and development funding from last year to pay service members on Wednesday if the government does not reopen by then.

The legality of shifting the Congress-approved funds was unclear.

Asked about the appropriation of the funds on Sunday during CBS News’ Face the Nation, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., replied, “probably not.”

“I think to pay the military during a shutdown would require legislation,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says that he will not negotiate with Democrats until they drop healthcare demands.

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson has said that the current government shutdown could become the longest in history, as an impasse between the Democrats and Republicans drags on with no end in sight.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Johnson, a Republican, said that he would not negotiate with Democratic lawmakers until they suspended policy demands related to healthcare, a dispute at the core of the shutdown.

“We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history,” said Johnson, who leads Republican lawmakers in the House.

The administration of President Donald Trump has used the shutdown, now in its 13th day, as a pretext for pushing forward a series of cuts and layoffs to government services and agencies, although its legal authority to do so remains in dispute.

Trump has plainly stated that such cuts will target his political rivals, saying last week that he would reduce “Democrat programmes” if the party refused to drop its demands on healthcare subsidies.

Recent polls have shown that US voters blame Democrats, Republicans, and Trump himself in roughly equal measure for the shutdown.

Democrats have called for an extension of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act that millions of people in the US rely on to buy healthcare plans.

Republicans have said that the issue can be addressed after the government is reopened, but Democrats have expressed doubt that the Republicans will honour that pledge.

Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers passed a huge tax and spending bill that is set to result in the loss of healthcare access for more than 15 million people.

While government shutdowns have become a routine occurrence in US politics in recent years, they can disrupt or reduce access to key services and force employees to work without pay for uncertain periods of time.

The US military said over the weekend that it would use unspent funds originally set aside for research and development to ensure that military personnel continue to receive pay.

The mass layoffs pushed by the Trump administration are a relatively new addition to shutdowns. Vice President JD Vance has warned that more “painful” cuts are ahead, even as government employee unions launch legal challenges against the terminations.

WASHINGTON — Republican Speaker Mike Johnson predicted Monday the federal government shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on their health care demands and reopen.

Standing alone at the Capitol on the 13th day of the shutdown, the speaker said he was unaware of the details of the thousands of federal workers being fired by the Trump administration. It’s a highly unusual mass layoff widely seen as way to seize on the shutdown to reduce the scope of government. Vice President JD Vance has warned of “painful” cuts ahead, even as employee unions sue.

“We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history,” Johnson of Louisiana said.

With no endgame in sight, the shutdown is expected to roll on for the unforeseeable future. The closure has halted routine government operations, shuttered Smithsonian museums and other landmark cultural institutions and left airports scrambling with flight disruptions, all injecting more uncertainty into an already precarious economy.

The House is out of legislative session, with Johnson refusing to recall lawmakers back to Washington, while the Senate, closed Monday for the federal holiday, will return to work Tuesday. But senators are stuck in a cul-de-sac of failed votes as Democrats refuse to relent on their health care demands.

Johnson thanked President Trump for ensuring military personnel are paid this week, which removed one main pressure point that may have pushed the parties to the negotiating table.

At its core, the shutdown is a debate over health care policy — and particularly the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are expiring for millions of Americans who rely on government aid to purchase their own health insurance policies on the Obamacare exchanges. Democrats demand the subsidies be extended, Republicans argue the issue can be dealt with later.

With Congress and the White House stalemated, some are eyeing the end of the month as the next potential deadline to reopen government.

That’s when open enrollment begins, Nov. 1, for the health program at issue, and Americans will face the prospect of skyrocketing insurance premiums. The Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that monthly costs would double if Congress fails to renew the subsidy payments that expire Dec. 31.

It’s also when government workers on monthly pay schedules, including thousands of House aides, will go without paychecks.

The health care debate has dogged Congress ever since the Affordable Care Act became law under then-President Barak Obama in 2010.

The country went through a 16-day government shutdown during the Obama presidency when Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act 2013.

Trump tried to “repeal and replace” the law, commonly known as Obamacare, during his first term, in 2017, with a Republican majority in the House and Senate. That effort failed when then-Sen. John McCain memorably voted a thumbs down on the plan.

With 24 million now enrolled in Obamacare, a record, Johnson said Monday that Republicans are unlikely to go that route again, noting he still has “PTSD” from that botched moment.

“Can we completely repeal and replace Obamacare? Many of us are skeptical about that now because the roots are so deep,” Johnson said.

