Republicans and Democrats at an impasse as government shutdown enters sixth day

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By JOSH BOAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican and Democratic lawmakers have provided few public signs of meaningful negotiations to break an impasse on reopening the federal government as the shutdown entered its sixth day on Monday.

President Donald Trump, when asked on Sunday night when federal workers would be fired as he has threatened, told reporters: “It’s taking place right now, and it’s all because of the Democrats.” He declined to answer a question about which agencies are subject to the cuts.

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before departing the White House, en route Norfolk, Va., to observe a naval sea power demonstration, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The possibility of layoffs escalates an already tense situation in which Washington lawmakers have struggled to find common ground and build mutual trust. Leaders in both parties are betting that public sentiment has swung their way, putting pressure on the other side to cave.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is expected to hold a Monday morning news conference at the Capitol, and others may do so as well.

The House is not expected to be in session this week, focusing attention on the Senate to take the lead on any deal in the Republican-led Congress. Yet even with House lawmakers away, the Republican and Democratic leaders have been holding almost daily briefings as they frame their arguments and seek to shift blame for the shutdown.

Democrats are insisting on renewing subsidies to cover health insurance costs for millions of households, while Trump wants to preserve existing spending levels as he believes that Democrats will have to fold because of the jobs and federal infrastructure and energy projects being put at risk.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference during day 3 of the government shutdown on Capitol Hill, Friday, Oct. 3, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

The stalemate comes at a moment of troubling economic uncertainty. While the U.S. economy has continued to grow this year, hiring has slowed and inflation remains elevated as the Republican president’s import taxes have created a series of disruptions for businesses and hurt confidence in his leadership. At the same time, there is a recognition that the nearly $2 trillion annual budget deficit is financially unsustainable.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, among those appearing on the Sunday news shows, said there have been no talks with Republican leaders since their White House meeting on Sept. 29. He said since then Republicans, including Trump, “have gone radio silent.”

The Trump administration sees the shutdown as an opening to wield greater power over the budget, with multiple officials saying they will save money as workers are furloughed by imposing permanent job cuts on thousands of government workers, a tactic that has never been used before.

Even though it would be Trump’s choice to cut jobs, he believes he can put the blame on the Democrats because of the shutdown.

Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California defended his party’s stance on the shutdown, saying the possible increase in health care costs for millions of Americans would make insurance unaffordable in what he called a “crisis.”

But Schiff also noted that the Trump administration has stopped congressionally approved spending. That essentially undermines the value of Democrats trying to seek compromises on the budget since the administration could block the spending of money from any deal. The Trump administration sent Congress roughly $4.9 billion in what are called pocket rescissions on foreign aid, a process that meant the money was withheld without time for Congress to weigh in before the previous fiscal year ended last month.

“We need both to address the health care crisis, and we need some written assurance in the law — I won’t take a promise — that they’re not going to renege on any deal we make,” Schiff said.

The television appearances indicated that Democrats and Republicans are busy talking, deploying against each other internet memes that have raised concerns about whether it’s possible to negotiate in good faith.

Vice President JD Vance said a video putting Jeffries in a sombrero and a thick mustache was simply a joke, even though it came across as mocking people of Mexican descent as Republicans insist the Democratic demands would lead to health care spending on immigrants in the country illegally, a claim Democrats dispute.

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Immigrants in the U.S. illegally are not eligible for any federal health care programs, including insurance provided through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. Still, hospitals receive Medicaid reimbursements for emergency care they are obligated to provide to people who meet other Medicaid eligibility requirements but don’t have an eligible immigration status.

The challenge, however, is that the two parties do not appear to be having productive conversations with each other in private, even as Republicans insist they are in conversation with their Democratic colleagues.

On Friday, a Senate vote to advance a Republican bill that would reopen the government failed to notch the necessary 60 votes to end a filibuster in the 100-member chamber.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said Sunday that the shutdown on discretionary spending, the furloughing of federal workers and requirements that other federal employees work without pay will go on so long as Democrats vote no.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., left, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., return to their offices after speaking with reporters on the third day of the government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Oct. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“They’ll get another chance on Monday to vote again,” Thune said. “And I’m hoping that some of them have a change of heart.”

