A typically fractious GOP is united around their continuing resolution. This time around, it’s Democrats demanding unrelated additions.

Back in the spring, progressive Democrats expressed unified hope that their party leaders would avoid “handing over the keys” in government funding negotiations to a Republican Party determined to shrink the federal government like never before. Things didn’t go as planned. Fearing the political consequences that would ensue from a shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) helped Senate Republicans clear a filibuster, unleashing a tidal wave of frustration from the progressive base that has followed him into the fall.

This time around, congressional Democrats swear they’re united against Republicans’ clean seven-week continuing resolution, or CR, to fund the government through November 21, the only unrelated legislative proposal being an increase in security funding for all three branches of government in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Now that Schumer is spoiling for a shutdown, Trump administration officials are daring him and his party to see what happens if they don’t reverse course ahead of the September 30 funding deadline.

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought sent a memo to agency heads directing them to consider mass firings for certain federal employees if Senate Democrats don’t get on board with Republicans’ House-passed continuing resolution.

“Programs that did not benefit from an infusion of mandatory appropriations will bear the brunt of a shutdown, and we must continue our planning efforts in the event Democrats decide to shut down the government,” the memo reads. “If Congress successfully passes a clean CR prior to September 30, the additional steps outlined in this email will not be necessary.”

It’s possible that the top four congressional leaders can negotiate an off ramp during their bipartisan White House meeting with President Trump this afternoon. But right now, Republicans are feeling confident about where the shutdown fight stands ahead of the September 30 deadline.

“Fundamentally, nothing has changed,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said over the weekend. “Hopefully Senator Schumer sees the light and listens to the same voice that walked him and his colleagues away from the edge of a shutdown in March.”

Meanwhile, the out-of-power party is betting that the American people will blame Republicans for a shutdown given the GOP’s unified control in Washington. Left unmentioned in Democrats’ framing of the negotiations is the reality that they’re demanding a suite of controversial legislative concessions in exchange for their votes.

Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are demanding that any continuing resolution include a permanent extension of temporary Affordable Care Act subsidies that were expanded in 2021 during the pandemic. (Thune says Republicans are open to negotiating on this front later in the year, but not in a government funding bill.)

Democrats’ current legislative solution is to pass a continuing resolution that’s chock-full of unrelated policy priorities, such as reversing the reconciliation bill’s public broadcast funding cuts and Medicaid reforms. That strategy has prompted Republicans to accuse Democrats of wanting to roll back the Republican-passed legislation’s crackdown on Medicaid rules for illegal immigrants.

“What the Democrats have done here is take the federal government as a hostage — and for that matter, by extension, the American people — to try and get a whole laundry list of things that they want that special interest groups on the far left are pushing them to accomplish,” Thune said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

Republicans view the Schumer-Jeffries gamble as so unserious that Trump canceled a planned meeting with them last week to negotiate a compromise. (That meeting was rescheduled to today.)

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the Monday afternoon meeting as Democratic leadership’s “last chance” to avoid a shutdown during an appearance on Fox and Friends.

Despite the significant political stakes, the government funding standoff has become a source of amusement to many Republicans and Trump administration officials, who are pleased by how easily they were able to corral their often-fractious House GOP conference into submission in supporting a continuing resolution through the fall. Fiscal hawks typically loathe continuing resolutions and often brawl with leadership over their own spending-cut demands.

But this time around, the script is completely flipped. Republicans united around a clean CR and some administration officials are joking that the Democrats are trying to run a House Freedom Caucus-inspired playbook to attach completely unrelated demands to a continuing resolution in exchange for their votes, a strategy with a poor track record of policy and political success.

Schumer is playing a dangerous game. House Republicans are currently scheduled to stay in their districts until after the September 30 deadline, meaning the only feasible off-ramp is for Senate Democrats to help Thune clear a filibuster on the House-passed continuing resolution.

As the clock ticks toward Tuesday’s midnight deadline, Republicans are confident they won’t get the blame in the event of a shutdown.

“We don’t want to shut down the government, but if Democrats refuse to pass this clean continuing resolution, that is exactly what is going to happen, and I think the Democrats will bear the responsibility for it,” Vice President JD Vance told Fox News Sunday.