As the government shutdown enters its second day on Thursday, there’s no end in sight, with the Trump administration potentially firing some federal workers in the next day and Republican senators looking to peel off wavering Democrats to support the GOP’s government funding bill.
The Senate will not hold votes on Thursday. After the failing of government funding bills Wednesday, the Senate adjourned for Yom Kippur. The next votes are scheduled for Friday.
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are working to recruit more Democrats to back their House-passed, GOP-backed seven-week stopgap funding measure that would allow the government to operate.
Majority Leader John Thune said that he believes rank-and-file Democrats will eventually break with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass a short-term funding bill to reopen the government.
“I think there are a lot of rank-and-file Democrats who are regretting letting Schumer lock them down into this rat hole,” Thune said in an appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” Wednesday night.
Democrats hung together Wednesday afternoon to block, for the third time, a stopgap funding bill offered by Republicans. Democrats are insisting that any solution address their demands on health care before they vote to advance it.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the White House that the Trump administration, including President Donald Trump, are continuing to talk to lawmakers on Capitol Hill with aims to “encourage Democrats” to acquiesce and support the GOP short-term continuing resolution.
“The president, vice president, the entire team here will continue to work and talk to members on the Hill to try and come to a resolution to try to encourage Democrats to muster up the courage to do the right thing,” Leavitt said.
On Fox News Thursday morning, Leavitt said those discussions were happening specifically with “moderate Democrats and also with ally Senate Republicans who have good relationships with these moderates.”
Still, finger pointing continues as Democrats and Republicans trade blame for the shutdown.
On Thursday morning, Speaker Mike Johnson slammed Democrats and Schumer for the ongoing shutdown, calling their stance “selfish” and “reprehensible.”
“I don’t have anything to negotiate,” Johnson said, after saying the House sent a clean continuing resolution to the Senate that funds the government for seven weeks.
Democrats are hitting back with Schumer saying in a social media post that “Republicans shut down the government because they can’t be bothered to protect health care for Americans across this country.”
The blame-casting is extending online, too. In addition to the public statements on federal websites blaming the “radical left” for the government shutdown, the Office of Management and Budget encouraged federal employees to create out-of-office email messages denouncing “Democrat senators” for causing the government shutdown, sources told ABC News.
Trump said he has a meeting scheduled with OMB Director Russ Vought on Thursday to determine which agencies he “recommends” be cut — either temporarily or permanently.
Last week, the Trump administration threatened mass layoffs of some federal workers during the shutdown. Vought warned House Republicans on a conference call Wednesday that the administration will start firing federal workers in the next “day or two,” multiple sources told ABC News.
It wasn’t yet clear which departments and agencies could first be impacted, though the Trump administration has said it would go after projects in Democratic states — including putting on hold $18 billion in infrastructure funding for New York City and cancelling $8 billion for energy projects in 16 states that voted with Democrats in the last presidential election.
“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump said in a Thursday social media post about cuts during the shutdown.
Trump also wrote on social media late Wednesday night that he wants Republicans to use the shutdown as an “opportunity” to save billions of dollars by clearing out “dead wood, waste, and fraud.”
ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
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