Jeffries and Schiff appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and Thune was on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from sending National Guard troops to Oregon

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By CHRISTOPHER WEBER and JACK BROOK, Associated Press

A federal judge late Sunday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying any National Guard units to Oregon at all, after a legal whirlwind that began hours earlier when the president mobilized California troops for Portland after the same judge blocked him from using Oregon’s National Guard the day before.

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During a hastily called evening telephone hearing, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order sought by California and Oregon.

Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term, seemed incredulous that the president moved to send National Guard troops to Oregon from neighboring California and then from Texas on Sunday, just hours after she had ruled the first time.

“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention to the temporary restraining order I issued yesterday?” she questioned the federal government’s attorney, cutting him off.

“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said later. “Why is this appropriate?”

The White House did not immediately comment on the judge’s decision.

Trump focuses on Oregon after Portland protests

Oregon is fighting to prevent federalized National Guard troops from coming to Oregon’s largest city to address ongoing protests at an immigration processing facility there.

Small protests have been going on outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility since Trump’s second term began in January. There have been occasional flare-ups, including in June, but for weeks nightly demonstrations attracted only a few dozen people.

A protester yells at police and federal officers during a protest at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore. on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Trump, however, has turned his attention to the city, calling Portland “war ravaged,” and a “war zone” that is “burning down” and like “living in hell.”

Local officials have pointed out that the protest occupies one city block far from the downtown in a city that covers 145 square miles (376 square kilometers). They also say many of his claims and social media posts appear to rely on images from 2020, when unrest that grew out of the Black Lives Matter protests roiled the city for several months. Trump sent federal law enforcement to the city then, as well.

Under a new mayor and police chief, the city has reduced crime, and the downtown has seen a decrease in homeless encampments and increased foot traffic.

On Sept. 28, when the Trump administration mobilized the Oregon National Guard over Gov. Tina Kotek’s wishes, the protests increased in size. On Saturday about 400 people gathered outside the ICE facility before federal agents shot tear-gas canisters into the crowd.

Police and federal officers throw gas canisters to disperse protesters near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore. on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Trump also authorized the deployment of 300 Illinois National Guard troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago on Saturday.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s office said the situation in Chicago “does not require the use of the military and, as a result, the Governor opposes the deployment of the national guard under any status.”

Sending in the National Guard from other states

This weekend, about 200 federalized members of the California National Guard who had been on duty around Los Angeles were reassigned to Portland, a Pentagon spokesperson said.

Approximately 100 California National Guard troops landed in Portland after midnight Sunday and around 100 more arrived by early evening, Alan Gronewold, commander of Oregon’s National Guard, said in a court filing before the emergency hearing late Sunday.

The state of Oregon also included in its filing a memo written by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that ordered up to 400 Texas National Guard personnel activated for deployment to Oregon, Illinois and possibly elsewhere.

A hasty court hearing

At the emergency hearing late Sunday, Immergut grilled the attorney for the federal government and accused them of seeking an end run around her order from the day before that temporarily blocked the deployment of National Guard troops in Oregon.

Scott Kennedy, the attorney representing Oregon, said he learned of the Texas National Guard mobilization just 24 minutes before the emergency hearing on Sunday night.

“It feels a little bit like we’re playing a game of rhetorical whack-a-mole here,” he told Immergut.

Lawyers for the federal government tried to argue that Oregon and Portland did not have standing and that California could show no harm by having some of its National Guard dispatched to another state.

Immergut issued a temporary order that expires in 14 days unless it is extended at a hearing set for Oct. 17. Arguments for a preliminary injunction — a more permanent block on sending federalized National Guard troops to Oregon — are set for Oct. 29.

