‘Erratic’ and ‘unhinged’ Trump to blame for shutdown, say senior Democrats
Senate democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have said in a joint statement early this morning that Donald Trump and Republicans had “shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people”.
They said their party remained willing to “find a bipartisan path forward to reopen the government” and end the shutdown, but reiterated their position that the Republican stance on health care remains a barrier. “We need a credible partner,” they said.
“Over the last few days, President Trump’s behavior has become more erratic and unhinged. Instead of negotiating a bipartisan agreement in good faith, he is obsessively posting crazed deepfake videos,” they said.
Here’s the full statement:
After months of making life harder and more expensive, Donald Trump and Republicans have now shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people. Democrats remain ready to find a bipartisan path forward to reopen the government in a way that lowers costs and addresses the Republican healthcare crisis. But we need a credible partner.
Over the last few days, President Trump’s behavior has become more erratic and unhinged. Instead of negotiating a bipartisan agreement in good faith, he is obsessively posting crazed deepfake videos.
The country is in desperate need of an intervention to get out of another Trump shutdown.
Key events
In short, no sign of movement from either side.
Thune said he was not interested in linking negotiations on health care policy to government funding. “Everybody’s now asking the question, ‘How does this end?’ It ends when Senate Democrats pick this bill up passed by the House of Representatives and vote for it.”
Thune reiterates his view that the Democrats are “holding the federal government hostage to their partisan demands” and says Republicans will not engage on bipartisan discussions while that’s ongoing.
Senate majority leader John Thune is speaking now. He says immediately that “Democrats have bowed to the far left and shut down the government”.
Schumer said that if Republicans worked with them to fix the healthcare crisis, “the shutdown could go away very quickly”.
“That’s what Democrats want, to end this now, fix healthcare now,” he said.
Calling Trump “the most immature president we’ve ever had”, Schumer said that “instead of acting like an adult” and doing something about the healthcare crisis, Trump “is threatening to hurt countless hardworking Americans”.
Schumer said: “When Democrats say we want to work with Republicans to lower premiums to strengthen healthcare, all we are doing is reflecting what the American people already want. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“They want us to sit down and negotiate something that real that takes this huge, huge burden off their shoulders,” he added.
Chuck Schumer is speaking now as the Senate reconvenes this morning to vote on the same two bills that it failed to pass last night.
President Trump calls what the Democrats want ‘radical’. President Trump, it is not radical to say Americans deserve lower healthcare premiums. It is not radical to say we want to prevent the average American family from getting these huge increases – for those on ACA, $1,000 a month.
Several federal government websites are down and and some are explicitly stating the shutdown as the reason. A couple even assign partisan blame.
As we reported yesterday, the housing and urban development department site has the following:
The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.
The DOJ also blames the left:
Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated.
Trying to load the website data.census.gov, the following message appears:
Due to the lapse of federal funding, portions of this website will not be updated. Any inquiries submitted will not be answered until appropriations are enacted.
The Department of Education website bears a banner reading:
Due to a lapse of appropriations, information on this website may not be monitored or maintained. Inquiries may not receive a response until appropriations are enacted.
Accessing the National Archives site, a pop-up reads that, with some exceptions:
Due to the shutdown of the federal government, National Archives facilities are closed, websites and social media are not being updated or monitored, and activities are canceled.
The state department site bears a red banner reading:
Due to a lapse in appropriations, website updates will be limited until full operations resume.
The commerce department bears a similar statement:
As a result of a temporary government shutdown, portions of this website are not being updated at this time.
The DOD cites the lapse in appropriations, adding:
The most recent appropriations for the Department of War expired at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Sept. 30, 2025. Military personnel will continue in a normal duty status, without pay, until such time as a continuing resolution or appropriations are passed by Congress and signed into law. Civilian personnel not engaged in excepted activities will be placed in a non-work, non-pay status.
The Department of Transportation runs a tiny banner reading:
Portions of the Department of Transportation are currently in shutdown/furlough status due to a lapse in appropriations
Homeland security says: “Due to the lapse in federal funding, this website will not be actively managed.”
The Office for Personnel Management also has: “Due to a lapse in appropriations, Federal Government operations vary by agency.”
‘They did not negotiate at all this time,’ says Schumer, defending past anti-shutdown statements
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on CNN this morning, has responded to House Speaker Mike Johnson and the White House’s targeting of him following his previous strong anti-shutdown sentiments expressed during past standoffs.
Schumer said those statements came amid intense negotiations between Republicans and Democrats which kept the government open – negotiations which he said did not take place this time.
During a previous standoff during Trump’s first term, Schumer said: “Shutting down government over a policy difference is self-defeating.”
But today Schumer said that was before Republicans “had done these horrible things to health care”, with both sides currently in an embittered standoff over health care spending.
And the bottom line is, when I was majority leader, we had 13 times to vote on a budget. You know why there was no shutdown? We sat and negotiated with the Republicans every time. They got some things, we got some things.
Schumer said “they did not negotiate at all” this time, despite “repeated entreaties” from himself and his House counterpart Hakeem Jeffries.
White House budget director expected to speak with House GOP this afternoon
With that in mind, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought is expected to hold a call with House Republicans at 1pm ET to discuss what happens next now that the government has shut down, multiple outlets are reporting.
