Government shutdown begins as White House moves to cut billions in funding

The first government shutdown in nearly seven years has now entered its second day.  

It's not clear when the impasse between congressional Democrats and Republicans over a funding bill to reopen the government will end. The Senate is set to hold its next votes on Friday.

President Trump wrote on Truth Social late Wednesday: "Republicans must use this opportunity of Democrat forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud. Billions of Dollars can be saved."

Trump administration officials have signaled in recent days that they may use the shutdown to lay off federal workers or — in the president's words — "get rid of" Democratic policies.

Last week, the White House Office of Management and Budget told federal agencies to consider layoffs if the government shuts down — an unusual step since the government typically only sends workers home temporarily during lapses in funding. On Wednesday, after the shutdown began, OMB Director Russ Vought told House Republicans on a private call this afternoon that reductions-in-force, or layoffs, will begin within two days, according to two sources familiar with the call.

"When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs," the president told CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang on Tuesday, hours before the shutdown started.

One of the main lines of attack the White House and Republican lawmakers have leveled against Democrats amid the government shutdown is the claim that Democratic lawmakers want to give immigrants in the U.S. illegally free healthcare — which Democrats deny. 

"Democrats are holding the American government HOSTAGE so they can give FREE health care to ILLEGAL ALIENS," House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said on social media Wednesday.

Trump administration officials and Republican lawmakers have pointed to a provision in the Democrats' funding proposal that would reverse the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's measures narrowing Medicaid eligibility for noncitizens. The changes sought by Democrats would only extend Medicaid coverage to immigrants with some kind of legal status or government protection.

Read more here.

By Camilo Montoya-Galvez and Laura Doan

Local courts in Washington, D.C., can no longer issue marriage licenses or perform marriage ceremonies due to the government shutdown, the court system said on its website.

Due to the city's special status under the Constitution, D.C.'s local courts are funded by the federal government with judges nominated by the president — unlike in the 50 states, which operate their own court systems. The city also has a separate federal court.

Many of the D.C. local court system's operations will continue during the shutdown, with judges and staff who work on criminal, civil and family law matters reporting to work without pay, according to the D.C. Courts' shutdown plan. While marriage licenses won't be issued, residents can still get copies of marriage certificates and other vital records during the shutdown.

The homepages of several federal agencies now feature messages blaming either Democrats or the "radical left" for the government shutdown. The departments that featured political messages included: Justice, Agriculture, State, Health and Human Services, Treasury and Housing and Urban Development.

Websites for other departments, including Defense, Commerce, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Education, Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration had notices about the shutdown that did not use political messaging. 

The messages noted that the websites would not be regularly updated until Congress approved new funding. 

The homepages for the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Energy did not contain any notices about how a shutdown would affect the websites. 

On Tuesday, the ethics group Public Citizen filed a complaint calling Housing and Urban Development's message blaming the "radical left" a violation of the Hatch Act, which limits political activity by federal employees. 

"The sheer crassness of this partisan advertisement by HUD using taxpayer dollars to campaign against Democrats and promote the Trump administration is going to make it exceedingly difficult for even a neutered ethics office to ignore," said Craig Holman, a government ethics expert with Public Citizen.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle responded: "The Democrats' petty political games are unnecessarily hurting the most vulnerable Americans in our society. Why is the media more focused on a banner than reporting on the impact of a Democrat shutdown on the American people?"

The Senate is expected to begin its next rounds of votes on government funding after 1:30 p.m. on Friday, according to guidance from Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso. Votes on the competing proposals from Democrats and Republicans are planned. 

The Senate has adjourned until noon on Thursday and will resume votes on Friday. Senators won't vote Thursday in recognition of the Yom Kippur holiday, which begins at sundown on Wednesday.

"We will be in session tomorrow, starting tomorrow afternoon. So the floor will be available if people want to give speeches," Thune said, adding that he expected it to be "fairly quiet around here" because of the Jewish holiday.

Caitlin Yilek and Cristina Corujo

A reporter asked Jeffries if he believes he's being personally targeted by the Trump administration in its decision to freeze $18 billion for key infrastructure projects in New York City. Jeffries represents part of Brooklyn. 

"The Trump administration is targeting the jobs, thousands of jobs of hard-working Americans," Jeffries said. "Working-class Americans and blue collar Americans will lose the ability to work at the Second Avenue Subway site or at the other project that has been canceled related to the Cross-Harbor Tunnel. That's consistent with what the Trump administration has consistently done throughout their time in office — lose jobs, cause economic pain and hardship for the American people."