The Republican speaker insists his party has been willing to discuss the health care issue with Democrats this fall, before the subsidies expire at the end of the year. But first, he said, Democrats have to agree to reopen the government.

The longest shutdown, during Trump’s first term over his demands for funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall, ended in 2019 after 35 days.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is exercising vast leeway both to fire workers — drawing complaints from fellow Republicans and lawsuits from employee unions — and to determine who is paid.

That means not only military troops but other Trump administration priorities don’t necessarily have to go without pay, thanks to the various other funding sources as well as the billions made available in what’s commonly called Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that’s now law.

The Pentagon said over the weekend it was able to tap $8 billion in unused research and development funds to pay the military personnel. They had risked missed paychecks on Wednesday. But the Education Department is among those being hard hit, disrupting special education, after-school programs and others.

“The Administration also could decide to use mandatory funding provided in the 2025 reconciliation act or other sources of mandatory funding to continue activities financed by those direct appropriations at various agencies,” according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO had cited the Department of Defense, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of Management and Budget as among those that received specific funds under the law.

“Some of the funds in DoD’s direct appropriation under the 2025 reconciliation act could be used to pay active-duty personnel during a shutdown, thus reducing the number of excepted workers who would receive delayed compensation,” CBO wrote in a letter responding to questions raised by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 (UPI) — The Smithsonian museums and research centers, along with the National Zoo, closed to the public Sunday for the first time during the federal government shutdown and are likely to remain closed until Congress reaches an agreement over national funding.

Though the shutdown officially began Oct. 1, outside funds from donations and endowments allowed a brief extension. Now, its administrators said, the Smithsonian complex must cease public operations until a budget deal.

The closures affect what had been one of the most accessible forms of public education and sightseeing in the United States With 21 museums, 14 research centers and the National Zoo, the Smithsonian is the largest museum and research network in the world.

The absence of open museums cast a palpable gloom over the capital. Though the weekend brought rainy weather that may have suppressed tourism anyway, the lack of activity around the National Mall left the area unusually quiet.

Washington’s reputation as a destination for cultural visitors has long been tied to its museums, and their closure underscores how dependent the city is on federal operations and how vulnerable that model becomes in shutdowns.

Moreover, many district residents work at various Smithsonian complexes, and the shutdown means a majority of Smithsonian staff members have been furloughed. Some essential operations, like at the National Zoo, must continue for animal care, using existing reserves.

The 163-acre public zoo is home to more than 2,200 animals. The private Conservation Biology Institute is in Front Royal Va., 73 miles away. The two employ in total more than 300 staff members and scientists.

For residents and tourists, the museums and zoo had been a “free of cost” option for learning and cultural engagement.

Most of its museums cluster along or near the National Mall, with several other in the D.C. metro area and two facilities in New York City — also closed because of the shutdown.

The portfolio includes institutions devoted to natural history, air and space, African American history and culture, American art and many specialized fields.

In addition to public galleries and exhibitions, the Smithsonian operates research and education centers. These focus on areas like the cnservation Institute, tropical research Institute and conservation biology.

Vice President JD Vance said Sunday there will be deeper cuts to the federal workforce the longer the government shutdown goes on, adding to the uncertainty facing hundreds of thousands who are already furloughed without pay amid the stalemate in Congress.

Vance warned that as the federal shutdown entered its 12th day, the new cuts would be “painful,” even as he said the Trump administration worked to ensure that the military is paid this week and some services would be preserved for low-income Americans, including food assistance.

Still, hundreds of thousands of government workers have been furloughed in recent days and, in a court filing Friday, the Office of Management and Budget said well over 4,000 federal employees would soon be fired in conjunction with the shutdown.

“The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” Vance said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “To be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful. This is not a situation that we relish. This is not something that we’re looking forward to, but the Democrats have dealt us a pretty difficult set of cards.”

Labor unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the aggressive move by President Trump’s budget office, which goes far beyond what usually happens in a government shutdown, further inflaming tensions between the Republicans who control Congress and the Democratic minority.

The shutdown began Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The expiration of those subsidies at the end of the year will result in monthly cost increases for millions.

Trump and Republican leaders have said they are open to negotiations on the health subsidies, but insist the government must reopen first.

For now, negotiations are virtually nonexistent. Dug in as ever, House leaders from both parties pointed fingers at each other in rival Sunday appearances on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We have repeatedly made clear that we will sit down with anyone, anytime, anyplace,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It’s unfortunate they’ve taken a my-way-or-the-highway approach.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) blamed Democrats and said they “seem not to care” about the pain the shutdown is inflicting.

