President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (right) are heading into another confrontation over the president's demands for more border wall money. Neither side seems to be backing down despite the government shutdown. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images government shutdown No progress to end shutdown after Trump meets with Dem leaders The president and top Democrats can't agree on Trump's demand for more border wall money.

President Donald Trump and congressional leaders made no tangible progress toward ending a 12-day government shutdown at a meeting on Wednesday, and Senate GOP leaders said they would not even take up House Democrats’ bills to reopen the government — underscoring the slim odds of quickly resolving the impasse in the new Congress.

Minutes after the meeting began, the Trump administration’s attempt to lecture Democrats on border security issues dissolved into a raucous finger-pointing match that made clear that a partial shutdown would drag into a third weekend.


The president’s face-to-face meeting with Democratic leaders was the first since the shutdown started before Christmas and comes as a quarter of the government remains shuttered, affecting close to 800,000 federal workers. With no resolution reached, Trump invited the group to meet again Friday, a day after House Democrats‘ plan to push through their own shutdown-ending deal despite Senate GOP leaders’ warnings that the funding bills won’t even come up for a vote.

“The Senate will be glad to vote on a measure that the House passes that the president will sign. But we’re not going to vote on anything else,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said after returning from the White House briefing with the top congressional leaders of both parties.

McConnell added that he hopes a deal could be reached within “days” or even “weeks” — an ominous sign of a protracted funding battle. He later came to the Senate floor to trash the House proposal as a "waste" of time for the Senate to take up and a "total nonstarter."

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"We're not interested in having show votes here in the Senate," he said. "It's exactly the kind of proposal you'd expect of the incoming House Democrats are choosing to stage a political sideshow rather than doing the hard work of helping govern the country."

The meeting stretched for more than an hour, but the group of senior lawmakers and White House officials didn’t seriously discuss a single new proposal to break the impasse, according to several attendees. Besides setting the date for a Friday meeting, there were no clear steps toward resuming negotiations that have been stalled since before Christmas.

At three different times, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked Trump why he won’t support reopening the other areas of the government that don’t have to do with the immigration dispute, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Trump replied: “I would be foolish if I did that.”

Even as Trump told the Democrats directly that he opposed their plan, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear that she plans to go ahead with a two-part strategy to reopening the government on Thursday.

The House will take up the two sets of spending bills the first day Democrats take back the majority in an attempt to pressure McConnell and Senate GOP leaders to taking up at least the six spending bills that are unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security.

“We have given the Republicans the chance to take ‘yes’ for an answer,” Pelosi told reporters outside the White House afterward.

Trump opened the meeting by speaking about nominations and then the wall, followed by a brief presentation on border security by DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who appeared via video. But Pelosi interjected to make the Democratic pitch to at least partially reopen the government, multiple attendees said.

“We never did get through the briefing,” the soon-to-be House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said.

Before the meeting, Trump showed no signs of backing down himself. In a meeting with Cabinet officials, Trump said bluntly: "We are in a shutdown because Democrats refuse to fund border security." He also pulled the rug out from a compromise offer spearheaded by Vice President Mike Pence that would have provided about half of the $5 billion that Trump has sought from Democrats.

"$5.6 billion is such a small number," Trump said.

The shutdown is now beginning to sting, with the holidays over and the highly visible Smithsonian museums closing as well as trash receptacles overflowing at federal parks in Washington. But that fallout hasn't created any apparent incentive for Democrats and the president to budge on their central disagreement: Trump's demands for more border barrier funding than the $1.3 billion that Democrats have proposed.

Democrats remain firmly opposed to devoting more taxpayer dollars to Trump’s border wall, and have hatched their own plan to reopen government this week without any new border money. The White House rejected that plan on Tuesday night, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying any funding bill without that additional cash would be a “nonstarter.”

Meanwhile, the stakes are getting higher for federal workers, with roughly 380,000 people told to stay home Wednesday. An additional 420,000 have been told to work without pay, with no guarantee that their next paycheck will go out.

Across the country, the shutdown is causing more pain as federal entities are forced to shutter operations as they run out of back-up plans to get cash — including in parts of the country that voted for Trump. As of Jan. 1, the Department of Agriculture will no longer issue new loans for rural development or grants for housing.

There are other looming deadlines. For instance, the next federal pay period ends on Jan. 5, though checks for that pay period don’t go out until the following week. On Jan. 11, the budgets for federal courts are expected to run dry, after largely operating on court fees and other funds for weeks.

John Bresnahan, Heather Caygle and Nancy Cook contributed to this report.