Justice Department lawyers asked a federal court to halt all deadlines in the civil case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported to his home country and then returned to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution.

The request was made in Abrego Garcia's challenge to his confinement and deportation. He was taken into custody by federal immigration officers in August after he was released from criminal custody in Tennessee. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis blocked the Trump administration from deporting Abrego Garcia.

In a brief, three-page filing, the Justice Department cited the lapse in federal funding that occurred overnight as the need for the pause of all deadlines.

"Absent an appropriation, Department of Justice attorneys and employees of the federal Defendants are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including 'emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,'" the filing states.

Abrego Garcia's lawyers did not agree to the request.

The two sides are set to appear before Xinis for a status conference Monday.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought told House Republicans on a private call this afternoon that reductions-in-force, or layoffs, will begin within two days, according to two sources familiar with the call.

Last week, OMB told federal agencies to consider permanent mass layoffs for programs that have discretionary funding that expired on Sept. 30 or that don't have alternative sources of funding.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he anticipates the shutdown will be resolved "well in advance of our next paycheck" in response to questions about members asking to withhold their pay. 

"Members of Congress are paid on a monthly basis," Jeffries said. 

Federal government employees, whether they are furloughed or not, will not be paid until Congress approves new funding. Lawmakers, however, continue to get paid during a shutdown because of how their pay is treated under the Constitution and federal law. 

Still, some members have asked for their paychecks to be withheld during the shutdown. 

The Utah Office of Tourism said that the state's five national parks — Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion — will remain open during the government shutdown. 

"Our priority has been and continues to be preserving our parks, maintaining the visitor experience, and ensuring Utah communities and businesses that rely on national park visitation are supported," said Natalie Randall, the office's managing director. "We are engaged in proactive conversations with public and private partners at all levels, offering strategic support to ensure the parks remain open with necessary resources." 

The office said visitors should expect "reduced services and reduced staffing" at the parks during the shutdown. 

Zion National Park is one of the most popular parks in the country, with more than 4.9 million visitors in 2024, according to the National Parks Service. Visitors to all of Utah's national parks contributed about $3.1 billion to the state's economy last year, the tourism office said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he has confidence in Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's ability to keep Democrats in the upper chamber united against the Republican proposal to fund the government for seven weeks. 

In a Sept. 19 vote, just one Senate Democrat voted in favor of the bill. But the number has since grown to three in subsequent votes this week. Republicans need five more Democrats to flip their votes to get the bill over the finish line and onto President Trump's desk. 

Jeffries said he had not been briefed on bipartisan discussions happening in the Senate over a possible path forward. 

"But House Democrats and Senate Democrats remain consistent and in lockstep in defense of the health care of the American people, and that's not going to change," Jeffries said in response to a question from CBS News at a news conference. 

Caitlin Yilek and Nikole Killion

Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, announced more funding cuts, saying the administration is moving to cancel $8 billion in climate-related spending in 16 states, all of which voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

"Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled," Vought wrote on X. 

He said the Energy Department would release more information about the cuts. 

The projects affected are in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, according to Vought. Fourteen of the states are led by Democratic governors. New Hampshire and Vermont are led by Republicans.

Read more here.

James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued a standing order halting civil proceedings involving the U.S., federal agencies and its officers.

Filing and discovery deadlines for the government are to be extended based on how long the shutdown lasts. Boasberg's order does not cover deadlines for the U.S. to respond to motions for temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions.

"This court has a significant volume of civil matters involving the United States, its agencies and its officers and employees, in which the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia and other Department of Justice litigating components represent those party litigants," Boasberg wrote. "The court has a need to minimize expenditures of scarce judicial resources on large volumes of case-specific motions to stay or extend pending deadlines."

Boasberg wrote that the impact of the current funding lapse "constitutes good cause" for extending deadlines and halting matters in which the U.S., its agencies and officers and employees are involved.

Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told reporters he is not a fan of the mass layoffs that have been threatened by White House during a shutdown, and that he hopes it's "just a tactic to get Democrats on board." 

Cramer said reductions-in-force carry the risk of making future policy and spending issues "more difficult" and "more challenging," with potential political consequences for Republicans. 

"There's the political ramification, perhaps that could cause backlash at the polls," he said. "It makes everything going forward more difficult for us, where you need 60 votes, and in the House where you have moderate Republicans that need to have some wiggle room." 

