WASHINGTON — President Trump abruptly cancelled a planned meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) meant to work out the impasse over government funding ahead of a partial shutdown next week.
Moments before delivering a scorching address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump declared that he won’t meet with the top Dems until “they get serious about the future of our nation.”
“After reviewing the details of the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The three had been scheduled to meet on Thursday after repeated requests from the two Democrats.
Both Schumer and Jeffries quickly fired back, with the former predicting that Trump “will own the shutdown” and the latter chiding that the president “always chickens out.”
Last week, the House passed a stopgap measure to keep the government funded through Nov. 21, but Senate Democrats blocked it. A Democrat-backed measure in the Senate also failed.
“There are consequences to losing Elections, but based on their letter to me, the Democrats haven’t figured that out yet,” Trump added Tuesday. “The Democrats in Congress seem to have totally lost their way.”
“I look forward to meeting with them if they get serious about the future of our Nation. We must keep the Government open, and legislate like true Patriots rather than hold American Citizens hostage.”
Due to the 60-vote threshold to overcome a Senate filibuster, Republicans will likely need at least eight Democrats to support any temporary spending bill, because the GOP has 53 seats and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has vowed to vote against any continuing resolution.
Jeffries and Schumer have vowed that Democrats will not support any stopgap measure that does not extend Obamacare tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year, and reverse Medicaid cuts Republicans enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said that the lower chamber will consider the Affordable Care Act subsidy extension later this year, after resolving the government funding impasse. House Republican leadership has also said it has no plans to hold further votes until after the shutdown deadline.
A Democrat-proposed resolution aimed at keeping the government’s lights on also included provisions meant to limit Trump’s ability to withhold federal funding.
In March, Schumer faced intense blowback from progressives after declining to block a GOP measure to fund the government through the end of this month.
“The situation is a lot different now than it was then,” Schumer said Sunday. “This is a demand from the American people across the board.”
The House and Senate are on recess this week due to Rosh Hashanah.
