House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries stated President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are “marching the country” into a authorities shutdown over their refusal to satisfy with Democrats and strike a deal to save lots of well being care funding from cuts.
Mr. Jeffries advised the Associated Press in an interview late Friday (September 26, 2025) that he remained hopeful Congress might attain an settlement to stop a federal funding lapse subsequent week, forward of the October 1 deadline.
But with Republicans having canceled subsequent week’s House voting session and Mr. Trump canceling his assembly with the Democratic leaders this week, he stated, “the onus is on Donald Trump to show some presidential leadership.”
“Donald Trump and Republicans are chaos agents,” Mr. Jeffries stated. “At moments in time that require stable, presidential leadership, Donald Trump is incapable of providing it.”
This shutdown, not the nation’s first, could possibly be tougher. Mr. Trump’s finances workplace this week ordered federal companies to organize a mass firing of federal employees, quite than the typical short-term worker furlough, if the federal authorities have been to shut.
The Republican leaders, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, say a shutdown can nonetheless be averted if Democrats drop their calls for. Before leaving city, House Republicans authorised laws that may hold the authorities funded into November, as Congress works to complete up its common appropriations work. But that measure failed in the Senate, as did a Democrat different that included the well being care funds.
“It’s my hope that we can find resolution over the next few days and avoid a government shutdown,” Mr. Jeffries stated.
The Democratic chief, who is in line to change into the House speaker if Democrats regain the majority in subsequent 12 months’s midterm elections, has change into the occasion’s chief messenger in the high-stakes funding combat. The Democrats are confronting restive voters demanding that they stand as much as the Trump administration and stop funding the White House’s agenda.
Mr. Trump could not say Mr. Jeffries’ title out loud — the Democratic chief stated he was knowledgeable just lately that in the previous decade, since Mr. Trump entered politics, the Republican President has not talked about the Democrat from Brooklyn — however Jeffries this week repeatedly name-checked him.
“Donald Trump, Get back to Washington, DC.,” Mr. Jeffries stated earlier at the U.S. Capitol, as the president attended the Ryder Cup in New York. “Why are you at a golf event right now? And the government is four days away from closing. That’s outrageous.”
After Mr. Trump abruptly canceled the deliberate assembly with him and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Jeffries stated at the Capitol, “Why did you back out of the meeting, bro?”
Mr. Jeffries advised his colleagues on a personal convention name on Friday with House Democrats to “stay the course.”
Democrats are preventing to shore up well being care funding, and specifically to stop the expiration of enhanced subsidies, put in place throughout the COVID-19 disaster, that helped Americans pay for insurance coverage via the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Without motion, the boosted subsidy will lapse, risking premium spikes for hundreds of thousands of Americans nationwide.
Republicans have stated Democratic calls for to roll again the Medicaid cuts in the GOP’s huge tax cuts and spending invoice that Trump signed into legislation this summer time are a nonstarter. And the GOP leaders have stated talks on the ACA subsidies can wait till the finish of the 12 months, when they’re set to run out.
“House Democrats are united,” Mr. Jeffries stated. “Donald Trump and the Republican Party are marching the country into a painful government shutdown because they do not want to address the health care crisis that they created.”
The Republican congressional leaders imagine Democrats are heading towards a political cliff.
“They’re walking in a trap they all set for themselves,” Mr. Johnson, of Louisiana, stated throughout an interview on the Moon Griffon radio present in his house state.
Mr. Johnson acknowledged he inspired Trump to not meet with the Democratic leaders this week after the White House had already agreed to Thursday’s scheduled assembly. Trump abruptly pulled out.
“He and I talked about it at length yesterday and the day before. I said, look, when they get their job done, once they do the basic governing work of keeping the government open, as president, then you can have a meeting with him,” Mr. Johnson stated on the Mike & McCarty Show. “Of course, it might be productive at that point, but right now, this is just a waste of his time.”
Mr. Trump has been right here earlier than. During his first time period, the country endured the longest shutdown, some 35 days over the 2018-19 winter vacation season, as lawmakers refused his demand for funding to construct a promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Before that, the authorities shut down for greater than two weeks in 2013, throughout the Obama administration, over failed Republican efforts to repeal and substitute the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Jeffries expects this shutdown, if it occurs, would finish as these previous ones did, he stated.
“At the end of both of those shutdowns, Republicans came to the conclusion that their position was unsustainable,” he stated. “And in my view, that’s exactly what will take place this time around, if Republicans shut the government down because they want to continue to gut the health care of everyday Americans.”
