WASHINGTON — The federal government barreled toward a shutdown Tuesday before a midnight deadline as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress remained deadlocked with Democrats in a spending standoff that was growing uglier by the hour.

Democratic leaders lashed out at Trump for posting a crude, artificial intelligence-generated video insulting and mocking them Monday night, hours after meeting with them at the White House to discuss the impasse.

The deepfake video superimposed a cartoon mustache and sombrero over Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who was pictured standing silently while Mariachi music played and the voice of Sen. Chuck Schumer was distorted to deliver expletive-laden remarks that included the line, “Nobody likes Democrats anymore.”

Jeffries responded Monday night by posting a photograph of Trump smiling alongside Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

“This is real,” the post said.

In a separate post, Jeffries wrote, “Bigotry will get you nowhere.”

No Signs of a Deal

As of midday Tuesday, there were no signs that congressional leaders planned to meet again to try to reach a spending agreement.

“We have less than a day,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, “and Donald Trump is tweeting deepfakes.”

Later Tuesday, Trump threatened to use a shutdown to enact measures that “are bad” for Democrats “and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.” Trump’s budget director, Russell Vought, dangled the threat of mass firings of federal employees last week.

“They’re taking a risk by having a shutdown,” Trump said.

Democrats have so far seemed unbowed by those threats.

“That’s just another excuse,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., said of Trump’s comments. “They’re doing this time and time again. They’re going to do what they want to do.”

Playing the Blame Game

Democrats and Republicans both stuck to their respective demands Tuesday, and they appeared set to spend the day blaming each other for the impasse and the resulting shutdown that appeared more likely with each passing moment. Republican leaders have insisted that Democrats accept a House-passed bill that would simply extend federal funds at current levels through Nov. 21.

Democrats are demanding more than $1 trillion to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year and roll back cuts to Medicaid and other health program that Republicans included in their marquee tax cut and domestic policy law that was enacted over the summer.

If the “Obamacare” tax credits are allowed to lapse, about 4 million people are projected to lose coverage starting next year, and prices would go up for an additional 20 million people. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that 10 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 as a result of the health cuts in the new tax law.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the majority leader, has said he would be willing to negotiate separately on extending the tax credits. Many of his senators who are up for reelection next year have endorsed the move. But Democrats were taking government funding “hostage,” Thune said.

“The Democrats’ far-left base and far-left senators have demanded a showdown with the president,” he said Tuesday. “And the Democrat leaders have bowed to their demands. Apparently, the American people just have to suffer the consequences.”

Trump and other Republicans continued to hammer at the misleading accusation that Democrats were shutting down the government in order to give health care to immigrants lacking legal status.

Trump’s fake video falsely quoted Schumer as saying Democrats “have no voters left” because of the party’s positions on social policies and wanted to give “illegal aliens” free health care. The fabricated voice added that shutting down the government was a way to get immigrants lacking legal status to vote for Democrats, a claim that embraces a debunked conspiracy theory about noncitizens voting.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Catie Edmondson/Haiyun Jiang

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