If Republicans want to quickly bring the government shutdown to an end, they will need to get one particularly formidable Senate Democrat on board.

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen has emerged as a central player in the bipartisan back-channeling that has ramped up this week as congressional leaders and President Donald Trump remain locked in a bitter stalemate.

Shaheen brings key credentials to the negotiating table. She’s an original proponent of the enhanced Obamacare tax credits whose expiration has emerged as a key flashpoint in the shutdown debate. She’s a veteran appropriator who has long despised government shutdowns. And she’s set to retire next year after 18 years in the Senate, insulating her from some of the political pressures her colleagues are feeling.

Earlier this year, Shaheen was one of the 10 Democrats who helped advance a GOP-written stopgap to avoid a March shutdown — and one of two members of the caucus who ultimately voted for it. This time around, she’s holding out as she works to forge some sort of consensus that could reopen the government while putting Congress on a path to extend the tax credits past the end of the year.

“I’ve been in conversations with a number of colleagues on both sides of the aisle,” Shaheen told reporters this week after the bipartisan Senate talks spilled into the open, adding that the insurance subsidies are “one of the areas that we ought to be able to find agreement on.”

While Shaheen has an independent streak, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other party leaders are aware of her outreach, fellow Democrats say, and in some cases she has asked her colleagues to try to keep lines of communication open.

“She’s doing a good job,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has kept in close touch with Shaheen. “There’s a couple of times where she’s said, ‘Hey, can you do this?’ to move the ball, ‘This person it might be better for you to talk to.’”

Shaheen, whose office declined to comment, has been careful not to delve into the nitty-gritty of her discussions. But she is hardly keeping her efforts a secret. She has done a round of media appearances this week — including on Fox News — to stress that a deal could be in reach if congressional leaders come together.

Lending that claim credibility is her long involvement in other bipartisan negotiations. That includes a Senate “gang” that helped bring an end to a brief shutdown in early 2018. She was also involved in bipartisan talks during former President Joe Biden’s administration, including a 2021 infrastructure deal.

More recently, she’s built close relationships with Republicans as the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, making common cause in defense of NATO and against Russian President Vladimir Putin — who has put her on a blacklist of Americans created in response to sanction efforts. She recently helped advance Mike Waltz’s UN ambassador nomination in exchange for a foreign aid deal.

Top Republican leaders now see her among the handful of Democrats who they believe want to find a quick way out of the shutdown stalemate. Ahead of the Oct. 1 shutdown, Shaheen declined for days to say how she would vote on a last-ditch attempt to pass a House-approved stopgap bill — the only off-ramp then available. Before and immediately after the Tuesday vote, she was spotted talking with several Republican senators, including Majority Leader John Thune.

“I think she’s one of many, as you know, on her side who tends to be kind of more in the reasonable caucus,” Thune said in an interview. “I think she’s looking for a path forward.”

Shaheen has been careful not to box herself or her colleagues in as they try to figure out an agreement about how to get out of the shutdown. And she’s opened the door to clamping down on the credits in order to win GOP support for extending them. 

While she hasn’t publicly locked herself into any specific proposal, she noted recently that nearly everyone who is getting help through the subsidies to pay for their health insurance makes less than $200,000 a year — an income figure that has also been raised by House moderates. Republicans are certain to press for an income cap as part of any agreement on an extension.

GOP senators say the health insurance subsidies are not her only concern. She is also looking at how to get full-year appropriations bills moving. (The funding bill she helps oversee as a subcommittee ranking member, for the Department of Agriculture, is part of a three-bill package that has effectively been stuck because of the shutdown fight.)

A person who has spoken with Shaheen who was granted anonymity to speak freely about her thinking said the senator is aware that Democrats are operating from a structural disadvantage since Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. The person added that while she is pushing for the best possible outcome and supports larger Democratic aims, she’s also being realistic about what is achievable in the negotiations.

Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who is part of the group of Republicans talking to Shaheen, called her a “good partner” in the effort to find an end to the shutdown.

“She’s been kind of a good purveyor of the message,” Rounds said. “I mean, she gets the fact that we’re not going to do anything until we get out of the shutdown. So she’s trying to figure out a way to convince more of her team that we need to get this shutdown behind us and then we can get back to regular order.”

Hakeem Jeffries has spent nearly three years in relative anonymity as House minority leader. Now the New York Democrat is treating the government shutdown fight as a potential breakout moment.