In a related court filing, an attorney in the California Military Department said the U.S. Army Northern Command advised the department on Sunday that an order will be issued keeping the 300 guard personnel federalized through the end of January.

Oregon and California react to Sunday’s ruling

Kotek, the governor of Oregon, applauded Immergut’s ruling and said Trump can “expect Oregon to stand up to him at every turn.”

“President Trump’s actions are an effort to occupy and incite cities and states that don’t share his politics, and I believe that we should expect him to continue to push the limits of his authority,” she said in a statement late Sunday.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Trump’s move to deploy the National Guard of one state to another “is well outside of the norms or practices” of any president.

“But this President is determined to take as much power as the courts will give him. This fight isn’t over, but today’s rebuke of the President’s illegal actions is a step in the right direction,” Bonta said in a statement after Sunday night’s ruling.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said Sunday that he saw federal agents engaged in what he described as unjustified use of force and indiscriminately spraying pepper spray and impact munitions during a protest outside the ICE facility.

“This is an aggressive approach trying to inflame the situation that has otherwise been peaceful,” Wilson said, adding that he has alerted the civil rights division of the Department of Justice to the agents’ actions.

Weber reported from Los Angeles and Brook from New Orleans. Associated Press journalists Ethan Swope in Portland, Oregon; Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island; and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

ICE ad blitz aims to lure local law enforcement officers to join Trump mass deportation efforts

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By THOMAS BEAUMONT and REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is spending millions of dollars on television advertising in select metro areas around the country, an Associated Press tally found, aimed at recruiting local officers frustrated with their cities’ restrictions on immigration enforcement into President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

“You took an oath to protect and serve, to keep your family, your city, safe,” the narrator says, as images of the cities targeted and ICE agents arresting people move across the screen. “But in sanctuary cities, you’re ordered to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents make an arrest during an early morning operation in Park Ridge, Ill., Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

The campaign — airing in more than a dozen cities, including Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta — is part of ICE’s $30 billion initiative to hire 10,000 more deportation officers by the end of the year to supercharge deportations. The money is part of the $76.5 billion sought by Trump’s Republican administration for ICE — a 10-fold increase in its current budget — as part of the sweeping, multitrillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts bill enacted in July.

ICE is already offering bonuses of up to $50,000 for new recruits and other benefits such as tuition reimbursement as it seeks to fast-track hiring.

And while some parts of the federal government are shut down as the result of Congress’ failure to pass a spending measure last week, the ICE ads reflect that the push for mass deportations, the Trump administration’s top priority, is still flush with cash.

Millions spent on the 30-second ads

The ads open with video of each metro’s familiar skyline and the narrator’s voice announcing, for example, “Attention, Miami law enforcement.” Beyond that, the spots are identical, inviting officers to “join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst. Drug traffickers. Gang members. Predators,” according to a review of the ads on the ad-tracking service AdImpact.

The 30-second spots began running in mid-September in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Boston; Chicago; Denver; New York; Philadelphia; Sacramento, California; Seattle; and Washington, D.C. Adding to the list a week ago: Atlanta; Dallas; El Paso, Texas; Houston; Miami; Salt Lake City; and San Antonio.

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As of Friday, total spending on the ads had topped $5.7 million, with the most spent since mid-September being $853,745 in the Seattle area. However, Atlanta saw the most in the past week, $794,084, according to AdImpact.

It was unclear why ICE targeted those locations and not others. There is no standard definition of what is a sanctuary jurisdiction although it generally refers to cities or states that limit their cooperation with ICE. Some but not all of the cities appear on a Justice Department list of cities that “that impede enforcement of federal immigration laws.”

Asked in an AP email to explain why specific areas were chosen as advertising targets, Department of Homeland Security officials declined to provide an explanation. Instead, they replied with a Sept. 16 press release, near the beginning of the ad campaign, reporting that it had received more than 150,000 applications and had extended 18,000 tentative job offers.

