By Erik Wasson, Bloomberg News

President Donald Trump and top congressional leaders have strong political incentives to stoke the ongoing stalemate during a White House meeting Monday even as they drive the U.S. to its first government shutdown in nearly seven years.

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Democrats are keen to use the shutdown battle to frame the next election around rising costs, particularly for health care. Republicans are equally eager to blame the Democrats and show them to be poor stewards of the government and the U.S. economy ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Progressive Democrats are putting party leaders under enormous pressure to show they are willing to fight the Trump administration. Those leaders are confident they can unite their caucus behind the health care issue and prevent a defection by the eight Democrats needed to pass the Republican bill, which would keep the government funded until Nov. 21.

GOP leaders say they can negotiate after the short-term bill is passed, but Democrats have said they don’t trust Trump or the Republican leaders to keep that promise. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Monday that Trump has leverage in the fight because the public dislikes government shutdowns.

“There is zero good reason for Democrats to vote against this clean continuing resolution,” Leavitt said. “The president is giving Democrats one last chance to be reasonable today. Look, there is nothing to negotiate when you have a clean CR look.”

Democrats want to spend $350 billion to permanently extend Obamacare tax credits to middle-class families, to avoid a premium spike on Jan. 1. They also want the bill to repeal Medicaid cuts in the giant Trump tax bill, including new work requirements and a crackdown on an accounting gimmick that has allowed states to increase their Medicaid reimbursement rates. They also want to reverse cuts to medical research and block the White House from rescinding previously enacted appropriations.

“Our position has been very clear: cancel the cuts, lower the cost, save health care so we can address the issues that really matter to the American people in an environment where the cost of living is too high,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

Trump has tied Democrats’ demands to the hot-button issue of migration, accusing them of seeking to funnel $1 trillion in taxpayer funds for undocumented immigrants.

That claim is wildly exaggerated, but based lon an aspect of the Democratic proposal, which would effectively increase federal Medicaid reimbursements to states that pay for emergency care for undocumented migrants.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the current restriction saves $28 billion over 10 years. They also want to repeal a separate provision that clarifies parolees and asylum seekers with temporary permission to remain the U.S. can’t receive Obamacare subsidies would save $119 billion over 10 years.

Trump gave no indication Sunday that the meeting would offer an easy resolution.

“I just don’t know how we are going to solve this issue,” Trump said in a phone interview with CBS News. He continued his criticism of Democrats’ negotiation posture, saying “they’re not interested in fraud, waste and abuse,” which is the only thing Republicans claim they are cutting from the budget.

The Trump administration has also threatened Democrats with mass firings of federal workers in the wake of any shutdown, supercharging a downsizing overseen by White House budget Director Russ Vought.

Instead of merely furloughing non-essential workers, as is usual during a shutdown, the administration is preparing to permanently end a number of jobs likely in the areas of the environment, agriculture and labor regulation.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday dismissed the threat as something Trump was going to do anyway. October layoffs were already in the works and the shutdown could allow the White House to blame Democrats for any economic fallout from the layoffs, while satisfying small-government conservatives in the party base.

Leavitt on Monday said that there won’t be any layoffs if the government remains open.

Democrats such as Senator Amy Klobuchar told reporters last week that the party is not demanding its entire proposal in exchange for voting for a GOP bill to keep the lights on through Nov. 21. The talks Monday signal the pressure on the White House to at least meet with Democrats worked.

“We never said that we need to have every single thing and that every single thing’s a red line. We want to negotiate with them to make this health care crisis less bad,” Klobuchar, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, said Friday.

She and other senators said this weekend that a mere promise from the GOP to talk later won’t suffice.

But that is precisely what Senate Majority Leader John Thune is suggesting.

“We can have that conversation. But before we do, release the hostage. Set the American people free. Keep the government open, and then let’s have a conversation about those premium tax credits,” Thune said on NBC’s Meet the Press. He said any possible deal on Obamacare subsidies isn’t ready.

