U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 25, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump is blaming Democrats for his administration’s plan not to furlough federal workers if the government shuts down on October 1, but to instead conduct mass firings.
Trump has ordered House and Senate Republicans to not negotiate with Democrats on legislation to fund the federal government, keeping it open after funds run out at midnight on September 30. He canceled a meeting with Democratic House and Senate Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer on ways to fund the government. And he has repeatedly made false and extreme accusations of what Democrats are asking for in exchange for their votes, calling them “unserious and ridiculous demands.”
The President earlier this week wrongly claimed that Democrats are “threatening” to shut down the government “unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens.”
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He also, wrongly, claimed Democrats want to “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.”
On Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump was asked why he would fire or lay off federal workers, rather than furlough them, as is the norm during government shutdowns.
“Well, this is all caused by the Democrats,” was the President’s response. “They asked us to do something that’s totally unreasonable. They never change. They want to give money away to illegals, illegally, people that entered our country illegally. They want to give them massive federal money. And we don’t want to do that.”
Trump continued to talk about borders, declaring, “we have absolutely perfect borders, like you haven’t seen in many years,” Democrats, he insisted “want to open up the borders,” “this is what [Chuck] Schumer wants, this is what the Democrats want. They want to have, and they want to take our money,” he added, referring to tariffs.
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