With just hours until the government shutdown becomes the longest in U.S. history, Senate Democrats privately agonized behind closed doors Tuesday about bringing it to an end.

A two-hour-plus lunch meeting ended without a clear consensus on an endgame for the 35-day standoff, even after several senators involved in increasingly serious bipartisan negotiations laid out their thinking during the lunch, according to multiple attendees.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer emerged from the long meeting and signaled that his party isn’t yet ready to surrender — guaranteeing the shutdown would surpass the roughly 34-day, 20-hour shutdown that ended in January 2019.

“Families are opening their health care bills and wondering how they’ll pay them. That’s the reality. So we’re going to keep fighting day after day, vote after vote, until Republicans put working families ahead of the wealthy few,” Schumer told reporters.

But two people granted anonymity to discuss caucus dynamics estimate that about a dozen Democrats now privately believe it’s time to reopen the government and then use the coming weeks to increase pressure on Republicans to address their core demand: an extension of key health insurance subsidies.

Pressed on where his caucus stands after the long lunch, Schumer said only, “We’re exploring all the options.”

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said he thought there was some progress made during the lengthy meeting. But he acknowledged a crucial “difference in opinion” remains over whether Democrats should vote to reopen the government without a concrete legislative plan to extend the subsidies for those who buy plans on Affordable Care Act exchanges.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said the senators involved in the bipartisan talks “made their case” but added “you need to have an agreement and not just discussions.”

He added, “When and whether we get there is an unknown.”

The note of caution and uncertainty stood in counterpoint to the rising expectations among Republicans that the shutdown could be put on a glide path toward resolution later this week.

Several Senate Democrats emerged from the lunch grim-faced and tight-lipped, a shift from the start of the shutdown when Democrats were unified behind a common message: that Republicans had to at least negotiate with them in order to win their votes.

“What’s the point of being in the Senate minority if you don’t use your power to get something?” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview, accusing Republicans of “basic bullying tactics.”

But the weeks of political trench warfare have taken a toll on senators — not to mention the rising toll of the shutdown on their constituents. President Donald Trump threatened to defy a court order to pay federal food aid Tuesday before his administration contradicted that message. Meanwhile, his Transportation secretary warned of mounting travel disruptions in the coming week as unpaid air traffic controllers and security officers call off work.

The Democratic lunch started just after the Senate rejected a House-passed stopgap bill for a 14th time. As in the previous 13 votes, only Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada broke ranks with fellow Democrats, as did Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

While the vote count remained static, there has been palpable movement among the rank-and-file Democrats who have been negotiating with Republicans over a shutdown solution that would fall short of the demands most of their colleagues have been making for more than a month.

A group of about 10 Senate Democrats met in a Capitol basement hideaway Monday night, a gathering first reported by POLITICO. Some members of the group met again through the day Tuesday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday that he has spoken with rank-and-file Democrats, including in a meeting last week with Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, as well as with King. They discussed the various pieces that would have to come together to reopen the government, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the talks.

“There’s a line of communication,” Thune said.

The bipartisan discussions are focused around a revised stopgap spending bill that would keep agencies open until at least December, as well as passage of the full-year Agriculture-FDA, Military Construction-VA and Legislative Branch spending bills. Those two pieces could be advanced together, with a Republican guarantee that Democrats would get a future vote to extend the insurance subsidies once the shutdown is over.

Some Democrats, including Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, are pushing for Speaker Mike Johnson to also guarantee a vote — something the Louisiana Republican has been loath to do as he argues Democrats need to reopen the government first.

Others want Trump to get directly involved. Republicans have said Trump will meet with Democrats on health care but only after the government reopens.

“President Trump should bring people to the White House instead of having parties in Mar-a-Lago, and make sure that people’s insurance benefits are not going to more than double and get everything opened up,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), referring to a lavish Halloween party Trump attended at his Florida resort.

Trump has shown signs he has grown impatient with the shutdown, repeatedly prodding Republicans in recent days to kill the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster rule and take action on party lines. Senate Republicans have been invited to have breakfast with Trump Wednesday, where the topic could be broached, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private invitation.