Republicans are divided on the Obamacare issue. Twelve swing-district House Republicans have signed onto a bill to extend them by a year, while Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is spearheading an effort to extend them by two years. Other moderates say they want to phase in an income limit to prevent high earners from claiming the benefit and introduce greater fraud controls.

Conservatives are standing firm, arguing that the COVID pandemic-era subsidies were meant to be temporary. Some argue that any deal on the premiums would have to include new restrictions preventing Obamacare plans from covering abortion and transgender-related procedures.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union that the meeting on Monday will be an opportunity for Trump to tell Democrats to drop their demands.

“Think of it, troops won’t be paid because Chuck Schumer needs political cover. I mean, it’s really that simple and I think everybody is going to see that clearly,” Johnson said. “The president wants to talk with him about that and say, ‘Don’t do that.’”

Schumer said he expects a substantive meeting.

“We’ll see on Monday — are they serious about negotiating with us,” he said.

With assistance from Lauren Dezenski and Josh Wingrove.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A roofing contractor fatally struck a pedestrian early Friday in Maplewood and smelled of alcohol when investigators caught up with him seven hours later at work in Sleepy Eye, Minn., according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.

Jose Ronald Hernandez Pineda, 46, of Maplewood, was charged in Ramsey County District Court with two counts of criminal vehicular homicide in connection with the crash that killed Abdul Bakr Jafar, a 31-year-old from St. Paul who was found lying in the middle of Maryland Avenue near McKnight Road about 4:30 a.m.

Jose Ronald Hernandez Pineda (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

A home’s surveillance video showed that Jafar was struck head-on by a dark-colored van while walking east in the middle of the westbound lane of Maryland Avenue, the complaint says. He was pronounced dead about 20 minutes later.

Hernandez Pineda remains at the Ramsey County jail ahead of a first court appearance on the charges, which allege driving a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene. An attorney for him is not listed in the court file.

A newspaper carrier told police he saw a dark-colored van driving toward him on Maryland Avenue about 4:30 a.m. He then saw a bag lying in the middle of the road and a body further down the road. The van sped west on Maryland toward McKnight.

The carrier turned around, caught up to the van and took photos, including of the back license plate. The van had ladders on top and reflective tape on the back.

The license plate was registered to a blue 2011 Chevrolet Express G3500 and is owned by a roofing company that operates out of a Maplewood home about 1.2 miles from the crash site.

An officer went to the home and saw a different truck in the driveway that registered to Hernandez Pineda’s wife. Driver vehicle services records also showed that Hernandez Pineda lived there.

Investigators contacted the woman, who said she and Hernandez Pineda are going through a divorce and do not live in the same house, the complaint says. She said she received a call in the morning from police, but disconnected it because she thought it was a scam.

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She then called Hernandez Pineda to see if he was OK. He denied hitting anyone, but said he thought he may have hit a deer, the complaint says. She said he usually leaves the Maplewood home between 3 and 4 a.m.

Investigators received location data for Hernandez Pineda’s phone, which was about two hours southwest in Sleepy Eye. Once there, investigators saw a roofing crew working at a home and a Chevrolet Express G3500 van, which had heavy front-end damage, parked nearby.

Hernandez Pineda was arrested at the job site about 11:25 a.m. Officers smelled alcohol on his breath, and a preliminary breath test resulted in .06 BAC reading, the complaint says. The legal limit to drive in Minnesota is .08 BAC.

A foreman of a roofing company told police he asked Hernandez Pineda that morning about the front-end damage to the van and that he said “something about there being a lot of deer by his house,” the complaint states.

A sample of Hernandez Pineda’s blood was taken for testing; results are pending.

The Twins have dismissed long-time manager Rocco Baldelli after missing the playoffs for the fourth time in five years.

The decision comes the day after the Twins finished a disappointing 70-92 season in which they could never find offensive consistency and eventually sold off at the trade deadline, shipping away 10 major league players.

After the Twins collapsed down the stretch last season, president of baseball operations Derek Falvey expressed public support in the manager. At that time, the Twins let go of three hitting coaches and assistant bench coach Tony Diaz, reshaping the staff around Baldelli.