Cramer argued Republicans already have the moral high ground and they shouldn't squander their political capital. 

Vance told reporters the federal government will be laying off workers "if the shutdown continues," echoing the president. On Tuesday, the president said "you have to do layoffs" in the event of a shutdown. 

"We're going to do everything that we can over the coming weeks, if the shutdown lasts that long, to ensure that people get the essential services that they need, despite the fact that Chuck Schumer has shut down the federal government," Vance said. "It's not going to be perfect. Because we are in a government shutdown, we are going to have to lay some people off if the shutdown continues. We don't like that, we don't necessarily want to do it, but we're going to do what we have to do to keep the American people's essential services continuing to run."

Essential government workers remain on the job during a shutdown, and neither essential employees nor those who are furloughed get paid until a funding lapse has ended.

Vance was also asked if the administration has asked agencies to target federal workers they believe to be Democrats in the reduction of forces.

"We're not targeting federal agencies based on politics," Vance said. 

Vance was asked to address the timing of the Trump administration's decision to freeze $18 billion in federal funding for two major infrastructure projects in New York City. Both Schumer and Jeffries are from New York, and the Department of Transportation named them in their announcement of the funding freeze. 

Russ Vought, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, announced the freeze in a post on X, saying funding for the Hudson Tunnel Project and Second Avenue Subway would be halted pending a review that will be delayed due to furloughs during the funding lapse.

"I haven't talked to Russ about this this morning but look I'm sure Russ is heartbroken about the fact that he is unable to give certain things to certain constituencies," Vance told reporters during the White House briefing. "We want to do everything that we can to help the American people but when the Democrats shut down the government, we have to actually do a little triage to make sure the most critical and most essential services are provided."

Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, the only House Democrat to break with his party to vote in favor of the Republican stopgap measure, criticized his party over the shutdown, arguing that it's "the result of hardball politics driven by the demands far-left groups are making for Democratic Party leaders to put on a show of their opposition to President Trump." 

"The shutdown is hurting Americans and our economy, and the irony is it has only handed more power to the president," he wrote. 

Golden said he supported an extension of the expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits, but that some Republicans have "reasonable concerns about tax credits going to high-income households." 

"There's room and time to negotiate," he said. "But normal policy disagreements are no reason to subject our constituents to the continued harm of this shutdown." 

Vice President JD Vance made a rare appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday, joining White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt's press briefing. 

Vance blamed the "Chuck Schumer wing of the Democratic party" for troops going without pay, low-income Americans going without food assistance and a lapse in the National Flood Insurance Program during hurricane season.

The primary reason the government is shut down, Vance claimed, is because "Chuck Schumer is terrified he's going to get a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," the popular progressive representative from New York. Schumer is up for reelection in 2028.

"The reason why the American people's government is shut down is because Chuck Schumer is listening to the far-left radicals in his own party because he's terrified of a primary challenge," Vance said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, praised bipartisan discussions that were happening on the Senate floor amid votes earlier Wednesday. 

"It's a good thing that Democrats and Republicans are talking," he told reporters. "We've always believed that Democrats and Republicans should sit down and negotiate. It's a good thing that Democrats and Republicans are now talking." 

Schumer also commented on the Trump administration's move to freeze roughly $18 billion in funding for New York City infrastructure projects, saying Russ Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget, is using New Yorkers and New Jersey residents "as pawns." 

"It's a disgusting thing and it shows how little regard Vought and Trump have for working families," he said. 

A bipartisan group of senators, swelling at one point to more than a dozen, gathered on the Senate floor during votes as some senators began looking for a path out of the shutdown.

Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican who was among the gaggle, told reporters that the discussion concerned both policy and process, saying any movement "requires, first of all, to get the government open again."

"The proposal that's on the table is 45 days, and then we start working on the issues that divide us," Rounds said. 

The South Dakota Republican outlined that "our message is, give us the 45 days and allow us to work our way through this process," adding that "we've got appropriation bills here that could be used as items to pass, and we can attach modifications to them if we can get a consensus."

Rounds said there's a "misunderstanding that we're divided on the ACA bill," but he said that isn't the case, noting that Republicans want to eliminate fraud and return the tax credits to pre-pandemic levels. He said "our Democrat colleagues disagree with pre-pandemic levels, but there's some place in there that we could find a path forward."