“They’re trying their best to distract the American people from the simple fact that they’ve chosen a partisan fight so that they can prove to their Marxist rising base in the Democratic Party that they’re willing to fight Trump and Republicans,” he said.

Progressive activists, meanwhile, expressed new support for the Democratic Party’s position in the shutdown fight.

Ezra Levin, co-founder of the leading progressive protest group Indivisible, said he is “feeling good about the strength of Dem position.” He pointed to fractures in the GOP, noting that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly warned last week that healthcare insurance premiums would skyrocket for average Americans — including her own adult children — if nothing is done.

“Trump and GOP are rightfully taking the blame for the shutdown and for looming premium increases,” Levin said. “Their chickens are coming home to roost.”

And yet the Republican administration and its congressional allies are showing no signs of compromise on Democratic demands or backing away from threats to use the opportunity to pursue deeper cuts to the federal workforce.

Thousands of employees at the departments of Education, Treasury, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services as well as the Environmental Protection Agency are set to receive layoff notices, according to spokespeople for the agencies and union representatives for federal workers.

“You hear a lot of Senate Democrats say, well, how can Donald Trump possibly lay off all of these federal workers?” Vance said. “Well, the Democrats have given us a choice between giving low-income women their food benefits and paying our troops on the one hand, and, on the other hand, paying federal bureaucrats.”

Democrats say the firings are illegal and unnecessary.

“They do not have to do this,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They do not have to punish people that shouldn’t find themselves in this position.”

Peoples writes for the Associated Press.

Donald Trump is directing US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to pay military personnel despite the federal government shutdown.

The president said on Saturday that Hegseth must make sure troops do not miss out on their regular paycheque, scheduled for Wednesday. The directive comes as other government employees have already had some pay withheld and others are being laid off.

“I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

The Republican and Democratic parties blame each other for failing to agree on a spending plan to reopen the government.

Trump’s message asks Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID” on 15 October, when military personnel would see their pay withheld for the first time since the shutdown began on 1 October.

Many US military employees are considered “essential”, meaning they must still show up for duty without pay. Some 750,000 other federal employees – about 40% – have been furloughed, or sent home, also without pay.

Furloughed employees are legally supposed to receive back-pay after a shutdown ends and they return to work, but the Trump administration has insinuated this might not happen.

“The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy,” Trump posted on Saturday.

Democrats have refused to vote for a Republican spending plan that would reopen the government after nearly 12 days shut down, saying any resolution must preserve expiring tax credits that reduce health insurance costs for millions of Americans and reverse Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, the healthcare program for elderly and low-income people.

Republicans accuse Democrats of unnecessarily bringing the government to a halt, and blame them for the knock-on effects caused by the federal work stoppage.

Finding a way to pay for military salaries could help reduce some of the political risk for congressional leaders if the shutdown drags on.

In an effort to pressure Democrats, the Trump administration has also begun laying off thousands of government workers, an unprecedented move during a shutdown.

“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management Director Russell Vought announced in a post on X on Friday morning, referring to an acronym for “reductions in force”.

The administration disclosed later on Friday that seven agencies had started firing more than 4,000 people, making good on the president’s repeated threats to use the shutdown to further his long-held goal of reducing the federal workforce.

The reductions included dozens of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to the BBC’s US partner CBS news, citing sources familiar with the situation.

The agency’s entire Washington DC office was laid off, the sources told CBS, adding that among the laid-off employees were those working on the CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, the agency’s Ebola response and immunisations. There were also reductions in the human resources department, they said.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, told CBS that the let-go workers were not essential, and that “HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda”.

Employees at the Treasury Department and in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security were also among those laid off on Friday, those agencies confirmed.

The American Federation of Government Employees and AFL-CIO, two major unions representing federal workers, have filed a lawsuit in northern California, asking a judge to temporarily block the layoff orders.

“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” AFGE president Everett Kelley said.

A spokesman from the White House budget office told the BBC on Saturday that the layoffs were just the beginning.

“These RIF numbers from the court filing are just a snapshot in time,” he said. “More RIFs are coming.”

In a court filing opposing the unions’ request for a temporary restraining order, the justice department revealed that agencies such as the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency could also see staff cuts.

The government lawyers said the labour unions had failed to establish that their members would be irreparably harmed by the layoffs, which is needed for the judge to grant the restraining order. But they said a restraining order would “irreparably harm the government”.

