Trump live updates: Senate to vote on bill to avert government shutdown ahead of midnight deadline

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries did not answer whether Democrats need new leadership in the Senate, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would back a Republican-endorsed plan to keep the government funded.

Asked whether he believes Schumer has “acquiesced” to Trump, Jeffries said “that’s a question that is best addressed by the Senate.”

“The House Democratic position is very clear,” he said. “We strongly oppose any efforts to cut the healthcare of the American people, veterans benefits and nutritional assistance, all of which are in the partisan Republican bill.”

Trump is trying to take a “chainsaw” to Social Security and federal health programs, he said.

Asked if he believes the Senate needs new Democratic leadership, he replied: “Next question.”

Democratic Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, is urging her colleagues to vote against the Republican-drafted spending bill.

She called the “CR” — a continuing resolution — a “Complete Resignation.”

“If you refuse to put forward an offer that includes any Democratic input, you don’t get Democratic votes,” she said in remarks on the Senate floor before today’s vote. “We are going to keep fighting for the America we love.”

K-9 bomb sniffer dog units are the latest victims of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, just as the White House celebrated a national day honoring the heroic animals.

Dozens of House Democrats sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to express their “strong opposition” to his support for Republican stopgap spending bill they call a “partisan continuing resolution that legitimizes President Trump and the Republican party’s dismantling of government.”

“If Republicans in Congress want to pass this bill, they should do so with their own votes. However, since they cannot, Republicans must work with Democrats to pass a clean [continuing resolution],” said the letter, which was signed by more than 50 House lawmakers.

“The American people sent Democrats to Congress to fight against Republican dysfunction and chaos,” they wrote.

After a brief court appearance this week, Mahmoud Khalil’s attorneys are now asking a judge to bring him back to New York after he was moved to a detention center in Louisiana, and for an order that blocks the Trump administration from similarly threatening noncitizens from removal from the country over support for Palestine.

A new filing fleshes out details from his arrest and detention, suggesting that Trump himself played a significant role overseeing the operation.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decries a Republican-led spending bill as “a false choice between a government shutdown or a blank check” for Donald Trump and Elon Musk “that makes a devastating assault on the well-being of working families across America.”

She calls on Democrats to reject the resolution, defying her colleague Chuck Schumer. Pelosi argued Democrats should “ “listen to the women” and support a competing measure from Democratic appropriations committee officials Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration will appeal and use the full force of the White House counsel’s office to fight a pair of court rulings that temporarily blocked mass firings of thousands of federal workers.

“You cannot have a low-level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president,” she told reporters Friday. “That is completely absurd.”

Trump and his allies, of course, repeatedly sought injunctions from “low-level district court judges” to block actions from his political opponents. His allies have repeatedly and baselessly accused judges across the ideological spectrum of trying to derail his agenda in rulings that have struck against key agenda items.

Leavitt called them “judicial activists.”

Senate Finance Committee Democrats appear to be giving the TV doctor a tough old time out there…