Senate holds rare Saturday session aimed at ending shutdown

The Senate convened at noon with an invocation from the chamber’s chaplain and the pledge of allegiance.

No votes are currently scheduled, but a notice from Majority Whip John Barrasso’s office said votes are “possible” during the Saturday session.

Bipartisan talks to reach an agreement to end the shutdown are expected to continue Saturday after Republicans rejected an offer from Democrats Friday to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of health insurance tax credits. 

Thune told CBS News the offer is a “nonstarter,” stressing that there is a proposal on the table that a group of bipartisan senators have been circling.

“We need to vote to open the government. And there is a proposal out there to do that, and then we can have this whole conversation about health care,” Thune said. 

The contours of the deal to end the stalemate began emerging earlier this week, with a possible agreement that would fund the government alongside long-term appropriations bills in exchange for a vote on extending health insurance tax credits that Democrats have demanded. But while some moderates have been eager to find a solution to reopen the government, others in the caucus appear emboldened by the party’s sweep in key races in Tuesday’s elections, pushing to hold out longer in the shutdown fight in an effort to extract further concessions.

Though Senate GOP leaders planned to move ahead with a vote on the continuing resolution Friday, with a plan to amend the bill to include the full-year funding measures if it advanced, the vote never materialized. Instead, Senate Republicans tried to advance a measure to pay federal workers who are working during the shutdown on Friday, which failed to reach the 60-vote threshold, picking up support from just three Democrats. 

Whether the chamber votes Saturday remains to be seen.

“We’ll see if something comes together that we can vote on,” Thune told reporters Friday night. 

In a Truth Social post on Saturday morning, President Trump said he was recommending Senate Republicans end the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

He said the money used to fund the program should be sent directly to members of the American public instead of “money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare.”

“In other words, take it from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people,” Mr. Trump wrote. 

Mr. Trump criticized the ACA as “the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World.” He added that Congress “must still terminate the Filibuster!”

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Friday froze, for now, a lower court order that required the Trump administration to swiftly provide full federal food benefits to roughly 42 million Americans.

The order from Jackson is temporary. She said it will give a federal appeals court more time to consider whether to provide the Trump administration with longer emergency relief while an appeal in the dispute over payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program moves forward. 

The Supreme Court’s late-stage intervention came as the Trump administration closed in on an end-of-day deadline, set by a district court judge Thursday, to cover in full food assistance for November and use roughly $4 billion for other nutrition programs to do so. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit had temporarily left in place the lower court’s decision, after which the Justice Department sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court.

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