As the US government shutdown entered its second full day, and with a Senate vote scheduled on a Republican plan to end the standoff, Donald Trump returned to the attack.
“Great to see how hard Republicans are fighting for our Military and Safety at the Border,” the president tweeted. “The Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked.”
Trump added a familiar call for an unlikely change in Senate rules: “If stalemate continues, Republicans should go to 51% (Nuclear Option) and vote on real, long term budget, no C.R.’s!”
The shutdown began at midnight on Friday, after Senate Democrats derailed a House-passed funding measure (or continuing resolution, Trump’s “CR”) that would have run through 16 February.
They did so by preventing Republicans who control the chamber reaching the 60-vote tally that means blocking mechanisms cannot be used. Five red-state Democrats voted for the funding measure but conservative Republicans voted against it.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has proposed a measure financing the government through 8 February, on which a vote must happen by 1am ET on Monday. Democrats say they have the votes to block it.
Led by the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, Democrats say they want to provide enough money to keep agency doors open only a few days, as a shorter time frame would put more pressure on Republicans to cut deals on immigration and the budget.
Democrats want safeguards for Dreamers, young undocumented migrants brought to the US as children who gained legal status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) an Obama-era policy that was rescinded by Trump in September.
The Republican leadership has argued that as Trump set a March deadline for a resolution to the issue, negotiations regarding the Dreamers would have continued if government funding was passed.
Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican senator who like others spent Saturday shuttling between Senate offices in pursuit of progress, said he believed the 8 February resolution would have the votes to succeed.
Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, told reporters there was “certainly a real possibility [of a deal] if there’s good faith on both sides”.
Friday night, he said, produced “the first real serious negotiations about this [spending bill] which only happened because of the vote result”.
But as politicians sought to apportion blame for the shutdown and dared each other to blink, the White House came out fighting.
Trump’s director of legislative affairs, Marc Short, told reporters Senate Democrats were “basically conducting a two-year-old temper tantrum in front of the American people”.
He added: “We will not negotiate the status of 690,000 unlawful immigrants while hundreds of millions of tax-paying Americans, including hundreds of thousands of our troops in uniform and border agents protecting our country, are held hostage by Senate Democrats.”
Trump’s presidential campaign, meanwhile, released a new ad, claiming Democrats were now “complicit in all murders by illegal immigrants”.
The public will not feel the full effect of the shutdown until the work week begins, on Monday. Non-essential federal workers are likely to be asked to take unpaid leave.
National parks remained open although in New York City the Statue of Liberty was closed. Governor Andrew Cuomo said he would seek funding to have it reopened. It was also announced that US military members overseas would after all be able to watch Sunday’s NFL championship play-offs.
The vote on the 8 February resolution could happen earlier than 1am.