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Oct. 10 (UPI) — Federal employee layoffs have begun as the government shutdown continues at least into next week after Senate members left Washington on Friday.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced the layoffs in a social media post that simply says, “the RIFs have begun.”

“RIFs” is an acronym for “reductions in force,” but Vought did not say how many federal workers or agencies are affected, The Hill reported.

An OMB spokesperson confirmed Vought’s statement is correct.

A Trump administration official told Politico the layoffs affect the Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Treasury departments.

President Donald Trump on Thursday told his Cabinet the layoffs would affect what he called “Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans,” Politico reported.

The OMB earlier notified federal agencies to prepare for a potential reduction in force if the shutdown were extended beyond a few days.

The agencies were to lay off non-essential workers and those who oppose the president’s policies, the OMB memo said.

Monday is a bank holiday — the observance of Columbus Day — in the United States, and the Senate had no votes on a continuing resolution to fund the government on Friday.

The Senate is scheduled to resume session on Tuesday, while the House is scheduled to return on Oct. 20.

Friday marked 10 days since the government shut down after the Senate failed to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government.

Thursday night marked the seventh attempt to pass a stopgap funding bill, but the upper chamber was 6 votes short of the 60 needed for a supermajority for the Republican bill and 13 votes short of the Democrats’ bill.

At issue are subsidies for Affordable Care Act tax credits set to expire in the new year and expansion of Medicare, while adding an estimated $1.5 trillion in costs over the next 10 years.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said his party wouldn’t support the stopgap legislation unless Republicans back extending the ACA tax credits and Medicare expansion.

President Donald Trump again threatened to cut federal programs if Democrats don’t support the Republican bill.

House and Senate Republicans say Senate Democrats want to provide healthcare funding for migrants who are not legal residents, which Senate Democrats have denied.

Some of the 750,000 federal workers furloughed as a result of the shutdown will begin missing their first paychecks Friday.

About 1.3 million members of the military are next set to receive pay on Wednesday, but they might have to wait until the federal government is funded to receive retroactive pay.

WASHINGTON — The White House budget office said Friday that mass firings of federal workers have started in an attempt to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers in the ongoing government shutdown.

Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on the social media site X that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government.

A spokesperson for the budget office said the reductions are “substantial” but did not offer more immediate details.

The Education Department is among the agencies hit by new layoffs, a department spokesperson said Friday without providing more details. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January, but its workforce was nearly halved amid mass layoffs in the Republican administration’s first months. At the start of the shutdown, it had about 2,500 employees.

The White House previewed that it would pursue the aggressive layoff tactic shortly before the government shutdown began on Oct. 1, telling all federal agencies to submit their reduction-in-force plans to the budget office for its review. It said reduction-in-force plans could apply for federal programs whose funding would lapse in a government shutdown, are otherwise not funded and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”

This goes far beyond what usually happens in a government shutdown, which is that federal workers are furloughed but restored to their jobs once the shutdown ends.

Democrats have tried to call the administration’s bluff, arguing the firings could be illegal, and seemed bolstered by the fact the White House had yet to carry out the firings.

But President Trump had said earlier this week that he would soon have more information about how many federal jobs would be eliminated.

“I’ll be able to tell you that in four or five days if this keeps going on,” he said Tuesday in the Oval Office as he met with Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney. “If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back.”

Meanwhile, the halls of the Capitol were quiet on Friday, then 10th day of the shutdown, with both the House and the Senate out of Washington and both sides digging in for a protracted shutdown fight. Senate Republicans have tried repeatedly to cajole Democratic holdouts to vote for a stopgap bill to reopen the government, but Democrats have refused as they hold out for a firm commitment to extend health care benefits.

There was no sign that the top Democratic and Republican Senate leaders were even talking about a way to solve the impasse. Instead, Senate Majority Leader John Thune continued to try to peel away centrist Democrats who may be willing to cross party lines as the shutdown pain dragged on.

“It’s time for them to get a backbone,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said during a news conference.

Kim and Groves write for the Associated Press. AP writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Heather Campbell lost her job working for a food bank over the summer because of federal funding cuts. Her husband serves as an officer in the Air Force, but now he’s facing the prospect of missing his next paycheck because of the government shutdown.

If lawmakers in Washington don’t step in, Campbell’s husband won’t get paid on Wednesday. Because the couple lacks the savings to cover all their expenses, they expect to survive on credit cards to pay the mortgage and feed their three children, racking up debt as the political stalemate drags on.

