Trump’s shutdown warning, which he has made before, raises the stakes ahead of a Sept. 30 government funding deadline, a political showdown before the November midterm elections that Republican congressional leaders had hoped to avoid.

‘‘I would be willing to shut down government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for border security, which includes the wall!’’ Trump tweeted. ‘‘Must get rid of lottery, catch and release, etc., and finally go to system of immigration based on merit! We need great people coming into our country!’’

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Trump threatened Sunday to stop funding the federal government this fall if Congress does not pass sweeping changes to immigration laws, including appropriating more public money to build his long-promised border wall.


A funding fight also could prove a distraction from Republican efforts in the Senate to confirm Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by Oct. 1.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a Friday interview with a Kentucky radio station that a shutdown will not happen, adding that talks over funding the wall would ‘‘probably’’ have to wait until after the midterms.

Talk of a shutdown was also dismissed by other top Republicans, including Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio, who leads the National Republican Congressional Committee, which coordinates campaign efforts for House Republican candidates.

“I think we’re going to make sure we keep the government open, but we’re going to get better policies on immigration,’’ Stivers said on ABC’s ‘‘This Week.’’

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, told CBS’s ‘‘Face the Nation’’ that he supports the president’s effort to pass conservative immigration policies but disagreed with his brinkmanship.

‘‘I don’t like playing shutdown politics. I don’t think it’d be helpful, so let’s try to avoid it,’’ Johnson said.


On the other side of the aisle, Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Democrats did not feel compelled to respond to Trump’s threat.

‘‘Democrats want to work together in a bipartisan way when it comes to comprehensive immigration reform,’’ Luján said on ABC.

Trump’s declaration on Twitter surprised some lawmakers who have been eager to avoid a bruising funding fight and highlighted his intense desire to make progress on signature agenda items that have stalled.

The president has not received from Congress as much funding as he has requested for his proposed wall along the US-Mexico border.

Trump also has been advocating a number of changes to immigration laws, including ending the visa lottery program as well as ‘‘catch and release’’ — the practice of releasing from detention immigrants caught entering the country illegally if they agree to court hearings.

Trump met Wednesday with McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, and discussed the upcoming spending fight.

The president signaled in the White House meeting that he was on board with McConnell and Ryan’s strategy to fund the government smoothly through ‘‘minibuses,’’ or smaller packages of spending bills, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

But in recent days, Trump has also spoken with several outside political allies who have urged him to strike a tougher line on the border wall as a means of pressuring Democrats and rallying his core voters in November, according to two people briefed on those discussions.


Trump has sought to make immigration a central campaign theme heading into the midterms.

He has defended his administration’s ‘‘zero tolerance’’ immigration policy, arguing that some parents who have been separated from their children under this policy are criminals.

It is unclear whether simply threatening to shut down the government could push Democrats to agree to fund construction of the wall, particularly because Trump has backed down at the last minute during previous standoffs.

Both last year and this year, Trump said he would shut down the government if Democrats didn’t agree to fund construction of the wall. Both times, Democrats refused, and both times, Trump agreed to sign spending bills that did not include funds for a new wall along the southern border.

Spending bills have appropriated funds to replace existing walls or barriers, something Trump has tried to promote to his supporters as signs of progress. The last spending bill funded $1.6 billion for border barriers, but that money does not apply to new construction.

There was a brief government shutdown in January after Senate Democrats refused to back a spending package because of Trump’s move to potentially force the deportation of immigrants who had been brought to the United States illegally as children. But the Democrats backed down quickly.

Congress reached an agreement in March to fund government operations through the end of September, and it must pass new legislation by then or the government will partly shut down Oct. 1, just five weeks before the midterm elections.


The White House’s demands for border funding have ranged widely, from $2 billion to $25 billion, since Trump’s inauguration.

House Republicans are trying to appropriate $5 billion to begin construction of the wall, a figure Trump has endorsed.

Some Senate Democrats have shown a willingness to partly fund construction of the wall in exchange for other immigration policy changes, but those talks have repeatedly broken down.