Bipartisan talks to resolve the government shutdown made little progress on Saturday as President Donald Trump appeared more dug in than ever on border wall funding, leading Senate Republicans to adjourn with the government closed through Christmas.

Both sides are refusing to compromise, with Trump and his allies continuing to demand at least $5 billion for a border wall and Democratic leaders refusing to agree to any money for new barrier construction.


Vice President Mike Pence met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) Saturday afternoon, but both left without an agreement.

"We're talking," Pence said as he exited Schumer's office.

A Schumer spokesman added: Pence “made an offer. Unfortunately, we’re still very far apart.”

But while Pence and Schumer were meeting, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was shutting down the chamber for the holidays, saying the Senate would not reconvene until Thursday, Dec. 27, suggesting that Washington faced a lengthy impasse over Trump's border wall. Members have been sent home for the holidays, and lawmakers and aides said they did not expect any agreement until sometime next week at the earliest.


McConnell held out hope for a deal, however: "Anything can happen,” McConnell told reporters as he exited the chamber.

Trump canceled his plans to travel to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, Saturday afternoon, citing the shutdown.

“Due to the shutdown, President Trump will remain in Washington, D.C. and the first lady will return from Florida so they can spend Christmas together,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Trump had already delayed his departure for Florida and spent the day huddling with hard-line conservatives at the White House. Over a lunch of short ribs and mashed potatoes, Trump and his allies discussed how best to message the shutdown in what Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) described as a "war room strategy discussion."


"We’re in a better position now because the president has been tough, and I think he’s going to stay tough," Gaetz said in an interview after the meeting. "I think the president is ready to proceed into January with a shutdown if border security is not a priority.”

Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) had a slightly different take. Shelby said the president was “exuberant” and indicated that while Trump wants to end the shutdown, he received “mixed messages” from the lunch group on whether to compromise, but he later stated that no deal was imminent.

"I don't know if we're far apart, but we're not together," Shelby said after meeting with Pence and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney at the Capitol.

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While the Big Four — McConnell, Schumer, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — have to sign off on any agreement, the package first must be publicly blessed by Trump, who has waffled several times in the negotiations over the past two weeks.

Trump is being pulled in opposite directions by House conservatives like Gaetz and establishment Republicans like Shelby, essentially telling both camps what they want to hear. A third attendee at the lunch said Trump won't settle for less than $2 billion in border money.

House Freedom Caucus leaders Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), along with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), also attended the lunch.

McConnell and Schumer each took to the Senate floor earlier in the day to jab at each other over the impasse before exiting the Capitol by 3:30 p.m. Ryan and Pelosi were also on site for part of the day but remained holed up in their separate Capitol suites.

The Capitol was mostly quiet otherwise, with a handful of members seen roaming around looking for answers themselves or making preparations to fly home for Christmas.


"I think we'll be back after Christmas," said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a senior House appropriator. Simpson said he was preparing to fly to Idaho on Sunday morning.

"Everybody is sitting here going, 'Well, we've kinda got a four-day break — the weekend, Christmas Eve and Christmas. But we need to end it right after that. This is bad optics," he added.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who talked with reporters mulling about around the Senate chamber, said she was looking for answers herself to when the shutdown would end. Kaptur had just left Ryan's office, where she got a picture with the outgoing speaker. Ryan told her he too was "waiting" for news, Kaptur said.

Kaptur then went into Schumer's office unannounced to try and get more details about the current status of talks. After meeting with Schumer, Kaptur told reporters the Democratic leader said it’s up to McConnell and other Republicans to work it out with Trump.

Just before her comments, McConnell said "productive talks" continued among Trump, Schumer and Pelosi, and he seemed deferential to the Democrats and the president after Trump threatened to veto a Senate-passed clean funding bill.

Meanwhile, the outgoing House majority is intent on not disappointing the president. Ousted House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) told reporters on Saturday that the president simply should not accept less than $5 billion for the wall and take his message to the American people to build political support for his position.

“I honestly believe that we can and must get the wall,” said Sessions as he wheeled his luggage through an empty Capitol.





On Friday, Pence, Mulvaney and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and adviser, offered Schumer a package that would include roughly $1.6 billion in funding for a border barrier, but no money for new construction. Schumer has not agreed and has instead stuck to his guns on flat funding for the Department of Homeland Security at $1.3 billion for fencing. Republicans have also talked about adding hundreds of millions of dollars more for border security, though Democrats have resisted that as well.


What exactly to call border security funding remains a point of contention.

“I talked to four Democrats [Friday] that said: ‘Look, if you just stop calling it the wall, we’re in,’” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).

On the House side, leaders gave members the green light to fly home for the holidays, doubtful that any deal would come together before late next week.

Most senators have also gone home and will be given notice to come back if there’s a roll call vote. But that might not be necessary: Many in the Senate believe they could voice vote any deal if the president signs off and avoid dragging back all 100 senators from across the country for a roll call vote.

Both sides are eager to make it appear the other has caved, so any deal would have to be both spun to conservatives as a win for the president and to liberals as a cave by the White House.

The Washington exodus comes despite the fact that 800,000 federal employees, including border patrol and TSA agents, are set to be furloughed or forced to work without pay over the holidays. While three-quarters of the government is already funded, nine federal departments and several major agencies, including NASA, the Food and Drug Administration and the IRS, are affected.

The first furloughed paycheck for federal workers isn’t set to be processed until Jan. 11, said a senior Republican source. That, in part, has relieved the pressure lawmakers feel to move quickly.

Few senior Republicans believe Trump can actually win significant amounts of wall money through this shutdown, though conservatives disagree. Rather, Democrats are likely to play hardball, let the shutdown Trump demanded drag out for days or weeks, then pass legislation to reopen the government — without Trump’s border wall — as one of their first moves upon taking the House on Jan. 3.


Eliana Johnson contributed to this report.