White House declines to engage Democrats as shutdown drags into second week

In the eight days since the government shut down, President Donald Trump and his allies have engaged in a furious public campaign against Democrats, blaming them for the closure, trolling political opponents online and urging party leaders to accede to their demands.

Behind the scenes, Trump and his aides have still not engaged with Democrats at all. The stance comes despite the potential political ramifications of the closure, which polling has shown the public blames more so on Republicans than Democrats.

“We’re happy to talk about everything. We plan to,” said a senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss plans publicly. “After the government is open.”

The White House has warned of imminent mass firings of federal workers and “irreversible” budget cuts if a shutdown occurred, though Trump officials have yet to enact those politics. Trump and his deputies have already had to authorize special funding for a food program for women and children that’s set to soon run dry. The president in a Cabinet meeting Thursday said his administration will “be making cuts that will be permanent” as a result of the shutdown, but did not elaborate on when that would begin.

At the center of the gridlock between congressional Democrats and Republicans are Affordable Care Act subsidies that are soon due to expire, potentially hiking the cost of health care for many Americans. Democrats have called on Republicans to extend those subsidies as a condition of reopening the government, though Trump has dug his heels in that he won’t discuss doing so until Democrats vote to fund the government.

Trump, seemingly aware of the political blowback he could face if the health care subsidies aren’t addressed, suggested earlier this week that his office was “speaking with the Democrats” about a solution. But after telling reporters as much Monday in the Oval Office, he walked back the comment that evening with a social media post.

“I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open,” Trump wrote.

Trump doubled down that those talks with Democrats won’t happen in the meantime. “All I want to do is very simple,” he said Wednesday during an event in the State Dining Room. “I want to get the country open, and then we’re going to discuss that, and we’d like to.”

Democrats in the Senate who have been a part of bipartisan congressional discussions to find a path forward, such as Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire) and Gary Peters (Michigan), said this week that they hadn’t spoken with the president.

“As I understand it, he has not been speaking to any Democrats,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (New York).

Schumer said he is “happy to have Democrats talk to Republicans,” and that “the only way you solve this problem, ultimately, is the four leaders and Trump agree.”

The shutdown began last week after Senate Democrats rejected a Republican-led proposal that would have extended funding at current levels until Nov. 21, voting nearly along party lines. Democrats refused to approve the funding extension unless Republicans agreed to certain concessions on health care policy, while Republicans countered with false claims that Democratic lawmakers wanted the government to offer full health care benefits to undocumented immigrants.

Tensions escalated after Trump posted an altered video of Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) speaking to reporters after a meeting at the White House, depicting Jeffries wearing a sombrero and handlebar mustache as an AI-generated Schumer voice said Democrats wanted to give undocumented immigrants “free health care.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a close Trump ally, said he met with a bipartisan group of senators as recently as Tuesday night to discuss a longer-term solution that would prevent the government from facing another shutdown in November, the next deadline for the funding extension Republicans have proposed. He maintains that Republicans’ position on the current shutdown hasn’t changed and they will not make changes to health care policy until the government is reopened, but that the group is having “productive” conversations about “what happens next.”

“That’s from the president’s directive,” Mullin said, adding that Trump has asked: “How do we avoid this? How do we keep people at the table? How do we make this appropriations process so we don’t continue to shut down the government for political gamesmanship?”

Asked whether a commitment to negotiate on ACA subsidies would be enough to get Democrats to reopen the government, Schumer responded: “No. We need to solve the problem.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said he saw no need “at this point” for Trump to hold discussions with Democrats about reopening.

“The president’s been a little busy, obviously, with Gaza, but this is something that the Senate’s got to be able to work out,” Lankford said. “He’s already said he’s willing to sit down and talk through all the different health care issues after the government is open. To start doing negotiations now just protracts the length of this shutdown.”

A Washington Post poll conducted last week found that significantly more Americans blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats, though many said they were not sure. A large majority supported Democrats’ call to extend the federal health insurance subsidies, but less than half were in favor of the party continuing to demand it if it extends the shutdown. Without the subsidies, insurance premiums could more than double for 22 million people with ACA policies.

During a government shutdown during his first term, Trump in January 2019 met twice with congressional leadership, including Democrats, in the third week of the nearly five-week shutdown. But after the second White House meeting — which ended with Trump telling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “Bye-bye” and walking out after less than 15 minutes of conversation — those negotiations stopped.

Trump and Pelosi toward the end of the shutdown communicated through formal letters — with Pelosi saying Democrats were uncomfortable attending the State of the Union if the government remained shut down and security agencies were not fully funded, and Trump telling Pelosi he was postponing her scheduled weeklong international trip that required military aircraft.

He eventually agreed to a deal and ended the stalemate after a record 35 days, facing intraparty tensions and a revolt by Senate Republicans as public anger mounted.

This time, the administration’s stance is not to engage with Democrats to reopen the government because there is nothing to negotiate, according to one of the senior White House officials.

“At the end of the day, that is what the administration is asking for, a clean bipartisan continuing resolution that the Democrats voted for six months ago, that they voted for 13 times during the Biden administration,” the official said.

The proposal Senate Republicans have put before their Democratic colleagues would fund the government through Nov. 21 at existing levels. It would also put additional money into security measures for each branch of government. Congress has also been voting repeatedly on a counterproposal from Democrats, which would extend funding through Oct. 31 and make the ACA subsidies permanent, among other Democratic policy priorities.

As for why the Trump administration had not yet begun to fire federal workers — despite congressional Republican leaders being told late last week to prepare for immediate layoffs — the official said they may still occur.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson noted that the Trump administration “was able to find a solution to fund the major federal nutrition program for women and children,” but said “everyone is paying the price for” Democrats’ decision not to vote to reopen the government.

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• Katie Tarrant contributed.