White House signals layoffs as shutdown continues without talks

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters in his Capitol office yesterday that there is still “a meaningful bipartisan path toward funding the government” despite the rising noise around the ongoing shutdown, after a White House meeting with President Donald Trump and congressional leaders.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Jeffries said the White House is worried about the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act health-insurance subsidies at the end of the year, calling them a real point of concern, but added that the administration’s rhetoric about healthcare for unauthorized migrants is “not a serious barrier for talks, beyond its political juice.” He also said threats of mass firings and cuts to projects in Democratic-leaning states “will backfire” and “won’t dent Democrats’ unity.”

Jeffries drew a clear line between what he called serious discussions at the White House on Monday and what came afterward. “Unfortunately, the president’s behavior subsequent to the White House meeting deteriorated into unhinged and unserious action,” he said, pointing to the “mariachi-themed” memes Trump sent his way online. Jeffries said his caucus will continue pushing for a deal, even as the shutdown stretches on.

Jeffries holds Democrats together while Senate fights GOP bill

Last month, Hakeem Jeffries persuaded all but one of the more than 200 House Democrats to vote against the GOP’s stopgap bill to keep the government funded, embracing a position that Democrats had rejected in the past.

Jeffries has also kept Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer firmly by his side this time, unlike in March when the party split. Then, Schumer and several Senate Democrats voted for a Republican bill to keep the government open rather than face a shutdown.

This time around, only a handful of Senate Democrats defected, leaving Republicans short of the 60 votes needed to pass their seven-week spending bill, including their most recent attempt on Friday.

Democrats are demanding a permanent extension of enhanced premium tax credits to help Americans purchase private health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and want assurances that the White House will not try to unilaterally cancel spending agreed to in any deal. Chuck Schumer told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, “They’ve refused to talk with us,” saying the impasse could only be solved by further talks between Trump and the four congressional leaders.

White House signals layoffs as shutdown continues without talks

As the shutdown entered its fifth day on Sunday, a senior White House official said the administration will start mass layoffs of federal workers if President Donald Trump decides negotiations with congressional Democrats are “absolutely going nowhere.”

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNN’s State of the Union that there is still hope Democrats will “back down,” avoiding a costly shutdown and the federal employee layoffs threatened by White House budget director Russell Vought. “President Trump and Russ Vought are lining things up and getting ready to act if they have to, but hoping that they don’t,” Hassett said.

“If the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere, then there will start to be layoffs. But I think that everybody is still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week, that we can get the Democrats to see that it’s just common sense to avoid layoffs like that.”

Trump described the potential job cuts on Sunday as “Democrat layoffs,” telling reporters, “Anybody laid off that’s because of the Democrats.” The shutdown began October 1, the start of the federal fiscal year 2026, after Senate Democrats rejected a short-term funding measure that would have kept federal agencies open through November 21.

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