By MARY CLARE JALONICK, LISA MASCARO and STEPHEN GROVES, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A partisan standoff over health care and spending is threatening to trigger the first U.S. government shutdown in almost seven years, with Democrats and Republicans in Congress unable to find agreement even as thousands of federal workers stand to be furloughed or laid off.

The government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday if the Senate does not pass a House measure that would extend federal funding for seven weeks while lawmakers finish their work on annual spending bills. Senate Democrats say they won’t vote for it unless Republicans include an extension of expiring health care benefits, among other demands, while President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are refusing to negotiate, arguing that it’s a stripped-down, “clean” bill that should be noncontroversial.

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It’s unclear if either side will blink before the deadline.

“It’s now in the president’s hands,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Monday after a meeting with Trump at the White House that yielded little apparent progress. “He can avoid the shutdown if he gets the Republican leaders to go along with what we want.”

Vice President JD Vance, who was also in the meeting, said afterward, “I think we’re headed into a shutdown, because the Democrats won’t do the right thing.”

While partisan stalemates over government spending are a frequent occurrence in Washington, the current impasse comes as Democrats see a rare opportunity to use their leverage to achieve policy goals and as their base voters are spoiling for a fight with Trump. Republicans who hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate will likely need at least eight votes from Democrats to end a filibuster and pass the bill with 60 votes, since Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is expected to vote against it.

No agreement at the White House

Trump had shown little interest in entertaining Democrats’ demands on health care, even as he agreed to hold a sit-down meeting Monday with Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., talks to reporters outside the West Wing of the White House, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, in Washington, as House Speaker Mike Johnson of La., and Vice President JD Vance, listen. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

As he headed into the meeting, Trump made it clear he had no intention to negotiate on Democrats’ current terms.

“Their ideas are not very good ones,” Trump said.

It was Trump’s first meeting with all four leaders in Congress since retaking the White House for his second term, and he did more listening than talking, Jeffries told House Democrats at the Capitol afterward, according to a lawmaker who attended the private caucus meeting and insisted on anonymity to discuss it.

Schumer said after the closed-door meeting that they had “had candid, frank discussions” with Trump about health care. Vance also said Trump found several points of agreement on policy ideas.

Schumer said Trump “was not aware” of the potential for health insurance costs to skyrocket once the subsidies end Dec. 31.

But Trump did not appear to be ready for serious negotiations. Hours later, Trump posted a fake video of Schumer and Jeffries taken from footage of their real press conference outside of the White House after the meeting. In the altered video, a voiceover that sounds like Schumer’s voice makes fun of Democrats and Jeffries stands beside him with a cartoon sombrero and mustache. Mexican music plays in the background.

Jeffries posted in response that “Bigotry will get you nowhere.”

He added, “We are NOT backing down.”

Expiring health care subsidies

Democrats are pushing for an extension to Affordable Care Act tax credits that have boosted health insurance subsidies for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The credits, which are designed to expand coverage for low- and middle-income people, are set to expire at the end of the year.

“We are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans,” Jeffries said.

Thune has pressed Democrats to vote for the funding bill and take up the debate on tax credits later. Some Republicans are open to extending the tax credits, but they want to place new limits on them.

“We’re willing to sit down and work with them on some of the issues they want to talk about,” Thune told reporters at the White House, adding, “But as of right now, this is a hijacking of the American people, and it’s the American people who are going to pay the price.”

A crucial, and unusual, vote for Democrats

Democrats are in an uncomfortable position for a party that has long denounced shutdowns as pointless and destructive, and it’s unclear how or when it would end. But party activists and voters have argued that Democrats need to do something to stand up to Trump.

Some groups called for Schumer’s resignation in March after he and nine other Democrats voted to break a filibuster and allow a Republican-led funding bill to advance to a final vote.

Schumer said he voted to keep the government open because a shutdown would have made things worse as Trump’s administration was slashing government jobs. He says things have changed since then, including the passage this summer of the massive GOP tax cut bill that reduced Medicaid.

Some of the Democrats who voted with Schumer in March to keep the government open were still holding out hope for a compromise. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters said Monday there’s still time before the early Wednesday deadline.

“A lot can happen in this place in a short period of time,” Peters said.

Shutdown preparations begin

Federal agencies were sending out contingency plans if funding lapses, including details on what offices would stay open and which employees would be furloughed. In its instructions to agencies, the White House has suggested that a shutdown could lead to broad layoffs across the government.

Trump’s budget director, Russ Vought, told reporters at the White House that a shutdown would be managed “appropriately, but it is something that can all be avoided” if Senate Democrats accepted the House-passed bill.

Before joining the administration, Vought had advised hard-line conservatives in Congress to use the prospect of a shutdown to negotiate for policy concessions. But on Monday, he berated Democrats for engaging in a similar ploy.