Republicans expect him to brief them on the letter he sent out to agencies instructing them to begin shutting down and to discuss the mass firings that the Trump administration has threatened to pursue during the shutdown.
Yesterday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office:
We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people and cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.
Schumer has ‘handed the keys of the kingdom’ to Trump to shrink government, says Johnson
Chuck Schumer has “handed the keys of the kingdom” to the executive branch to “downsize the scope and scale” of the government, House speaker Mike Johnson has told Fox Business this morning, characterizing the shutdown as a “pretty massive backfire” for Democrats.
Addressing the White House budget office’s direction to federal agencies to prepare plans for mass firings amid the shutdown, Johnson said this morning:
While a shutdown is very damaging for real American people who depend upon government services, it can provide an opportunity downsize the scope and the scale of government, which is something that we’ve always wanted to do. So in a way Chuck Schumer has now handed the keys to the kingdom the executive branch under President Trump to do some things that we would not otherwise be able to do because we would not get Democrat votes for them.
He said the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, “gets to decide now what services are essential, what programs and policies should be continued, and which would not be a priority for taxpayers”.
That is what is about to happen and Chuck Schumer has allowed that. And so, from his political perspective, it’s a pretty massive backfire.
There’s now “a real opportunity for government to work more efficiently and effectively for the people if those decisions are made”, Johnson added.
You can watch the clip here.
Vice-president JD Vance has told CBS Mornings that the government doesn’t want to lay federal workers off during the shutdown. Blaming it on a “faction of Senate Democrats”, he said:
We don’t want to lay anybody off, but what we do want to do is make sure that as much of the essential services of government remain functional as possible.
We were sort of dealt this hand by that faction of Senate Democrats who shut down the government. We’re going to have to deal with it. We’re going to have to make sure that as much of the people’s government remains government remains open or functional as possible.
‘Erratic’ and ‘unhinged’ Trump to blame for shutdown, say senior Democrats
Senate democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have said in a joint statement early this morning that Donald Trump and Republicans had “shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people”.
They said their party remained willing to “find a bipartisan path forward to reopen the government” and end the shutdown, but reiterated their position that the Republican stance on health care remains a barrier. “We need a credible partner,” they said.
“Over the last few days, President Trump’s behavior has become more erratic and unhinged. Instead of negotiating a bipartisan agreement in good faith, he is obsessively posting crazed deepfake videos,” they said.
Here’s the full statement:
After months of making life harder and more expensive, Donald Trump and Republicans have now shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people. Democrats remain ready to find a bipartisan path forward to reopen the government in a way that lowers costs and addresses the Republican healthcare crisis. But we need a credible partner.
Over the last few days, President Trump’s behavior has become more erratic and unhinged. Instead of negotiating a bipartisan agreement in good faith, he is obsessively posting crazed deepfake videos.
The country is in desperate need of an intervention to get out of another Trump shutdown.
On the president’s schedule today is signing executive orders in the Oval Office today at 4.30pm ET. This will be closed to press but I’ll update you if anything changes.
Before that, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will hold a press briefing around 1pm ET where she will face loads of questions on today’s shutdown. I’ll bring you all the latest from that when it gets going later.
As the midnight deadline approached last night, the Senate again rejected a Republican plan to keep federal funding flowing and avert a government shutdown.
In a pair of back-to-back votes, each party mostly united to block the other’s stopgap funding proposal, all but ensuring a partial shutdown for the first time in nearly seven years. Both measures needed 60 votes to pass.
Republicans united against a plan offered by Democrats to fund the government through the end of October, that would have also reversed the Medicaid cuts enacted as part of Donald Trump’s tax and spending megabill this summer and extend healthcare subsidies that make health insurance premiums more affordable for low- and middle-income people who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Nearly all Democrats voted to reject a House-passed plan that would have kept federal spending mostly at current levels through 21 November, and bolstered security for the executive branch officials, the supreme court, judges and members of Congress in the wake of the assassination of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.
Here’s how each US senator voted on the Republican plan.
In the stock markets, European stocks and gold prices rose, while Wall Street futures fell on Wednesday as the US government shut down after lawmakers failed to reach a funding deal.
The prospect of services in the United States being closed pushed gold to another record high over $3,895, reports AFP.
In Asia, Tokyo’s stock market sank, while Hong Kong and Shanghai were closed for holidays.
European markets were lifted by pharmaceutical shares after Pfizer was granted reprieve from President Donald Trump’s tariffs by agreeing to lower drug prices in the United States. Trump also announced plans to unveil a website to allow consumers to directly purchase some medications from manufacturers at discounted rates.
The dollar remained under pressure on concerns caused by the US government beginning to shut down Wednesday. Democrats and Republicans failed to break a budget impasse, with talks hinging on health care funding.
“Historically shutdowns have been bad for the US dollar, bad for US equities, and bad for bonds too,” said Emma Wall, chief investment strategist at Hargreaves Lansdown. “Should the shutdown remain unresolved it is likely to drive money outside of the US to markets with more certainty,” she added.
While most shutdowns end after a short period, investors were concerned it could prevent the release Friday of the key non-farm payrolls report – a crucial guide for the Fed on rate decisions.
“Shutdowns have delivered bouts of volatility, but the precedent has been that weakness tends to be short-lived,” noted Joshua Mahony, chief market analyst at Scope Markets.
Futures on all three main indexes in New York were in the red.