“You’re asking us to put our lives on the line or the people we love to put their lives on the line,” said Campbell, 39, who lives outside Montgomery, Alabama, near Maxwell Air Force Base. “And you’re not even going to give us our paycheck. What? There is a lot of broken trust there.”

The nation’s third shutdown in 12 years is once again raising anxiety levels among service members and their families because those in uniform are working without pay. While they would receive back pay once the impasse ends, many military families live paycheck to paycheck. During previous shutdowns, Congress passed legislation to ensure that troops kept earning their salaries, but time is running out before they miss their first paycheck in less than a week.

“There are so many things that Congress can’t agree on right now,” said Kate Horrell, the wife of a Navy veteran whose Washington, D.C., company provides financial advice to military families. “I don’t want to assume that they’re going to be able to agree on this.”

Paying the troops has support, but it’s unclear when a deal might pass

When asked if he would support a bill to pay the troops, President Donald Trump said, “that probably will happen.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Trump said Wednesday. “Our military is always going to be taken care of.”

Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican and former Navy helicopter pilot, has introduced a measure to maintain military and Coast Guard salaries, and it has bipartisan co-sponsors.

The House is closed for business until next week, leaving two days to take action before Wednesday’s payday. Missed paychecks for military service members are among the most serious pressure points in the shutdown, causing political pain for the lawmakers. Several proposals have been floated for voting on stand-alone legislation that would ensure no interruption in pay, but those are not expected to be brought up for consideration, for now.

Amanda Scott, whose husband is an Air Force officer in Colorado, said the uncertainty goes beyond the stress of just getting by — it chips away at the military’s ability to retain the best people and their readiness to fight.

“How ready and lethal are you if you don’t know if you can feed your family?” said Scott, 33, of Colorado Springs, who works for a defense contractor and volunteers as an advocate for military families. “A lot of these service members are highly skilled and can go out and make much more money in the civilian sector.”

Aid is available for service members, but it’s not enough for some families

Support is available for military families through nonprofits and charities. For example, some financial institutions are offering zero-interest loans, while each military branch has a relief organization.

But Campbell said she and her husband in Alabama can’t apply for a payday loan because they’re refinancing their house. They lack a substantial emergency fund because they were paying off student loans and moved several times in the last few years to military posts. It was often challenging for her to find steady work and child care.

“The opportunity to build up savings is really difficult on just one income,” Campbell said. “I don’t know many military families that have a month’s worth of income set aside just in case, let alone multiple months’ worth.”

Jen Cluff, whose husband recently left the Air Force, said her family was on a food aid program during the 2019 shutdown. But even the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, also known as WIC, which helps more than 6 million low-income mothers and young children, would run out of federal money within two weeks unless the shutdown ends, experts say.

“We made so little and had three young children,” said Cluff, 42, of San Antonio. “We were definitely a family that had very little buffer.”

If Congress had not passed legislation to pay troops during the last shutdown, missing more than two paychecks “would have been catastrophic for us,” she said.

“Resentment can grow quickly,” Cluff said of the shutdown, adding that “the general public, and many in government, truly don’t understand the daily sacrifices our military members and their families make for our country.”

Wider effects feared in military-heavy areas

The economic impact will ripple through regions with large military footprints, like coastal Virginia, home to the nation’s largest Navy base and several other installations. The area’s 88,000 active duty service members and their families likely have pulled back significantly on spending, said Rick Dwyer, executive director of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance, an advocacy group.

“Think about service members who are deployed right now around the world,” said Dwyer, who served in the Air Force during previous shutdowns. “They’re having to wonder if their families are going to be able to pay the rent, the child care bills, the car payments.”

A shutdown contingency plan posted on the Pentagon’s website cites the use of funds to continue military operations from Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill. The Congressional Budget Office has said money appropriated to the Defense Department under the new law could be used to pay active duty personnel.

It was not clear if the funding would be used for that. The Pentagon said Thursday that it could not provide information “at this time.”

Its contingency plan says it will “continue to defend the nation and conduct ongoing military operations” as well as activities “necessary for the safety of human life and the protection of property.”

Listed among the highest priorities are securing the U.S.-Mexico border, operations in the Middle East and the future Golden Dome missile defense program. The plan also noted that “child care activities required for readiness” would continue.

Raleigh Smith Duttweiler, chief impact officer for the National Military Family Association, said most child development centers on military bases are still operating. But she said most service members pay for child care off base.

“Last I checked, my kids’ babysitter doesn’t take an IOU from the federal government,” said Duttweiler, whose husband is a Marine.

Finley writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.