House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that public pressure will force Republicans back to the negotiating table in search of a bipartisan deal to reopen the government. 

Asked at the Capitol why he thinks President Trump will change course and enter talks over the health care provisions Democrats are demanding, Jeffries didn’t hesitate for a moment. 

“Public sentiment,” he told reporters on the Capitol steps. “The American people are paying close attention, and they know that it was Donald Trump and Republicans who have shut the government down.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has rejected that premise. He and other Republican leaders think they’ll win the fight for public sentiment because their bill — which would extend government funding through Nov. 21 — maintains spending levels that Senate Democrats supported earlier in the year. 

“The reason that we’re talking to you so plainly today is to explain to every single American citizen why this is happening,” Johnson told reporters in the Capitol on Thursday morning. “How in the world could they blame the people here who have done our job and sent over a clean CR to keep the lights on?”

The fierce finger pointing highlights the entrenched positions the parties have adopted in the early stages of the shutdown — and the challenges they face in getting out of it.

Jeffries said a long history of Republicans shutting down the government — including extended shutdowns in 2013 and 2019 — lend Democrats an edge in the public relations battle. 

“Republicans have repeatedly shut the government down, throughout the years,” he said. “And does any reasonable person think that Donald Trump or JD Vance or Mike Johnson or Senate Republicans are behaving like individuals who actually want to reopen the government?” 

“House Republicans are literally on vacation right now, scattered throughout the country and the world,” he continued. “Democrats have been here all week.”

Democrats have been encouraged by a series of recent polls indicating that voters, by fairly wide margins, blame Trump and his party for the shutdown, not least because Republicans control all levers of power in Washington. They’re demanding negotiations on a bipartisan bill that extends ObamaCare subsidies beyond Dec. 31, when they’re scheduled to expire. 

“We want to have a bipartisan discussion, use common sense to reopen the government, pass a spending agreement that makes life better for the American people, particularly as it relates to their high cost of living,” Jeffries said.

“Unfortunately, Republicans have shown zero interest in even having a conversation.”

Johnson is not denying the Republicans’ refusal to negotiate, but he said there’s a simple reason for it: There’s nothing to talk about.

“People say, ‘Why aren’t you negotiating with Schumer and Jeffries?’ Because I quite literally have nothing to negotiate,” he said. “There’s nothing I can pull out of the bill that was a Republican priority to say, ‘Oh, we won’t do that. Why don’t you guys vote for it now?’ 

“I don’t have anything.”

The Speaker also rejected the notion that there’s an urgency surrounding the ObamaCare subsidies, since they don’t expire until the end of the year.

“We have three months to do that,” he said. “That is not an issue for today.”  

How long the shutdown endures is anyone’s guess. 

On Wednesday, Jeffries suggested it won’t break any records when he predicted it would be solved before the next round of House lawmaker paychecks go out, at the end of the month. But on Thursday, he sounded a different note, saying Democrats are bracing for the long haul for the sake of ensuring the ObamaCare subsidies don’t expire. 

“Democrats are in this fight until we win this fight,” he said.