In other news, House Speaker Mike Johnson told CBS News that Adelita Grijalva, a newly elected Democrat from Arizona, will be sworn in next week. Grijalva would be the final member needed to force a vote on a bill requiring the Trump administration to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie has been leading the push for lawmakers to sign on to what's known as a discharge petition, which allows a majority of the House to force a vote on a bill that leadership does not want to bring up. The underlying bill, led by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, would compel the Justice Department to turn over a trove of records related to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in federal custody in 2019.

The discharge petition needs 218 signatories to force a vote on the bill, and it has been stuck at 217 for several weeks. Grijalva won a special election last week to replace her late father, Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.

At the Capitol, Johnson said Grijalva would be sworn in when the House convenes on Tuesday. 

"As soon as we're back, yeah. As soon as we're back in session," he said in response to a question.

Johnson has sought to delay a vote on the Epstein files bill, sending lawmakers home early in July to avoid a floor vote on the matter.

Patrick Maguire and Stefan Becket

The House-passed measure to fund the government until Nov. 21 again fell short of 60 votes in the Senate for a third time. In a 55 to 45 vote, three Democrats joined with all but one Republican in voting to advance it. The outcome was the same as a vote on Tuesday. 

The Democrats who voted with the Republicans were Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats. GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky opposes a short-term funding measure and voted against the bill.

Senate Republicans plan to hold additional votes in the coming days to put pressure on Democrats to vote for the bill, which would almost immediately end the shutdown and reopen the government.

Thune told reporters ahead of the vote that Democrats are facing pressure "from the top" preventing them from crossing the aisle.

Several federal agencies have sent notices to employees or issued public messages blaming Democrats in Congress for the shutdown in apparent violation of the Hatch Act, the federal law that prohibits civil service employees in the executive branch from engaging in political activity while on the job.

But any investigation into those activities will likely have to wait until after the shutdown is over. The Office of Special Counsel, the government agency that investigates Hatch Act violations, is closed during the lapse in funding.

"Due to a lapse in appropriations, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel is closed," the agency says on its website. "Complaints may still be filed, but most will not be addressed until OSC reopens."

Public Citizen, a progressive nonprofit, alleged that the Department of Housing and Urban Development violated the Hatch Act with a banner on its website blaming the "Radical Left in Congress" for the shutdown. Craig Holman, a government ethics expert at the group, said the Trump administration has "managed to neuter the ethics enforcement offices in the executive branch," even before the shutdown. 

"Those who are responsible for enforcing the Hatch Act — namely, the Office of Special Counsel, followed by the Office of Government Ethics and the Attorney General's office — have all been taken over by Trump loyalists or those who are intimidated by Trump," Holman said.

Earlier this year, President Trump fired Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, who unsuccessfully sued over his ouster.

The impact of the government shutdown is slowly expanding to the Justice Department. U.S. attorneys are moving to pause cases across the country due to lack of available government resources and staffing to effectively handle lawsuits filed by and against the government.

"Absent an appropriation, Department of Justice attorneys are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including 'emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,'" government lawyers wrote in a filing as part of a Justice Department lawsuit filed against California officials Monday over the state's refusal to turn over its voter registration list.

They asked the court to halt the case until Congress has approved more funding.

Justice Department lawyers made a similar request in another lawsuit over cuts to grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.

"The lapse in appropriations thus requires a substantial reduction in the workforces of the USAO, HUD, and HHS, particularly with respect to the defense of civil cases. This reduction has effectively eliminated the ability of counsel who have worked on and are familiar with this case to handle the litigation and to file the Defendants' motion papers while the lapse in appropriations continues," they wrote.

A Democratic continuing resolution that would fund the government until Oct. 31 failed to advance in the Senate, in a 47 to 53 vote. Sixty votes were needed to advance the measure, which would also extend health insurance tax credits that Democrats have made a top priority.

The Senate is now voting on whether to invoke cloture on the House-passed measure to fund the government until Nov. 21. This vote also needs 60 votes to succeed.

The Senate is now voting on a Democratic continuing resolution that would fund the government until Oct. 31 and extend health care tax credits, their main demand in the funding fight. It failed to reach a 60-vote threshold in the upper chamber on Sept. 19, and again Tuesday night, hours before the deadline to fund the government. 

The measure is expected to fall short of 60 votes, at which point the Senate will proceed to a vote on the House-passed measure that would fund the government until Nov. 21. That measure has also failed twice, and is expected to again fall short, though Republicans are hoping to peel off support from Democrats feeling the pressure of a shutdown. 

Roughly 100,000 federal workers who accepted a deferred-resignation offer from the Trump administration earlier this year have officially left the federal workforce.

