President Trump tweets: ‘We will be out for a long time unless the Democrats come back from their ‘vacations’ and get back to work.’
WASHINGTON — The longest federal government shutdown in American history ground into a fourth week Saturday with President Trump showing fresh defiance on Twitter, congressional Democrats firmly resolved to resist his calls for a border wall, and unpaid workers caught in the middle.
“We will be out for a long time unless the Democrats come back from their ‘vacations’ and get back to work,” Trump tweeted Saturday. “I am in the White House ready to sign!”
Trump’s statements came a day after some 800,000 federal employees missed an expected paycheck and after he tamped down speculation that he might declare a national emergency to begin construction on his wall and break the impasse. Instead, he told reporters Friday, “we want Congress to do its job.”
Federal workers who have been forced to work without pay have started going to the courts to challenge the shutdown.
The National Federation of Federal Employees, National Association of Government Employees, the National Weather Service Employees Organization and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers – representing a combined 244,000 members working in coastal Virginia, southern California, central Montana and the Washington area – filed suit in the U.
