Shutdown, Day 3: backroom talks, repeat votes and bare-knuckle politics

The federal government stumbled into a third day of shutdown Friday with little sign of a breakthrough. Senators are teeing up yet another pair of votes this afternoon on rival funding bills — reruns that have already failed three times — while a handful of Democrats and Republicans quietly feel out a compromise behind the scenes.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called the whole episode “stupid” and argued there’s not much to negotiate. He’s pushing a seven-week “clean” stopgap to reopen agencies and keep appropriations talks moving, and says Democrats will get another shot to back it Friday. Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., say any deal has to include an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies set to lapse Dec. 31, warning premiums will spike and coverage will drop without action now. Thune insists that debate can wait until after the lights are back on.

The stalemate hardened after a Monday White House meeting with President Donald Trump ended without a deal — and with insults flying online. Since then, politics has bled into shutdown tactics: the administration has threatened permanent layoffs, paused or moved to cancel billions in previously approved funds in Democratic-led states, and even inserted partisan language into furloughed Education Department workers’ automatic emails. Some moves have boomeranged: after bipartisan blowback, the White House reversed $187 million in New York counterterrorism cuts, even as other holds — like $2.1 billion for Chicago transit projects — remained on ice.

Floor drama hasn’t helped. Speaker Mike Johnson shrugged off the president’s trolling of Democrats as “what President Trump does” while insisting Republicans are ready to talk — after Democrats vote to reopen government. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., accused Democrats of “fake outrage,” even though he joined most of them in voting down his party’s temporary funding plan over deficit concerns. And Republicans have continued to claim Democrats forced the shutdown over benefits for undocumented immigrants, an issue Democrats say barely surfaced in talks.

The practical fallout is piling up. Roughly two million federal workers are missing pay as research, data releases and routine oversight go dark; Friday’s monthly jobs report didn’t publish. If the Senate’s dueling measures fail again today, leaders say there likely won’t be weekend votes — meaning the earliest off-ramp could be Monday, when the House returns from recess.

There are faint signs of a lane: a small bipartisan group has been exploring ways to pair a short funding patch with at least a framework on health-care subsidies. Veteran appropriator Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., an early champion of the enhanced ACA credits, has emerged as a pivotal voice in those conversations. But with both sides dug in — Republicans demanding a simple reopening, Democrats demanding concrete health-care guarantees — the shutdown is set to stretch until one camp blinks.

Politico, the New York Times, Reuters, the Washington Post, and NBC News contributed to this report.