The "Fork in the Road Initiative" offered federal workers the opportunity to resign their positions, but keep their full pay and benefits until Sept. 30. More than 150,000 employees accepted the buyout offer, far fewer than the more than 200,000 that the Trump administration hoped would leave their positions. 

The head of the Office of Personnel Management told NBC 4 that roughly 100,000 workers would leave their jobs as of Tuesday, with the remainder ending their employment with the federal government at the end of the year.

Russ Vought, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, announced on X that the Trump administration is freezing roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects, launching the first salvo of the shutdown to target the home state of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leaders in the Senate and House.

Vought said the funds will be "put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles," referring to diversity, equity and inclusion policies that the administration has targeted on a range of fronts. He said the Department of Transportation would release more details about the funding freeze soon. 

Specifically, Vought said work on the Hudson Tunnel Project and Second Avenue Subway will be affected. 

Read more here.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune held a news conference Wednesday morning with other Republicans outside the Capitol, where they pointed the blame at Democrats for failing to fund the government before the shutdown deadline. 

"As we speak here this morning, there are hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are getting their furlough notices, nearly half of our civilian workforce is being sent home," Johnson said, with the National Mall behind him. "The longer this goes on, the more pain will be inflicted, because it is inevitable, when the government shuts down."

Johnson said "the sad thing about it is that every single bit of this was entirely avoidable." The speaker said the House "did our job," touting the clean, seven-week continuing resolution that passed last month, but has twice failed to reach 60 votes in the Senate.

"The simple truth is Democrats in Congress have dragged our country into another reckless shutdown to satisfy their far-left base," Johnson said. He said it's "entirely up to them" whether the government reopens.

Thune accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of walking Democrats into a "boxed canyon," saying "there's no way out, folks, there's no way out."

"Everybody's now asking the question, how does this end?" Thune said. "Well, it ends when the Senate Democrats pick this bill up, passed by the House of Representatives, and vote for it."

Thune called it a "very straight-forward issue," urging Senate Democrats to support the GOP in approving the measure to fund the government. 

According to the Labor Department's contingency plan, the September jobs numbers will not be released Friday, as scheduled.

"Economic data that are scheduled to be released during the lapse will not be released," the plan says, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics will suspend its operations during the shutdown. It will also not be conducting surveys for next month's report.

"All active data collection activities for BLS surveys will cease. The BLS website will not be updated with new content or restored in the event of a technical failure during a lapse," the Labor Department said.

The jobs report is closely watched by investors and by the interest rate-setting Federal Reserve, which last month signaled it was monitoring the labor market for signs of weakness as hiring slowed in the last two months. In August, employers added 22,000 jobs, well short of the 80,000 jobs economists had expected.

On Tuesday, the White House withdrew the nomination of E.J. Antoni, who had been tapped to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, without explanation. The president has not yet named a new commissioner.

House Republicans will hold a call with White House's Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought today at 1 p.m. to discuss the government shutdown, two sources told CBS News.

The call comes after OMB last week sent a memo to federal agencies telling them to consider reduction-in-force notices, or layoffs, for federal employees in discretionary programs. On Tuesday, President Trump said that "when you shut it down, you have to do layoffs." 

"So we'd be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected. And they're Democrats, they're going to be Democrats," he said.

Patrick Maguire and Jaala Brown

The National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department, released its plans for the shutdown late Tuesday evening. The document says 9,296 of the service's 14,500 employees will be furloughed, but many areas will remain open to the public.

"Park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors," the plan says.

The NPS' plan for the parks themselves makes a distinction between those with accessible areas that collect fees under a law known as the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act and those that don't. The agency has a list of parks that do and don't charge fees on its website here.

About 100 of the 400 parks in the National Parks system collect fees. Those parks that have accessible areas will use available fees to provide "basic visitor services" to maintain "restrooms and sanitation, trash collection, road maintenance, campground operations, law enforcement and emergency operations, and staffing entrance gates as necessary to provide critical safety information."

Parks with accessible areas that don't collect fees may be able to use "regional or national" fees with the approval of the service's director.

Parks without accessible areas will not operate during the shutdown, the NPS plan says. Staffing will be at a minimum and "[n]o visitor services will be provided." The service "will not issue permits, conduct interpretive or educational programs, collect trash, operate or provide restrooms, maintain roads and walkways (including plowing and ice melting) or provide visitor information."