Some cities where the ads have been playing, particularly Boston and Chicago, have been repeatedly criticized by the Trump administration for their policies that limit how much they can work with federal immigration enforcement. ICE has launched immigration crackdowns in both of those cities. Local officials in Chicago have been particularly outspoken against the stepped-up enforcement.

Albuquerque is among the smallest metropolitan areas where the ads are airing, though the city’s mayor, Tim Keller, has been a vocal opponent of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. In July, Keller signed an executive order barring city employees from assisting federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement “unless legally required.”

Local police can’t compete with ICE promises

The AP reached out to police departments in areas where the ads were running. Most departments either did not respond or said they did not comment on actions of outside agencies. A few, including Sacramento and Miami, said they had not noticed any of their officers leaving for positions at ICE or DHS.

Four of the markets where the ads are playing are in Texas, including San Antonio.

Danny Diaz, the president of the city’s Police Officers Association, said he’d seen the ads and was concerned about prospective recruits who might be thinking of joining the city’s police department joining ICE instead.

“We can’t compete with a $50,000 signing bonus,” Diaz said. “I do think that the younger generation will jump on that.”

The government shutdown could dampen ICE’s recruitment hopes, he said.

“They’re furloughing federal employees, and I don’t think individuals want to leave one department to go work for a federal agency when they don’t know if they’re going to receive a check or not,” he said, referring to the lapse in funding that has led to federal law enforcement officers going without pay.

Philadelphia police Capt. John Walker said it’s too early to tell whether the ad campaign has had an impact on the city’s recruiting. Instead, he suggested, the ads appeared more geared toward reassuring viewers that the Trump administration was addressing illegal immigration.

“It’s the psychological feel. You want to know that there are cops out there because it makes you feel good,” said Walker, who’s in charge of Philadelphia police recruiting. “That’s all this is, strengthening the belief that they’re doing something.”

The ad blitz comes as law enforcement departments around the country are struggling to meet staffing demands.

Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

The Nobel Prize in medicine goes to 3 scientists for work on the human immune system

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By KOSTYA MANENKOV, STEFANIE DAZIO and LAURAN NEERGAARD, Associated Press

STOCKHOLM — Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.

Brunkow, 64, is a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Ramsdell, 64, is a scientific adviser for Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco. Sakaguchi, 74, is a distinguished professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Center at Osaka University in Japan.

The immune system has many overlapping systems to detect and fight bacteria, viruses and other bad actors. Key immune warriors such as T cells get trained on how to spot bad actors. If some instead go awry in a way that might trigger autoimmune diseases, they’re supposed to be eliminated in the thymus — a process called central tolerance.

The Nobel winners unraveled an additional way the body keeps the system in check.

The Nobel Committee said it started with Sakaguchi’s discovery in 1995 of a previously unknown T cell subtype now known as regulatory T cells or T-regs.

Then in 2001, Brunkow and Ramsdell discovered a culprit mutation in a gene named Foxp3, a gene that also plays a role in a rare human autoimmune disease.

The Nobel Committee said two years later, Sakaguchi linked the discoveries to show that the Foxp3 gene controls the development of those T-regs — which in turn act as a security guard to find and curb other forms of T cells that overreact.

The work opened a new field of immunology, said Karolinska Institute rheumatology professor Marie Wahren-Herlenius. Researchers around the world now are working to use regulatory T cells to develop treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer.

“Their discoveries have been decisive for our understanding of how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases,” said Olle Kämpe, chair of the Nobel Committee.

Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee, said he was only able to reach Sakaguchi by phone Monday morning.

“I got hold of him at his lab and he sounded incredibly grateful, expressed that it was a fantastic honor. He was quite taken by the news,” Perlmann said. He added that he left voicemails for Brunkow and Ramsdell.

The award is the first of the 2025 Nobel Prize announcements and was announced by a panel at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics Oct. 13.

The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who founded the prizes. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. He died in 1896.

The trio will share the prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million).

Dazio reported from Berlin and Neergaard from Washington.

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