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The federal government remained shut down Thursday amid an ongoing partisan divide over funding laws with no immediate end in sight.
The shutdown has temporarily furloughed around 750,000 federal workers, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The Trump administration has warned it may start firing employees as the shutdown progresses and has begun canceling or withholding funding for projects in Democratic-led states.
In the meantime, several agencies are almost completely shuttered, including the Department of Education, the Commerce Department, the Labor Department and the State Department. National parks will largely remain open, though visitor centers, parking lots and museums will be closed. Programs that are not funded by annual appropriations laws such as Social Security and the U.S. Postal Service will continue, as will work necessary to national security and defense.
The Senate once again rejected proposals to extend federal funding on Wednesday, primarily along partisan lines, and both parties publicly remain dug in to positions they’ve held for weeks. The chamber is set to vote again on the same bills Friday after a one-day break Thursday for the Yom Kippur holiday.
The Senate once again rejected proposals to extend federal funding on Wednesday, primarily along partisan lines, and both parties publicly remain dug in to positions they’ve held for weeks. The chamber is set to vote again on the same bills Friday after a one-day break Thursday for the Yom Kippur holiday.
While there is still no clear path out of the shutdown, senators of both parties met throughout the day Wednesday in informal huddles on the Senate floor to find a solution that will bring enough Democratic votes to reopen the government.
“This is us, just senators getting together and spitballing and then seeing if we could come to some kind of consensus,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), who was a part of the conversations. “And then I think a lot of us would then go back to our leadership and then go from there.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said Thursday that he had been briefed on the talks and hoped they might lead somewhere. But he expressed skepticism about one Democratic idea: extending government funding through Oct. 31 instead of Nov. 21, as Republicans have proposed.
“We’re really kind of quibbling over pretty small stuff,” Thune told reporters.
Democrats pitched the shorter funding extension to pressure Republicans into extending Affordable Care Act subsidies before open enrollment starts Nov. 1. Those subsidies expire at the end of the year, but Democrats argue they must be extended as soon as possible to avoid sharp increases in insurance quotes during the open-enrollment period.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has said Republicans seek to extend funding through Nov. 21 because that’s how long it would take Congress to finish work on appropriations bills.
Democrats have different metrics by which they say they’ll judge any deal. Some are focused on securing an agreement on health care policy, while others say they’ll need more assurances that President Donald Trump and White House budget director Russell Vought will not seek to change any congressional spending agreement.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) said his top priority in any negotiations was securing a commitment from Trump to keep in place congressionally approved funding and not fire federal workers.
“I would like to see the Republicans make a commitment to work with us on health care, but I’ve never said that has to be all i’s dotted and t’s crossed, because that could be complicated,” Kaine told reporters. “But a deal has to be a deal. We cannot enter into a deal and then have the president tomorrow just decide to fire more people.”
Meanwhile, Vought has directed agencies to consider mass layoffs rather than temporarily furloughing workers, in a break from previous government shutdowns.
He told House Republicans on Wednesday that those layoffs will begin within a “few days.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would meet Thursday with Vought to discuss which federal agencies “he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”
“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” he wrote. “They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said such cuts would hurt American families.
“He’s snatching paychecks, threatening jobs, and deliberately inflicting suffering on working people just to score petty political points,” Schumer said Thursday in a statement.
Even as the Trump administration on Thursday ratcheted up rhetoric promising firings, senior government officials were quietly counseling agencies against undertaking reductions in force, known as RIFs, The Washington Post reported, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Officials have determined that such layoffs probably would violate appropriations law, one of the people said: in particular, the Antideficiency Act. That legislation forbids the federal government from obligating or expending any money not appropriated by Congress during a lapse in funding—and would likely prohibit making the kinds of severance payments required to execute RIFs, officials have concluded.
Meanwhile, plans for firings have been developed at several agencies, The Post reported, but have not been executed. Those proposed layoffs target a relatively small number of employees, The Post reported, and do not match recent White House rhetoric about large-scale dismissals.
Traditionally, the president and White House budget office determine which federal activities should continue based on national security and if parts of the government have money left over from other funding sources.
The administration said it would withhold roughly $18 billion in federal funds from two major New York transportation projects until they could be further reviewed for alleged discriminatory practices. The move appeared designed to pressure Schumer, though the Transportation Department said the pause was because the staff reviewing the projects had been furloughed.
Vought also announced $8 billion in climate project funding would be put on hold through the Department of Energy in 16 states represented by only Democratic senators, which Democrats criticized.
“This is not a functioning democracy if the president seizes spending power in order to reward his friends and punish his enemies,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut). “We’re just seeing more and more evidence of how our democracy is being undermined every day that the president continues to act without any checks.”
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