Republicans across the federal government are eager to hammer Democrats for making bold policy demands ahead of next week’s shutdown deadline. But they’re split on how to do it.
Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader John Thune, are trying to keep the message simple: The GOP wants to keep agencies open for a few more weeks while negotiations continue while Democrats are asking for unreasonable concessions.
Speaker Mike Johnson and the House GOP are all in on a message focusing on how the Democratic wish list would undo Republican-passed provisions barring undocumented immigrants from accessing public services.
And then there’s President Donald Trump, who delved even deeper into the culture wars Tuesday when he accused the other party of seeking to “force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors” as part of the negotiations — an accusation that has puzzled even some fellow Republicans.
The diverging messages from GOP leaders comes after Trump reversed his decision to hold a White House meeting with top Democratic leaders — an about-face that came after Johnson and Thune privately warned him that it would undercut the party’s negotiating position.
Taken together, the visible cracks in the GOP front are raising internal concerns as party leaders face off against Democrats who are largely united behind a plan to focus on health care — particularly an extension of expiring insurance subsidies.
“There have been some unforced errors, clearly,” said one senior House GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly about Republicans’ strategy so far.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have seized on Trump’s cancellation of the meeting, with Schumer accusing the president of throwing a “tantrum” and Jeffries criticizing Johnson for sending House members home until after the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.
“They’re not even pretending as if they want to find common ground,” Jeffries told reporters Wednesday in the Capitol.
Trump’s attacks accusing Democrats of seeking to force taxpayers to underwrite gender-reassignment surgery came the morning after GOP congressional leaders counseled him not to meet with Schumer and Jeffries — something he told reporters over the weekend he intended to do.
Not only were Johnson and Thune worried about losing leverage if Trump opened negotiations with the Democrats, they were initially alarmed they might not be included in the meeting, according to four people granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
In a lengthy social media post cancelling the meeting, Trump decried Democrats for refusing to vote for a shutdown-avoiding spending punt “unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens (A monumental cost!), force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors, have dead people on the Medicaid roles, allow Illegal Alien Criminals to steal Billions of Dollars in American Taxpayer Benefits, try to force our Country to again open our Borders to Criminals and to the World, allow men to play in women’s sports, and essentially create Transgender operations for everybody.”
Most of those claims are rooted in a Democratic proposal to roll back parts of the Republican-passed domestic policy megabill that Trump signed in July. That law includes new curbs meant to keep noncitizens from accessing public benefits such as Medicaid, as well as other new verification requirements and border security funding.
His arguments on transgender surgeries, however, appear to stem from Democrats’ demand for a permanent extension of Obamacare insurance subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year and are currently used by more than 20 million Americans.
Five states require insurance plans to cover gender-reassignment surgeries and related health care for transgender enrollees, and top Trump advisers and outside groups argue that a straight extension of the existing federal tax credits would continue taxpayer support for those policies. They believe that argument should be a key GOP focus ahead of the potential shutdown, according to three Trump officials granted anonymity to describe the deliberations.
But some Hill Republicans were confused and caught off-guard by Trump’s focus on transgender politics. It also served to create headaches for a handful of the most vulnerable House Republicans, who are pushing for a one-year clean extension of the insurance subsidies. They include Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.), a co-author of the proposal who has strong backing from House GOP leaders.
The White House further scrambled the GOP strategy late Wednesday when it circulated a draft memo instructing agencies to create plans for mass firings of federal workers if Democrats don’t relent and a shutdown occurs. That alarmed some Hill Republicans who saw it as an unnecessary provocation that, in the words of one, “would give Democrats an excuse to vote against” the GOP-led stopgap — and muddy their message that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were unreasonable hostage-takers.
House Republican leaders, meanwhile, are much more comfortable hammering Democrats over illegal immigration — an issue they believe has the best chance of keeping their fractious conference united ahead of the looming shutdown. In interviews and social media posts, they’ve conspicuously embraced those arguments while steering clear of the transgender themes some of Trump’s top advisers are keenly focused on.
“House Republicans have already done the job of passing a clean, bipartisan bill to keep the government open,” Johnson posted on X Wednesday. “Now it’s up to Senate Democrats – who have long said shutdowns are bad and hurt people – to vote to fund the American government, or shut it down because they want to restore taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens.”
Some Senate Republicans have also mentioned illegal immigration — such as Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 GOP leader, who said last week that “Democrats would rather shut down the government than stop states from paying for free health care for illegal immigrants.” The Senate GOP campaign arm also knocked Democrats in key races, arguing they would vote with Schumer and force “American taxpayers to fund illegal immigrants’ government benefits.”
But Thune and other GOP senators have been most comfortable battling Democrats on process grounds, arguing that there is no reason to hold up a short-term funding patch and potentially shutter federal agencies over the insurance subsidies or any other policy dispute. Thune characterized Democrats’ demands Wednesday as “completely unhinged” in a CNN interview.
Asked about extending the expiring tax credits, Thune reiterated his and Johnson’s position to push off those discussions until later this year.
“It ought to be done in regular order,” he said, without repeating any of Trump’s arguments about transgender surgeries or illegal immigration.
Jeffries on Wednesday said it was Trump who was the “unhinged” one, citing his Truth Social screed Tuesday. He said the GOP has “no path forward” without Democratic cooperation.
“They’re running scared,” he said. “They have no defensible position, and that’s why, unfortunately, they’re marching us to a government shutdown.”