But he couldn’t survive yet another fourth-place finish, one in which the Twins lost at least 90 games for the first time since 2016.

Baldelli, 44, was hired after the 2018 season to take over for Paul Molitor. In seven seasons at the helm of the Twins, he led them to the postseason three times and finished 527-505 (.511). His 527 wins are second on the team’s all-time managerial win list behind just Tom Kelly and Ron Gardenhire.

The move kicks off what should be an offseason of change for the Twins’ front office, which has its work cut out for itself to rebuild an underperforming roster.

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Charlie Javice, the founder of a startup company that sought to dramatically improve how students apply for financial aid, was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison for cheating JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million by greatly exaggerating how many students it served.

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Javice, 33, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court for her March conviction by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who said she committed “a large fraud” by duping the bank giant in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem the company, called Frank, had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000, Hellerstein found.

The judge said Javice had assembled a “very powerful list” of her charitable acts, which included organizing soup kitchens for the homeless when she was 7 years old and designing career programs for formerly incarcerated women.

In court papers, defense lawyers noted that Javice has faced extraordinary public scrutiny, reputational destruction and professional exile, “making her a household name” in the same way Elizabeth Holmes became synonymous with her blood-testing company, Theranos.

Defense attorney Ronald Sullivan told Hellerstein that his client was very different from Holmes because what she created actually worked, unlike Holmes, “who did not have a real company” and whose product “in fact endangered patients.”

In seeking a 12-year prison sentence for Javice, prosecutors cited a 2022 text Javice sent to a colleague in which she called it “ridiculous” that Holmes got over 11 years in prison.

Hellerstein largely dismissed arguments that he should be lenient because the acquisition pitted “a 28-year-old versus 300 investment bankers from the largest bank in the world,” as Sullivan put it.

Still, the judge criticized the bank, saying “they have a lot to blame themselves” after failing to do adequate due diligence. He quickly added, though, that he was “punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan’s stupidity.”

Sullivan said the bank rushed its negotiations because it feared another bank would acquire Frank first.

A prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, though, said JPMorgan “didn’t get a functioning business” in exchange for its investment. “They acquired a crime scene.”

Fergenson said Javice was driven by greed when she saw that she could pocket $29 million from the sale of her company.

“Ms. Javice had it dangling in front of her and she lied to get it,” he said.

Given a chance to speak, Javice said she was “haunted that my failure has transformed something meaningful into something infamous.” She said she “made a choice that I will spend my entire life regretting.”

Javice, sometimes speaking through tears, apologized and sought forgiveness from “all the people touched or tarnished by my actions,” including JPMorgan shareholders, Frank employees and investors, along with her family.

Javice, who lives in Florida, has been free on $2 million bail since her 2023 arrest.

At trial, Javice, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, was convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud and wire fraud charges. Her lawyers had argued that JPMorgan went after Javice because it had buyer’s remorse.

In her mid-20s, Javice founded Frank, a company with software that promised to simplify the arduous process of filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a complex government form used by students to apply for aid for college or graduate school.

Frank’s backers included venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg. The company said its offering, akin to online tax preparation software, could help students maximize financial aid while making the application process less painful.

The company promoted itself as a way for financially needy students to obtain more aid faster, in return for a few hundred dollars in fees. Javice appeared regularly on cable news programs to boost Frank’s profile, once appearing on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list before JPMorgan bought the startup in 2021.

Javice was among a number of young tech executives who vaulted to fame with supposedly disruptive or transformative companies, only to see them collapse amid questions about whether they had engaged in puffery and fraud while dealing with investors.

In their pre-sentence submission, prosecutors wrote that they were requesting a lengthy prison sentence to send a message that fraud in the sale of startup companies is “no less blameworthy than other types of fraud and will be punished accordingly.”

Prosecutors added that the message was “desperately needed” because of “an alarming trend of founders and executives of small startup companies engaging in fraud, including making misrepresentations about their companies’ core products or services, in order to make their companies attractive targets for investors and/or buyers.”