Shedding his reputation as a cool, careful and sometimes overly calculating leader, Jeffries has staked out a much more aggressive approach in recent weeks as he and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer careened into a confrontation with President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

While the GOP leaders have so far been more eager to dog his fellow Brooklynite — calling it a “Schumer shutdown,” for instance, after Senate Democrats withheld their votes for a House-passed stopgap bill — Jeffries has made conspicuous moves to make himself a main character in the standoff.

More precisely, he has tried to pick a fight with Trump — first accusing him of not knowing his name, then calling a deepfake video the president posted depicting Jeffries in a sombrero and mustache “racist,” demanding Trump address any further criticism“to my face,” and telling Trump budget chief Russ Vought to “get lost,” among other attacks.

“The president has been engaging in irresponsible and unserious behavior, demonstrating that all along, Republicans wanted to shut the government down,” Jeffries told reporters Wednesday, shortly before he posted a unflattering meme of Vice President JD Vance on his X account.

The tenor of his sparring has contrasted with that of Schumer, who has steered away from calling the deepfake video racist and has instead called it part of a “tantrum” that proves Trump is not serious about negotiating an end to the shutdown. It’s also a departure from Jeffries’ predecessor, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose favored tactic in dealing with Trump was the cutting offhand remark.

But Jeffries’ more bombastic approach is winning praise from elements of the party that want to see more fight out of their leaders.

“They are in the minority over there, and they’re a majoritarian body where the minority has very little voice in terms of affecting the outcomes of events like this,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “And so he’s showing what an oppositional party leader should do — a lot of fight, a lot of strength — and frankly, the ability to keep Democrats united on the other side of the Capitol.“

Whether he has earned the respect that he so clearly seeks remains unsettled. Trump still has yet to utter Jeffries’ name in public. He referred to him Tuesday to reporters as “a very nice gentleman who I didn’t really know — you know who I’m talking about.”

But after posting the first AI-generated video Monday that had Schumer doing all the talking and Jeffries simply appearing mustachioed in the background, Trump posted another video Tuesday solely starring a deepfaked Jeffries.

Vance chimed in Wednesday from the White House: “I will tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make a solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop.”

Trump might be forgiven for not having Jeffries’ name on the tip of his tongue. Unlike with Schumer — whom Trump has known for decades and was a frequent sparring partner during his first term — Jeffries had no substantial interaction with the president before Monday’s Oval Office meeting.

As House minority leader, he holds the least power of the four top congressional leaders — unlike senators, Democrats in the chamber can be completely sidelined by a united GOP majority — and he is not well known nationally.

Just under half of Americans have never heard of him, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, versus about a quarter for Schumer, who has held his top position since 2017. Before Pelosi stepped down from a 20-year run as the top House Democrat, only 3 percent of Americans surveyed told Pew they’d never heard of her.

Ahead of the sitdown, Jeffries spoke about Trump with an ally who has long experience dealing with the president — civil rights leader Al Sharpton. He said in an interview that in the weekend conversation that otherwise focused on the New York City mayoral race, Jeffries said he didn’t know what to expect out of the meeting.

“I told him I’ve been fighting with Trump for 35 years, from the Central Park Five all the way through, and [that] sometimes he tried to act nice,” Sharpton said. “I said, ‘I find him to be a day trader — he says whatever will work to his advantage at that particular time. I don’t think Donald Trump believes in anything but Donald Trump.’ And Hakeem kind of chuckled.”

After walking out of the White House, Jeffries hewed closely to health-care-focused talking points that he and Schumer have carefully honed since infamously diverging on a prior GOP-written spending bill back in March.

Then Trump posted the AI-generated video, and Jeffries let loose, calling it “bigoted” and then “racist and fake.” It was a response that stunned some of his colleagues, who agreed with the assessment but also knew Jeffries had long counseled Democrats not to take Trump’s “bait.”

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), a longtime Jeffries ally, said it was the first time he’d ever heard the leader call a personal attack “racist.”

“I was furious, and no one would blame the leader if he said I didn’t want to be around this guy or get somebody else to take my place to interact with the White House,” Cleaver said. “He’s going to be a professional about it.”

“It was blatant. It was personal. It was insulting. And I think that Hakeem had to respond for his own self-respect,” added Sharpton.

Asked about Jeffries’ response, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said, “Anyone who’s feigning outrage over a perfect meme should instead focus on the countless Americans who will suffer as a result of the Democrat shutdown.”