“This is hostage-taking,” he said. “It is not something that we are going to accept.”

Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Kevin Freking and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.

By AMIR VAHDAT, Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran said Tuesday that 120 Iranians detained in the United States for illegally entering in the country will be returned to Iran in the coming days.

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As many as 400 Iranians would be returning to Iran as part of the deal with the U.S., Iranian state television said, citing Hossein Noushabadi, director-general for parliamentary affairs at Iran’s Foreign Ministry. He said the majority of those people had crossed into the U.S. from Mexico illegally, while some faced other immigration issues.

The U.S. has not acknowledged striking a deportation deal with Iran.

The New York Times first reported the deportations.

Noushabadi said the first planeload of Iranians would arrive in one or two days after stopping over in Qatar on the way. Authorities in Qatar have not acknowledged that

In the lead up to and after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, a large number of Iranians fled to the United States. In the decades since, the U.S. had been sensitive in allowing those fleeing from Iran over religious, sexual or political persecution to seek residency. Iran has criticized Washington for hosting dissidents and others in the past.

It’s unclear exactly what has changed now in American policy. However, U.S. President Donald Trump since reentering the White House has cracked down on those living in the U.S. illegally.

Noushabadi said that American authorities unilaterally made the decision without consultations with Iran.

There are times when I miss practicing law, because — right now — there are few more important posts for defending the rule of law and the integrity of the American system of justice than on James Comey’s defense team.

Let’s be clear — perfectly clear — about what happened last week. On Thursday, a federal grand jury, acting on the urging of President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, indicted Comey, the former director of the FBI. The indictment was the culmination of a transparently vindictive campaign by Trump to get revenge on his political enemies, no matter the facts or the law.

Let’s rewind the clock to May 2017. At the time, the FBI was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, and Trump was furious that he was implicated. Trump reportedly demanded that aides speak out in his defense and was so angry that he was screaming at television clips about the investigation.

While Trump has spent years denigrating the “Russia hoax,” it’s important to remember that there was already evidence of serious misconduct on Trump’s team. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned after he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Trump’s campaign chair, Paul Manafort, had to resign in the middle of the campaign in part because of his own lucrative ties to Russian-allied leaders in Ukraine.

The stated justification for firing Comey was his alleged mishandling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business. The memorandum from Rod Rosenstein, then deputy attorney general, that recommended Comey’s termination outlined a series of complaints about Comey’s decisions, both to publicly discuss the results of the FBI’s investigation and to publicly announce the reopening of the investigation in October 2016 just days before the election.

For Trump, however, this justification was unquestionably a pretext. Days after Comey was fired, Trump told NBC News that he had intended to fire Comey “regardless” of the Department of Justice’s recommendation, and the reason was the Russia investigation. “When I decided to just do it,” he told NBC’s Lester Holt, “I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.”

The Russia hoax is central to MAGA’s persecution narrative, and Trump has had a thirst for revenge ever since. He’s repeatedly attacked Comey in quotes, comments and interviews. He campaigned to be elected president last year promising retribution.

Now Trump is getting exactly what he wanted. The sequence of events is startling.

On Sept. 19, Erik Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was initially selected by Trump, resigned after Trump told reporters, “I want him out.” Siebert had been investigating two Trump opponents, Comey and Letitia James, the attorney general of New York.

Both cases had hit roadblocks. Siebert reportedly had concerns about the strength of the evidence against both Comey and James. Trump did not care. He wanted his indictments, and he wanted them now.

On Sept. 20, he posted an extraordinary public message that was directed to his attorney general, Pam Bondi. “Pam,” it began, “I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’”

He indicated that he was promoting Lindsey Halligan, one of his former personal attorneys, to take Siebert’s place, and ended with this directive: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

After Halligan assumed office Sept. 22, federal prosecutors reportedly presented her with a memorandum detailing the weaknesses in the case against Comey. No matter. She pressed on, reportedly presenting the case against Comey to the grand jury herself, and on Sept. 25 she secured a simple, two-count indictment against Comey, for allegedly lying to Congress and for allegedly obstructing justice.

She had tried to secure a three-count indictment, but in a highly unusual move (it’s a famous saying in the legal profession that a decent prosecutor can persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich), the grand jury refused to indict on one of the counts.

Details

The indictment is so short and so bereft of detail that it’s hard to determine the factual allegations in the case. Jake Tapper of CNN is reporting that sources tell him that the indictment is related to an FBI investigation, called “Arctic Haze,” that was looking into leaks to news outlets reporting on the origins of the Russia investigation.

According to CNN, investigators examined whether Comey authorized Daniel Richman, a friend of his who is a law professor at Columbia University, to leak information to the media.

No one doubts that Richman spoke to the media in Comey’s defense, but the redacted documents from the Arctic Haze investigation reveal that he told investigators that “Comey never asked him to talk to the media.” They conclude with this statement: “The investigation has not yielded sufficient evidence to criminally charge any person, including Comey or Richman, with making false statements or with the substantive offenses under investigation.”