"As a general rule, if a facility or area is locked or secured during non-business hours (buildings, gated parking lots, etc.) it should be locked or secured for the duration of the shutdown," the plan says. 

The service says parks can enter into agreements with state and local governments and third parties "for donations to fund the full operation of an individual park unit or for specified services." 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended the Democrats' position Wednesday morning as the government began shutting down. 

"We are going to show them it's the Republicans that did this," Schumer told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning. "The American people are going to be totally on our side."

Asked about Republicans claiming Democrats are taking the government "hostage," Schumer refuted the idea, saying Republicans "haven't negotiated with us at all."

On the claim that Democrats are seeking to allow undocumented immigrants access to health care benefits with their demands in the funding fight, Schumer said "they are lying."

"They are lying, and you know why?" Schumer said. "They don't want people to know the truth about health care and how they're decimating it."

The minority leader also appeared on CNN, where he outlined Democrats' posture and said Republicans can't "bully" them into supporting a GOP-led measure to fund the government.

"They can't bully us into just passing their bill, which does nothing zero for American health care and has not had any Democratic input, despite the fact that we've asked to sit down with them week after week and month after month, they will now see that," Schumer said. "And we're going to be out there fighting."

Nikole Killion and Kaia Hubbard

Social Security Agency Commissioner Frank Bisignano appeared to blame Democrats for potential furloughs caused by a government shutdown, according to a message to staff obtained by CBS News.

In the note, which was written before the shutdown, Bisignano wrote, "If Congressional Democrats maintain their current posture and refuse to pass a clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded before midnight on September 30, 2025, federal appropriated funding will lapse."

The Housing and Urban Development Department is blaming the "Radical Left." A red banner across its website reads, "The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government."

The messages may be violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits civil service employees in the executive branch from engaging in political advocacy. 

By Scott MacFarlane, Michael Kaplan

Vice President JD Vance put the blame on the "far-left faction" of Senate Democrats for the shutdown on Wednesday, crediting moderates who voted with Republicans on a House-passed bill on Tuesday to extend government funding.

"There are critical services that the Democrats have taken hostage because they have a policy disagreement that they are open to work with us on, but they shouldn't be shutting the government down because of that policy disagreement," Vance said Wednesday on "CBS Mornings."

Vance said "we're going to have to make sure that as much of the peoples' government remains open or functional as possible."

"That's what we're going to do but there's going to be some pain," he added.

On the Affordable Care Act tax credits that Democrats are seeking, Vance said "those subsidies, while many of them are important, they don't expire until next year."

"So the idea that you have to shut down the government in early October over subsidies that don't expire for many months is preposterous, nobody buys it," he said. 

Vance said the administration wants to have the conversation on health care, but "what you don't do is hold the economy hostage and shut down the government because we're not giving you everything that you want."

"What we've learned through these cycles of government shutdowns is they never work, they cause a lot of damage," Vance said. "We should take that wisdom, open up the government, and then talk about how to ensure that people have access to health care."

The vice president said "each day that we keep going it's just going to get worse."

"So let's stop it," he said. 

The Senate will reconvene Wednesday morning and is expected to again vote on measures to keep the government funded, as GOP leaders aim to peel off Democratic support for a House-passed bill to fund the government until Nov. 21

The Senate first voted on the measure on Sept. 19, when all but one Democrat opposed the continuing resolution, while supporting a competing proposal. Then, with hours to fund the government on Tuesday night, the measure again fell short of the required number of votes, though Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, joined Democratic Sen. John Fetterman to support the Republican-led measure.

Republicans have 53 seats in the Senate, a majority. But most legislation requires 60 votes to advance, making support from Democrats necessary to fund the government. 

With additional opportunities to vote on the measure this week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, called on Democrats to break with their party to support the GOP bill. He indicated late Tuesday that "some conversations" were happening with "some Democrats" who are "very unhappy with the situation that they're in," He pointed to the Democrats who voted in favor of the GOP bill Tuesday, saying, "tonight was evidence that there was some movement there." 

Senate GOP leaders are expected to continue to offer the measure to fund the government in the days ahead, though the Senate is expected to observe the Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, on Thursday. 

The federal government began shutting down at 12 a.m. on Wednesday after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement to extend government funding. 

Republicans and Democrats have been at odds over how to fund the government as Democrats have pushed for negotiations over health care tax credits to be included in a funding measure. Without an extension or approval of another funding bill, spending authority expired, sending the federal government into a shutdown.

Read more here.