Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters during a news conference on November 5, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON – Following significant Democratic victories in local and state elections across the country on Election Day, top Democratic congressional leaders pressed for a meeting with the president to end the federal government shutdown, which on Wednesday became the longest in U.S. history (on its 36th day).
“The election results should send Donald Trump a much-needed thunderbolt that he should meet with us to end this crisis, his shutdown,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “The time has come for a bipartisan meeting. The conclusions from last night were simply clear.”
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats, he sent a letter on Wednesday to President Donald Trump, calling for a bipartisan meeting at the White House to end the government shutdown and address rising individual health care premiums.
“Republicans felt the political repercussions last night,” Schumer said after Democrats won on Election Day Tuesday. These included the passage of a redistricting measure in California to offset partisan gerry gerrymandering by GOP states, governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, and local races across the country.
For more than a month, Democrats voted against approving the House-passed stopgap GOP spending measure over concerns that health care tax subsidies would expire at the end of the year. With the start of open enrollment, people who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace are seeing their premium costs augment dramatically.
Sanders withdraws from making deals
Schumer did not detail what type of deal Democrats would accept, but said any negotiations “must take into account the health care needs of the American people.”
However, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Democrats should not accept any deal with the GOP unless House Speaker Mike Johnson and the president commit to legislation extending these tax breaks.
“The bottom line is that we have to succeed in protecting the health care of the American people, and if it’s just a piece of legislation that passes through the Senate… so what? Where does it go? Then it just becomes a pointless gesture,” Sanders said.
Republicans maintain that they will only begin discussing health care once Democrats agree to resume government funding.
The Senate failed for the 14th time this week enact a transient spending solution that would fund the government through November 21.
Lawmakers acknowledged that the up-to-date stop-gap spending bill would have to be extended beyond the Nov. 21 deadline, but they failed to reach an agreement on a up-to-date deadline.
Thune downplays Democratic victories
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Wednesday that he is skeptical that the government shutdown contributed to gigantic Democratic victories across the country.
“The closure will not benefit anyone,” he said.
The South Dakota Republican noted that the shutdown may have played a role in the Virginia suburbs, where a vast proportion of federal workers live and are on furlough due to the government shutdown.
“There are a lot of federal employees in Northern Virginia, so it certainly could have influenced the election,” Thune said. “But I think it’s hard to draw conclusions.”
But Thune said he is focused on ending the government shutdown and hopes progress can still be made before senators leave next week for their Veterans Day recess.
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy warned this week that if the shutdown continues next week, it could lead to some airspace having to be closed due to a shortage of air traffic controllers who continued to work despite the shutdown.
Trump, in a social media post, blamed two factors for Republicans’ impoverished showing on Tuesday: his absence from the vote and the government shutdown.
“I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, a negative for Republicans, and that was a big factor, and they said I wasn’t on the ballot,” Trump said during a press conference Wednesday.
Withholding SNAP benefits
As the government shutdown continued, the Trump administration tried to get Senate Democrats to agree to a transient spending solution by ordering the U.S. Department of Agriculture not to employ its emergency fund to provide food aid to 42 million people.
Two federal courts have found that the Trump administration acted illegally in withholding benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the USDA has agreed that this will happen partially release SNAP benefits.
Trump wrote on his social media platform earlier this week that SNAP benefits will only be released when Democrats vote to reopen the government, which would likely violate two court orders.
“SNAP BENEFITS, which have increased by billions of dollars (MANY TIMES!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term (due to the fact that they were accidentally ‘given’ to anyone upon request, not just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will only be granted when the Radical Left Democrats open the government, which they can easily do, and not before!” – he wrote.
However, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to walk back that statement on Tuesday, arguing that the president’s social media post did not refer to the court’s order but to future SNAP payments.
“The president doesn’t want to use this (emergency) fund in the future, and that’s what he talked about,” Leavitt said.
