MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The federal government is heading to a shutdown at midnight tonight. If that happens, tens of thousands of government employees will be told they have to stay home. Others will be expected to work without pay. Congressional leaders met at the White House with President Trump yesterday. When it was over, Vice President JD Vance came out and said this.
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JD VANCE: I think we're headed into a shutdown because the Democrats won't do the right thing. I hope they change their mind, but we're going to see. I'll let the speaker...
MARTIN: The last government shutdown was in 2018. Trump was in office then, too. Republicans controlled the House and Senate and needed Democratic votes to pass a spending bill, just like now. But as NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports, a lot has changed.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Back then, it was Trump who was trying to use a shutdown as leverage to extract a policy win - billions of dollars in funding to build a border wall, as he told Democratic leaders days before the shutdown.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don't want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it.
KEITH: And shut it down he did, rejecting a last-minute bipartisan compromise to keep the lights on. Once it started, it was really hard to end it.
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GILES SNYDER: Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Giles Snyder. The partial federal government shutdown is now 22 days old, making it the longest in U.S. history and it appears...
KEITH: It ended up lasting 35 days. The first Trump administration worked to minimize the impact on Americans, going so far as to keep national parks open despite many park employees being on forced furlough. Shalanda Young was a top Democratic congressional aide at the time.
SHALANDA YOUNG: They didn't want the shutdown to feel like it had an impact on Americans.
KEITH: This time, though, the roles are reversed. Democrats are the ones trying to leverage their votes for policy changes. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke outside of the White House last night.
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HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Democrats are fighting to protect the health care of the American people.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.
JEFFRIES: And we are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans, period, full stop.
KEITH: Now it's Republicans accusing Democrats of holding the government, quote, "hostage." But there's an escalation from typical temporary furloughs. The White House has instructed agencies to plan for mass firings of federal workers during the potential shutdown. And a new memo says one of the few allowable uses of government-issued equipment during the shutdown for furloughed workers will be checking to see if they've been fired. Young, who was budget director for President Biden, says these threats are unprecedented and just confirm why Democrats don't trust the Trump administration to keep any deal they make.
YOUNG: It feels just different in so many ways. You know, all you have in this town is your word, and it's been broken over and over and over.
KEITH: The Trump administration's current shutdown posture reflects confidence, says Hogan Gidley, who was a top White House aide in the first Trump term and is now advising House Speaker Mike Johnson. He says the president and Republicans are confident voters are going to blame Democrats for this shutdown.
HOGAN GIDLEY: They're going to shut down the government so that a select few people inside their radical base are happy that they are just standing up and fighting. But they're not getting anything done for the American people.
KEITH: One person who's had very little to say about this so far is President Trump himself. In 2018, he made sure cameras were rolling for his Oval Office blowup with Democratic leaders. Yesterday, the cameras were kept out.
Tamara Keith, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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