There is another potential theory of the prosecution’s case — that Comey lied to the Senate about authorizing his then-deputy, Andrew McCabe, a central figure in the Russia investigation, to speak to the press for a story about the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation in 2016.

The best explanation of the weakness of that theory comes from Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and my friend and former colleague at National Review. Andy and I clashed frequently when I was at the magazine; we disagreed on the wisdom and merits of the Russia investigation. He thought it was a “disgrace” and wrote an entire book arguing that point.

But he took one look at the Comey indictment and wrote that it was “so ill conceived and incompetently drafted, he should be able to get it thrown out on a pretrial motion to dismiss.” The reason is simple: There is no credible evidence that Comey lied at all.

As McCarthy notes, the indictment may center on confusion as to whether Comey lied when he said that he did not “authorize” his deputy, McCabe, to leak news to The Wall Street Journal that the FBI was investigating the Clinton Foundation.

But there’s no publicly available evidence that supports this claim. Comey told the inspector general that McCabe “definitely did not tell me that he authorized” the leak. McCabe, for his part, told the inspector general’s office that he let Comey know the day <em>after</em> the story broke that he authorized the leak and that Comey “did not react negatively, just kind of accepted it.”

Even if you believe McCabe over Comey — which is inadvisable because the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General found that McCabe “lacked candor” about the leak when questioned about it — McCabe only said that he told Comey about the leak after it happened. As McCarthy writes, “McCabe never even claimed that Comey ‘authorized’ the leak as that term is commonly understood.”

Context

It’s important to discuss the details of the case, but we cannot forget the context. The Department of Justice is prosecuting a former director of the FBI, and it’s doing so not because there is clear evidence of a crime, but because there is clear evidence that the president wants revenge.

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Trump’s Truth Social post, in fact, could well be Exhibit A in a motion to dismiss the case. Or it could be one of the first pieces of evidence presented to a jury to show that this case has nothing to do with the truth and everything to do with obeying the orders of the most powerful man in the world.

But it’s even worse than that. Trump’s retribution isn’t just inflicting grave injustice on its innocent victims; it’s hollowing the Justice Department. As decent people resign, they’re replaced with people eager or at least willing to participate in Trump’s partisan inquisition.

When you put it all together, there can be no doubt: Trump’s attack on American justice has taken its next, and most ominous, turn.

“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” Those infamous words are the hallmarks of a corrupt state. Trump is now openly mimicking the dictators he admires so much. He has shown Bondi the man, and Bondi’s Department of Justice has manufactured the crime.

David French writes a column for the New York Times.

Today is Tuesday, Sept. 30, the 273rd day of 2025. There are 92 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 30, 1938, addressing the public after cosigning the Munich Agreement, which allowed Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed, “I believe it is peace for our time.”

Also on this date:

In 1777, the Continental Congress — forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces — moved to York, Pennsylvania, after briefly meeting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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In 1791, Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” premiered in Vienna, Austria.

In 1947, the World Series was broadcast on television for the first time, as the New York Yankees defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-3 in Game 1; the Yankees would go on to win the Series four games to three.

In 1949, the Berlin Airlift came to an end after delivering more than 2.3 million tons of cargo to blockaded residents of West Berlin over the prior 15 months.

In 1954, the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy.

In 1955, actor James Dean was killed at age 24 in a two-car collision near Cholame, California.

In 1972, Pittsburgh Pirates star Roberto Clemente connected for his 3,000th and final hit, a double against Jon Matlack of the New York Mets at Three Rivers Stadium.

In 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to illegally annex more occupied Ukrainian territory in a sharp escalation of his seven-month invasion.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Angie Dickinson is 94.
Singer Johnny Mathis is 90.
Actor Len Cariou is 86.
Singer Marilyn McCoo is 82.
Actor Barry Williams is 71.
Singer Patrice Rushen is 71.
Actor Fran Drescher is 68.
Country musician Marty Stuart is 67.
Actor Crystal Bernard is 64.
Actor Eric Stoltz is 64.
Rapper-producer Marley Marl is 63.
Country musician Eddie Montgomery (Montgomery Gentry) is 62.
Rock singer Trey Anastasio (Phish) is 61.
Actor Monica Bellucci is 61.
Actor Tony Hale is 55.
Actor Jenna Elfman is 54.
Actor Marion Cotillard is 50.
Author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates is 50.
Tennis Hall of Famer Martina Hingis is 45.
Olympic gold medal gymnast Dominique Moceanu is 44.
Actor Lacey Chabert is 43.
Actor Kieran Culkin is 43.
Singer-rapper T-Pain is 41.
Racing driver Max Verstappen is 28.
Actor-dancer Maddie Ziegler is 23.