That Jeffries mounted a more aggressive response than Schumer to Trump’s attacks is of little consequence in terms of the shutdown fight. Besides his own personal feelings, some Democrats noted it reflects the more rough-and-tumble style in the House and voters’ desire for a more pugilistic approach to Trump.

But there have also been small tactical differences between the two leaders that could get magnified as the standoff wears on. Notably, Jeffries has staked out some harder lines than Schumer — insisting, for instance, that any health care agreement be in writing and attached to any bill reopening the government, while Schumer has left room to cut an unwritten side deal.

One prominent House Democrat believes Jeffries has been handling himself well.

“He has seized the moment,” Pelosi said in a brief interview. “He’s doing a great job. I have no guidance for him except to keep on doing what he’s doing.”

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune laid out a path to end the government shutdown in an exclusive interview Wednesday, saying he is willing to discuss the shape of future health care negotiations if a “critical mass” of Democrats say they are willing to support a House-passed funding bill in return.

The comments, made in his Capitol office less than 18 hours into the first shutdown since 2019, are in keeping with the South Dakota Republican’s current strategy — which is to let pressure build on Democrats to back the GOP-led House stopgap as the only solution.

But Thune acknowledged that he has had back-channel conversations with Democrats and said he’s willing to discuss how to structure a negotiation on Obamacare insurance subsidies that are set to lapse at the end of the year.

“I keep telling them: When they have eight or 10 — preferably 10, or more — when they have a critical mass, let me know if there’s a conversation they want to have,” Thune said.

He insisted he would not negotiate on the substance of an extension while the government is closed. But pressed on whether he was open to discussions with Democrats about how the health care negotiations might work post-shutdown or how to advance full-year appropriations bills, Thune said, “We are.”

“Some of those conversations are happening,” he added. “With our members and their members there’s a lot of back-and-forth going on right now about some of the things they would like to see happen.”

Those bipartisan conversations spilled into public view Wednesday when a large group of senators talked on the Senate floor about how the government might be reopened. The talks, according to several lawmakers involved, are in their early phases. But they are a sign that, less than 24 hours into the shutdown, lawmakers are already looking for the way out of it.

Republicans involved in the bipartisan talks say that a framework for negotiations on the health insurance subsidies has come up, as well as a timeline for wrapping them up. Some Democrats want a deal by Nov. 1, when open enrollment starts for plans offered on Affordable Care Act exchanges. Linking it to the passage of a larger appropriations package after the shutdown fight has also been discussed.

But GOP senators said they are largely offering reassurances to Democrats that dozens of their members, and Thune, are willing to have a negotiation on the subsidies once the government is reopened under the House-passed continuing resolution.

Thune backed up that message Wednesday, reiterating in the interview that the GOP funding patch through Nov. 21 remains the only viable option: “Everybody wants a solution, wants a way out. But I don’t know how you do that absent opening up the government.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer continued Wednesday to push for a substantive negotiation on health care as 44 of the 47 members of the Democratic caucus remained behind him in a third vote against the House CR. Another five would have to break ranks to pass the bill.

Thune said in the interview that he believed Schumer is in a “tough spot” but that he hoped he would give rank-and-file Democrats “latitude” in their current discussions with Republicans.

Schumer, for his part, offered public support for the bipartisan Senate talks Wednesday, noting that he and other Democrats have been saying for weeks that Republicans need to talk to them.

While some Democratic lawmakers have warned they won’t vote for the stopgap bill unless a deal on extending the insurance subsidies is written into it, others have left the door open to an off-ramp that would fall short of that red line.

“One of the reasons probably why there are some of us in this camp is that there are Republicans telling us, ‘We agree with you. For our own interest, we have to fix this,’” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is involved in the talks, said Wednesday.

Thune, however, said he could not guarantee that a deal on extending the premium tax credits would be ready to be passed by Nov. 21, when the House stopgap would expire.

“I don’t know we can have a deal that could pass by then but I think there are … definitely discussions around things that could lead” to one, he said.

What to do about the soon-to-expire subsidies badly divides Republicans. Conservatives want to let them lapse at the end of the year. But a swath of House and Senate Republicans are open to extending them later this year with changes, such as new income limits, language aimed at preventing potential fraud and new minimum out-of-pocket premiums.

“What I can’t guarantee, of course, is an outcome and, in particular, one that would clear in the House, too,” Thune added. “The White House is another factor here. But I think everybody realizes we want solutions.”