US government shutdown: Trump tweets ‘not much headway made’ after Pence tries to end standoff over border wall

Hopes of breaking deadlock dealt another blow as catastrophic effects of prolonging standoff begin to become clear

Democratic congressional staffers met with Vice President Mike Pence and several senior Trump administration officials on Saturday in a renewed attempt to bring the two-week government shutdown over the president’s demands for a border wall to an end.

Shortly after the meeting, Mr Trump tweeted: ”Not much headway made today.” Democrats agreed there had been little movement, saying the White House did not budge on the demand for $5.6bn and would not consider re-opening the government.

The White House maintained the vice president and his team had been clear they needed funding for the wall and the Trump administration is eager to resolve the shutdown as soon as possible.

Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were among the senior administration figures who attended the White House meeting. However, in the hours after the meeting, accusations about who is responsible for the shutdown began flying. Mr Mulvaney, in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union show accused Democrats of being there to “stall”. Democrats familiar with the meeting said the White House position was “untenable”.

With talks at a standstill, House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that House Democrats plan to start approving individual bills to reopen shuttered departments, starting with the Treasury, to ensure Americans receive their tax returns.

“While President Trump threatens to keep the government shut down for ‘years’, Democrats are taking immediate further action to reopen government, so that we can meet the needs of the American people, protect our borders and respect our workers,” Ms Pelosi said.

President Trump enacted the partial government shutdown after failing to obtain his $5.6bn funding request to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border. Democrats – who are now in control of the House of Representatives – passed a bill earlier this week to fund and reopen the government without providing any additional funding for the proposed wall.

The bill will need to be signed by the president for it to go into effect. Mr Trump, however, said he will not sign the bill until he gets the money he believes is required for the border wall.

Both the Trump administration and Congress are at a deadlock with both refusing to budge from their positions, thus leaving nine federal government agencies closed for two weeks and 800,000 public workers unpaid.

Nancy Pelosi called Mr Trump’s proposed border wall “immoral” and a “waste of money”.

Mr Trump repeated his demand for the border wall in his tweets on Saturday.

“The Democrats could solve the Shutdown problem in a very short period of time,” Mr Trump tweeted. “All they have to do is approve REAL Border Security (including a Wall), something which everyone, other than drug dealers, human traffickers and criminals, want very badly!”

On Friday, Mr Trump threatened to use presidential emergency powers to bypass congressional approval to build the border wall. That measure, however, would be met with legal obstacles.

The latest developments come at a time when House Democrats are building the momentum for a potential impeachment of the president. Earlier this week, Democratic California Rep Brad Sherman introduced articles of impeachment against Mr Trump, alleged the president obstructed justice in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Several other Democrats have made headlines for their vocal calls to impeach the president. The most notable, and perhaps controversial, of them all came from freshman Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who said “we’re going to impeach that m****rf***er”.

Additional reporting by agencies