Congressional lawmakers and their aides are gearing up for what seems to be an unavoidable shutdown after President Trump canceled a planned meeting on Thursday with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).

Senate Democrats have asserted they cannot support any government funding bill passed by the House if GOP leaders refuse to engage in discussions, while Republicans argue there is nothing to negotiate, presenting next week’s vote on a “clean” continuing resolution to keep the government running as a take-it-or-leave-it deal.

“I think there’s a 99 percent chance that there’s a shutdown. There just doesn’t seem to be any endgame for either party to get out of a shutdown,” said Brian Darling, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide.

“Republicans want to show that they want to get their priorities funded and I think the Democrats need to dig in and show that they can fight. I think both parties have an incentive from their base to shut their government down, it’s just a matter of how long,” he said.

Trump has clearly stated he is not prepared to make any concessions to Schumer and Jeffries. He is also ready to exacerbate the shutdown for Democrats by favoring funding for Republican priorities and redirecting resources from Democratic-leaning states to GOP strongholds.

On Wednesday, the White House increased its pressure on Democrats to relent and accept a House-passed temporary funding measure by distributing a memo warning of widespread layoffs.

The memo directs agencies to use a shutdown as an “opportunity to consider reduction in force (RIF) notices to all employees in programs, projects or activities” if the funding for those programs lapses on Oct. 1 and they are not “consistent with the president’s priorities.”

Schumer issued a statement Wednesday night calling it “an attempt at intimidation.”

“Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one not to govern, but to scare,” he wrote.

Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist and former Senate aide, said Trump is provoking Democrats to block any Republican-drafted government funding bill by refusing to consider their requests to address rising health care costs, the issue that Schumer has put at the center of the funding showdown.

“If he won’t even sit down and meet to have a discussion, he is telling Congress, he is telling the American people he would rather shut down the government,” Kott said of Trump.  

Kott said Democrats can’t back down now, warning that if they agreed to a clean short-term funding stopgap after demanding concessions on health care, they would undermine any leverage they might have in November or December to negotiate a longer-term funding deal.

“If the president of the United States won’t even meet with you in October, why would you think he would meet with you in November?” he said. “The fact that he won’t even take the meeting tells you everything you need to know.”

Some centrist Democratic senators, however, privately wonder how much leverage Schumer and Jeffries have in the standoff.

Republicans have proposed a “clean” seven-week stopgap funding bill, the same type of straightforward resolution that Democrats passed 13 times when they controlled the Senate during former President Biden’s time as president.

“How many of their darlings are we holding? Where’s our leverage? Identify what’s our leverage point,” said Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who is questioning Schumer’s hard-line strategy heading into the Sept. 30 deadline for keeping the government open.

Fetterman warned that a shutdown could give Trump the same unfettered power to redirect funding, slash agency budgets and furlough workers that Schumer and other Democrats raised the alarm about when they voted for a partisan GOP funding bill in March.

Fetterman thinks that’s why Republicans jammed the Senate with such a partisan funding bill in March. He believes they were trying to lure Democrats into the trap of a shutdown to give Trump more power.

“I thought it was a honey trap back then, they were begging us to effectively do it,” he said.

The Pennsylvania Democrat warned that a shutdown now would give Trump’s allies the same opportunity to tear the government apart.

“Now this creates more opportunities to do all of those things that’s compatible with the [Project 2025] plan. I think that’s exactly what they want,” he said, referring to the conservative blueprint to overhaul the federal government.

John Ullyot, a Republican strategist and senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, said Republicans feel confident they’ll have the upper hand politically if federal departments and agencies shut down indefinitely.

“I’d say it’s all up to Schumer. President Trump holds all the cards right now and it looks bad for Democrats if they shut down the government. I think Schumer will blink at the last moment because he knows the Democrats are really in a tailspin as a party right now and if they were to take this step right now, this would put them even further down in the political landscape for the next [election] cycle,” he said.

“Schumer really has to look at this and he doesn’t have a lot of cards to play. If he wants to shut down the government then that’s something they’re going to have to answer for and it isn’t pretty for the party,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Wednesday said the Democrats’ funding demands are so outrageous that it’s not even worth Trump’s time to meet with them, backing the president’s decision to cancel Thursday’s leadership summit on the funding impasse.

“The Democrats’ requests are completely unhinged and unreasonable and unserious, and if they want to have a serious conversation … I’m sure the president … would be happy to do that,” Thune said Wednesday during a CNN interview.

“But at least right now, what they’re asking for to keep the government open for seven weeks is over a trillion dollars in new spending and all kinds of policy riders that never go on continuing resolutions,” he said.

Senate Democrats last week unveiled an alternative continuing resolution to fund the government until Oct. 31 that would permanently extend the enhanced health care premium subsidies that are due to expire at the end of this year something that would cost $350 billion over 10 years and restore nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid funding cut by the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Democrats have added language to unfreeze funding targeted by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, including the $5 billion in foreign aid he wants to claw back through a pocket rescission.

Democrats have already voted down the seven-week continuing resolution passed last week by House Republicans, even though it kept current funding levels in place and didn’t include any poison-pill policy riders.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who has played a central role in crafting the Democratic funding strategy, argued Wednesday that Trump, not Democratic leaders, are being unhinged and unreasonable.

“Here’s the truth: Republicans are forcing a shutdown because they won’t so much as sit down with Democrats to find a solution to fund the government & protect your health care,” she posted on the social media platform X.

Updated at 8:15 a.m. EDT.