Trump cancels meeting with Democratic leaders ahead of government shutdown deadline

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President Donald Trump said he is scrapping a White House meeting with top congressional Democrats later this week, as the threat of a government shutdown looms over Washington.

“After reviewing the details of the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Tuesday.

The president also rattled off a list of demands he claimed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries want in exchange for their party’s votes to keep the government funded and avert a shutdown on October 1. The pair had confirmed just shortly before that they were scheduled to meet with the president this week in the Oval Office.

While a single meeting between Trump and Democratic leaders was unlikely to result in a swift deal to avert a shutdown altogether, it had been the most tangible indication yet that party leaders would come to the table to negotiate on funding. Now, with each party publicly trading barbs and refusing to cave, the prospect of a shutdown seems more serious than ever.

Jeffries and Schumer had said they were planning to “emphasize the importance of addressing rising costs, including the Republican healthcare crisis” during the meeting with the president, arguing in a joint statement that it was “past time to meet and work to avoid a Republican-caused shutdown.”

Following the cancellation, Jeffries invoked a phrase on X that has been known to irk the president: “Trump Always Chickens Out.” The Democratic leader also told his House members they should return to Washington Monday, even though GOP leaders canceled votes on the eve of the funding deadline. “Democrats will be in town and prepared to get the job done,” he wrote.

And Schumer, whose party would have to supply Republicans seven votes to pass the GOP stopgap measure in the Senate, accused Trump of “running away from the negotiating table before he even gets there.”

“Democrats are ready to work to avoid a shutdown — Trump and Republicans are holding America hostage. Donald Trump will own the shutdown,” he said.

Trump, on Truth Social, left the door open to meeting in the future, provided Democrats “become realistic about the things our Country stands for.”

“I’ll be happy to meet with them if they agree to the Principles in this Letter. They must do their job! Otherwise, it will just be another long and brutal slog through their radicalized quicksand,” Trump said in the lengthy post.

Lawmakers left Washington, DC, on Friday for a week in their home districts without a path forward, after the Senate rejected both a House-passed seven-week government funding measure and a Democratic alternative.

Republicans have argued their bill to fund the government through November 20 is a “clean” continuing resolution, or CR, with only $30 million in extra security money for members of Congress and $58 million for security for the executive and judicial branches. It also includes a funding “fix” for DC, which would free up $1 billion of the city’s own money, adjusting a mistake in an earlier bill.

The Democratic bill, meanwhile, included expensive health care changes, such as extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Republicans have argued it’s inappropriate to add such provisions to a stopgap funding bill and that they should be negotiated as part of a year-end funding bill.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters shortly before Trump’s post that he and Senate Majority Leader John Thune would attend any meeting that took place with Democratic leaders, but he questioned whether a meeting was necessary.

“Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have made just wild partisan demands that they’re trying to attach to a very simple, short term, very clean CR. We just want to keep the government open so our appropriators can continue to do their work,” he told reporters, accusing his Democratic colleagues of “trying to make a mockery of it.”

Asked whether he would bring House members back to Washington, Johnson maintained the current plan was to keep lawmakers in their home districts.

“We got our work done in the House. We got it done early with regard to the funding,” he said. “People had a lot to do back in their districts, and so we’re on the ready at any time but the plan would be to come back when it’s necessary, but the current plan is to not have session days on September 29 and 30.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.