U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) speaks to reporters outside his office on the 14th day of the U.S. government shutdown at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on October 14, 2025.
Elizabeth Franz | Reuters
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Saturday that bipartisan talks in the U.S. Senate to end the government shutdown are moving in a positive direction, with lawmakers working on an agreement to temporarily reopen the government and introduce three long-term funding bills for some government agencies.
“Yes, I think so,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, told reporters when asked if there had been essentially positive bipartisan talks in the past 24 hours.
Saturday marked the 39th day of the federal government shutdown, which has already taken many federal workers off the job, impacting food assistance, air travel and national parks. After weeks of stalled talks, Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate appear to have begun negotiations in earnest later this week.
Lawmakers on Saturday wanted to release the full text of three full-year funding measures for fiscal year 2026 for agriculture, food and nutrition programs, along with military construction projects, veterans programs and Congressional operating funds, Republican senators said. The proposal would fund these projects until September 30, 2026.
Meanwhile, senators are working on stopgap measures to buy time to reach agreement on the federal government’s nine remaining “discretionary” spending bills, including for Homeland Security, Defense, Housing and Health agencies.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, told reporters that the short-term funding, currently scheduled to expire Nov. 21, would be renewed with new legislation to reopen the government and keep it funded through the end of January.
Thune said it would be “great” if a vote could be held on Saturday, but did not commit to setting a deadline. “It’s an opportunity for people to solidify their opinions, so we’ll see how the day goes,” he said.
Despite Thune’s upbeat story, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Saturday attacked the Trump administration’s withholding of SNAP food stamp funding and accused it of playing “politics” by imposing flight reductions at certain airports.
On the Senate floor, Schumer complained that Republicans “came out of the gate” Friday to deny Democrats’ demands for a one-year extension of health care subsidies that are set to expire as part of the government reopening bill.
It will likely require the support of at least eight Democrats to break the chaos of the government shutdown. Thune did not say how Republicans would respond to Democratic demands to extend subsidies for 24 million people in the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace.
President Donald Trump “wants to solve the health care crisis in this country where insurance premiums are skyrocketing,” Thune said. But Republicans say they won’t negotiate on health care subsidies until the government shutdown ends.
President Trump on Saturday urged Republican senators to redirect federal funds used for health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act into direct payments to individuals. Some Republican senators have expressed support, but Democrats have been largely silent so far.
“I recommend that Senate Republicans take the hundreds of billions of dollars currently going to money-siphoning insurance companies to rescue the poor health care provided by Obamacare and send them directly to Americans, so they can buy better health care for themselves and have money left over,” Trump wrote in an article for Truth Social, without providing further details.
The ACA Marketplace allows people to purchase insurance directly from health insurance companies, primarily serving people who are uninsured through employers or Medicare and Medicaid government programs.
Representatives from the White House did not respond to requests for comment on Trump’s post.
President Trump’s comments came hours before the US Senate reconvened at noon (17:00 GMT) after rejecting a bill on Friday to restore paychecks to hundreds of thousands of federal workers during the longest government shutdown in US history.
The record-long shutdown had affected many programs.
For example, approximately 10,000 young children and their families have been left without Head Start early learning and nutrition programs due to closures in 18 states and Puerto Rico, according to the First Five Years Fund, which advocates for child care and early learning programs at the federal level.
These programs had federal funding renewal deadlines of October 1st and November 1st. Those approvals were frozen at the start of the shutdown on October 1, when the allocated funds were depleted.
