President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday as Vice President Mike Pence huddled with White House adviser Jared Kushner, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and senior congressional aides. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo Government Shutdown 'Not much headway': Talks flounder as shutdown enters third week A White House official indicated the partial government shutdown could last until the end of January.

Congressional Democrats and President Donald Trump remain a long way from reopening the government, though top congressional officials and the Trump administration agreed to keep talking on Sunday about how to lift the government out of a partial shutdown.

In a lengthy meeting held midday Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other administration officials continued to push for $5.7 billion in border barrier funding, according to congressional aides and people familiar with the meeting.


The administration plans to submit a formal request of how they want to use that money later this weekend, and congressional staffers and Trump aides will meet again on Sunday, according to an administration official.

Democrats reiterated in the meeting that they do not want to negotiate on immigration or anything else until the government reopens, according to Republican and Democratic aides familiar with the meeting. Protecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants protected under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program did not come up, people familiar with the meeting said, though asylum policies were discussed.

“Today was an opportunity for the administration to come down from an untenable position that cannot pass the Congress. That did not happen,” said a Democratic source familiar with the meeting.

“If Democrats truly appreciate the urgency of opening the government and the border crisis, they will either accept or make a counter to the budget justification,” shot back a Republican source.

Trump himself acknowledged that not much progress had been made.

“V.P. Mike Pence and team just left the White House,” Trump tweeted. “Briefed me on their meeting with the Schumer/Pelosi representatives. Not much headway made today. Second meeting set for tomorrow. After so many decades, must finally and permanently fix the problems on the Southern Border!”

With both sides still far apart, House Democrats on Saturday disclosed the next phase of their funding strategy, in a clear attempt to pressure more GOP lawmakers into defying Trump and agreeing to reopen the government.

Pelosi announced Saturday afternoon that Democrats would vote to reopen federal departments one by one, starting with the bill that funds the Internal Revenue Service — a move that would likely ensure the on-time arrival of millions of tax refunds.

“It’s a direct impact for basically every American,” a House Democratic aide said.

The same bill would also give federal workers a 1.9 percent pay raise, which Trump has personally opposed. It also would block the pay raise slated for Pence and his executive office staff, according to the aide.

Democrats are adopting a tactic reminiscent of House Republicans’ strategy during the 2013 shutdown, in another period of fiercely divided government.

They also hope to weaken Trump’s base of support in the House, where seven Republicans already voted to pass Pelosi’s most recent funding package, as GOP leaders continue to casually predict that a shutdown could last for months, if not years.

Democrats announced their plan shortly after the staff-level discussions, which followed a raucous meeting among Trump and Democratic and Republican congressional leaders on Friday that deteriorated into Trump grousing about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s members calling for his impeachment. Trump also said the shutdown could last months or years if he does not get what he wants.

A White House official indicated on Saturday that if no agreement is reached by the middle of next week, the shutdown could last until the end of January. Congress is out of session until Tuesday.

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, meanwhile, told “Meet the Press” in an interview due to air on Sunday that Trump was willing to shift his demand from a concrete wall to a steel fence — something Trump himself has already publicly floated.

“If he has to give up a concrete wall, replace it with a steel fence in order to do that so that Democrats can say, ‘See? He's not building a wall anymore,’ that should help us move in the right direction,” Mulvaney said.

The shutdown is now into its third week and is one of the longest in history, though 75 percent of the government was funded last year. Democrats have repeatedly told the administration they find it difficult to negotiate on the president’s border security demands until the government reopens; Trump has surmised that his only real leverage to get border funding is to refuse to sign any bill that omits one of his chief political priorities.

Democrats have offered only $1.3 billion in annual funding for border fencing, and Trump is still asking for the $5.7 billion that last year’s Republican House majority provided in a bill the Senate never passed. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed or working without pay, trash is piling up at national parks and the Smithsonian museums are shuttered.

Trump opened the day by taunting Democrats on Twitter. He claimed that congressional Democrats “could solve the Shutdown problem in a very short period of time” by ceding to his demand to fulfill a key campaign promise.

“I don’t care that most of the workers not getting paid are Democrats, I want to stop the Shutdown as soon as we are in agreement on Strong Border Security! I am in the White House ready to go, where are the Dems?”

Trump had previously tweeted without evidence that most furloughed federal workers are Democrats.

Trump followed up with another tweet demanding a “WALL!” and another slamming Democrats on appropriating foreign aid but not “properly securing our Border.”

The tweets came as Pence huddled with Nielsen, White House adviser Jared Kushner and senior congressional aides, following through on Trump’s pledge to have his aides work throughout the weekend to try to strike a deal to reopen the government. Mulvaney also attended the meeting.

But the talks apparently yielded little tangible progress and it’s unlikely any deal can be reached without more face-to-face meetings between the president and Democratic leaders. Democrats have privately panned the “working group” as little more than cover to make it appear there is progress.

A Pence aide called the talks “productive” and said negotiators agreed to meet again Sunday afternoon. But the aide indicated there was no breakthrough and no “in depth conversation” about an exact dollar figure.

While it appeared that Trump was willing to sign off on the Senate’s stopgap bill funding the government before Christmas, a backlash from conservative media prompted him to return to a hard-line position, leaving roughly 800,000 federal workers in the lurch since Dec. 21.

The partial government shutdown is starting to bite, and more disruptions are emerging across the nation.

Trump on Saturday waded into a dispute between a DHS spokesman and CNN over a report published Friday that unpaid TSA workers were calling in sick in increasing numbers, therefore affecting airport operations.

“Great Tweet today by Tyler Q. Houlton @SpoxDHS on the #FakeNews being put out by @CNN, a proud member of the Opposition Party. @TSA is doing a great job!” Trump wrote.

Houlton’s tweet actually came on Friday, and said, “More #FakeNews from @CNN. Security operations at airports have not been impacted by a non-existent sick out. CNN has the cell numbers of multiple @TSA public affairs professionals, but rather than validate statistics, they grossly misrepresented them.”

CNN hit back on Saturday afternoon, tweeting, “CNN spoke to numerous TSA & union officials & cited data provided by unions for our report. TSA itself put out a statement acknowledging increased call-outs after we published. @spoxdhs & @realdonaldtrump may not like the truth but that won’t stop us from reporting. #FactsFirst.”

But in a sign that the Trump administration is becoming more aware of optics problems, the Office of Personnel Management said Pence and hundreds of other Trump administration officials will not receive a pay raise as long as the government remains partially shut down.

John Bresnahan, Sarah Ferris, Heather Caygle, Eliana Johnson and Andrew Restuccia contributed to this report.