Donald Trump will leave the country amid the government shutdown

WASHINGTON — Judging by the behavior of the country’s leaders, it would be difficult to say that the longest total government shutdown in history is happening.

The House has not been in session in more than a month, a controversial and unprecedented decision by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to shut down all legislative business amid the standoff.

The Senate is deeply entrenched and barely functioning, receiving doomed votes and leaving town every weekend. And the president is completely out of touch, instead focusing on demolishing parts of the White House complex to build a grand ballroom. He is scheduled to leave the country on Friday afternoon for a major five-day trip to Asia.

“Do all the decisions now come from the Republican side of Donald Trump and the fact that Trump is leaving town? What’s with all this ‘putting America first’ crap?” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said Thursday.

Asked about Democrats’ calls for Trump to intervene and reach a deal to end the shutdown, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters, “Good luck.”

The shutdown began Oct. 1 after Senate Democrats refused to vote in favor of a funding bill passed by the House because it omitted an extension of tax credits that help 22 million Americans pay health insurance premiums from the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans maintain that any negotiations on extending expiring subsidies can only occur once the government reopens. Democrats don’t trust Republicans to hold up their end of the deal and stop Obamacare premiums from skyrocketing for millions of Americans next year unless Trump guarantees it. So far he has not shown any interest in discussing the matter.

“I would like to meet with both of them, but I just had a little warning: I will only meet if you let the country open,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

The pressure on Congress to act will only increase in the coming weeks. Barely 1.4 million Federal workers begin missing their first full paycheck this week, forcing many to take out loans. A pair of competing measures seeking to pay federal workers failed to advance in the Senate on Thursday amid partisan gridlock.

And states have begun warning the nation’s 42 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients that they will not receive benefits next month, potentially damaging both household budgets and the broader economy.

Democrats have demanded that the Trump administration pay for the benefits, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told News themezone on Thursday that he hoped the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, would reconsider its claim that it can’t find the funds.

Every day since the shutdown began, President Johnson has held a morning press conference to repeat, among other things, the simple fact that a majority of Senate Democrats voted against a clean government funding bill.

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“The reason we find it important to come here every day and repeat, once again, the same simple truth is because they are trying so hard to cover it up,” Johnson said Wednesday.

But on Friday, for the first time since the lockdown began, Johnson didn’t even bother to follow his usual weekday routine. A handful of reporters showed up and even C-SPAN was caught off guard, saying in a chyron that the speaker would soon speak on the 24th day of the shutdown.

Democrats are betting that Republicans will finally come to the table as more Trump supporters feel the growing pain of the shutdown, especially as Obamacare enrollees begin receiving notices of significantly higher premiums by 2026.

“Republicans are boycotting the negotiations and boycotting Washington,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “They could just do the easy thing and sit down and talk to us about how to get it done, but they think Donald Trump is a king and they don’t need the Democrats and their boycott of the negotiations is the biggest problem.”