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Top Republicans are portraying Donald Trump as a “big-hearted president” who is desperate to reopen the US government, even as he delays food assistance funding for millions of low-income Americans but steams ahead with construction of his $300m gilded White House ballroom.
As the government shutdown entered its 33rd day, the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, presented Trump as a man angry and desperate to break the impasse so as to ease mounting pain for ordinary Americans. “He’s just desperate for the government to open, he’s tried everything he can,” Johnson said, adding that Trump was a “big-hearted president, he wants everybody to get their services”.
The speaker’s claims, made in an interview with Fox News Sunday two days after Trump hosted a lavish, Great Gatsby-themed soiree at Mar-a-Lago, gave a slanted take on the president’s position. Trump continues to exert an iron grip on the shutdown, resisting political and even federal court pressure to ease the burden on vulnerable Americans while protesting he has no power to end the impasse.
Two federal court judges ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must use $5bn in contingency funds to keep paying food assistance Snap benefits for up to 42 million low-income Americans. The payments stopped Saturday under the shutdown, posing the risk of hunger for millions of people.
Despite the two court orders, it remains unclear when or whether the administration will restart the payments. Trump has said he is waiting for clarification from the federal judges on where the money should come from.
The federal court orders require that partial payments of Snap start as early as Wednesday. Asked by CNN’s State of the Union whether that deadline could be met, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said: “Could be”. He said that the administration would not be appealing Friday’s rulings.
Instead of authorising use of the contingency funds, Trump has instead exhorted fellow Republican senators to break the impasse by ending the Senate filibuster. The mechanism requires 60 votes in the 100-vote chamber for most kinds of legislation – including an end to the shutdown – to pass.
The House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Trump on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday of “weaponising hunger”. He said that the funds exist to continue food assistance benefits through November.
Without mentioning by name the president’s $300m ballroom construction project, Jeffries added that Trump and his administration can find funding “for other projects, but somehow they can’t find money to make sure that Americans don’t go hungry”.
As the impact of the shutdown begins to bite across the country, threatening poorer Americans and generating mounting delays at US airports, opinion polls suggest that Trump’s Republican party is facing most of the blame from citizens. An NBC News poll carried out at the end of October found that 52% of voters blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for the stalemate, with 42% blaming Democrats.
The split fell along familiar partisan divisions, with those identifying as liberal, young people, Black and higher-educated voters blaming Trump – and Democrats being blamed by self-identified supporters of the president’s Make American great again (Maga) movement, white men and rural voters.
So far Democrats in the Senate are holding firm with their refusal to support Republicans in reopening the government. Only three Democratic senators have broken ranks so far, with the majority insisting that any deal on the shutdown must be tied to extending healthcare tax credits to avoid steep rises in premiums in 2026 under Affordable Care Act health plans.
One of the three Democrats who have joined Republican senators to vote for ending the shutdown, John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, turned on his own party on Sunday. He told CNN’s State of the Union that “Democrats really need to own the shutdown, I mean, we’re shutting it down … This is wrong, we are hurting the very people that we fight for.”
Airports are starting to experience delays amid shortages of air traffic controllers who are deemed to be essential federal employees and are obliged to work – yet have ceased being paid. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said 80% of controllers did not show up for shifts in the busy New York region on Friday.
At least 35 FAA facilities, including some of the largest airports in the country, are reporting staffing issues.
The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, told CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday that safety would not be compromised, adding: “The real consequence is, what kind of rolling delays do you have throughout the system? I think it’s only going to get worse.”
He said that as the shutdown continued, more air traffic controllers would “make the decisions of funding their families, putting food on their table, gas in their cars, versus coming into work. That’s not what I want, but I’m a realist.”
English (US)