But Republicans have other internal tensions to resolve — not least of which is the widespread opposition among conservatives to any extension of the crucial Obamacare tax credits.

Several House Republicans raised concerns on a private call Tuesday morning with Johnson and other leaders that Republicans should not help bail out Democrats from the failures of their 2010 health law, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the conversation.

They are also locked in an intense internal struggle over how long to schedule a funding punt. The conflict played out inside the Senate GOP’s own Tuesday lunch, according to two people in the room granted anonymity to describe the private meeting.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) strongly pushed for her preferred expiration date of Dec. 19, while hard-liners including Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) pushed for a deadline in early 2026.

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), another appropriator who is advocating for a December end date with Collins, also clashed with Scott — an eyebrow-raising development that led one GOP senator to note that Republicans clearly needed “a longer family discussion” about the issue.

Several GOP senators also said during the lunch and in other recent meetings that any promise to Democrats regarding a vote on the ACA subsidies should also require a vote on a Republican alternative. That legislation would likely involve guardrails favored by conservatives, including a crackdown on so-called phantom enrollees, minimum out-of-pocket premiums and new abortion funding restrictions, among other provisions.

“If there is going to be a vote on a Democrat proposal, then there will have to be an offsetting Republican proposal as an alternative,” a second GOP senator said.

Mia McCarthy, Calen Razor, Benjamin Guggenheim, Jennifer Scholtes and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday pressed Republicans to do away with the filibuster in the Senate, warning that failing to do so would cost his party control of Congress and the White House in the next two election cycles.

“The Democrats are far more likely to win the Midterms, and the next Presidential Election, if we don’t do the Termination of the Filibuster (The Nuclear Option!), because it will be impossible for Republicans to get Common Sense Policies done with these Crazed Democrat Lunatics being able to block everything by withholding their votes,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“FOR THREE YEARS, NOTHING WILL BE PASSED, AND REPUBLICANS WILL BE BLAMED. Elections, including the Midterms, will be rightfully brutal,” he continued. “If we do terminate the Filibuster, we will get EVERYTHING approved, like no Congress in History.”

The posts came on Election Day morning as voters in Virginia and New Jersey are set to decide two hard-fought gubernatorial races — and on Day 35 of a government shutdown that more Americans blame Republicans for than Democrats, according to an ABC News poll last week.

The Senate’s filibuster rule requires 60 votes to bring legislation to the floor and for passage, something both parties have contemplated doing away with in recent years given the chokehold effect on lawmaking in an era of intense partisanship and narrowly divided government.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune quickly dismissed Trump’s proposal on Monday, telling reporters “the votes aren’t there.”

Trump’s first year back in office has produced just one major piece of legislation, a massive package of tax cuts and energy deregulation — the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” as Trump dubbed it — which Republicans passed using a budgetary maneuver that circumvented the filibuster and allowed for passage with just 51 votes. He has not outlined a major legislative agenda for the rest of his term, governing largely by executive orders.

In his post, he suggested a number of conservative priorities — election reforms, more tax cuts, additional actions on the border — that Congress could act on if the filibuster were no longer in place.

Democrats showed unmistakable signs of splintering Monday as the government shutdown reached the cusp of setting an all-time record.

While many are still demanding their colleagues dig in and fight, a critical mass of Democratic senators appear to be engaged in serious talks about bringing an end to the five-week stalemate. The shutdown is set to overtake the 35-day record Tuesday night.

The divisions among Democrats over whether it’s time to negotiate a way out — or even what that way out should be — comes as Senate Republicans grow increasingly confident about their posture, with top leaders hoping to be able to pass a funding patch by the end of the week that would reopen shuttered agencies.

To do that, they’ll need to flip at least five more Democratic votes. Double that number of senators met behind closed doors Monday night in a Capitol hideaway office.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who has been involved in informal bipartisan talks since before the shutdown started, said in a brief interview afterward she hoped there would be a resolution to the shutdown this week.

“We’re having lots of active conversations,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told reporters.

The sense of fatigue with the marathon standoff — and the mounting impacts on everyday Americans, including missing food aid and air travel delays — was acknowledged by at least one senior Democrat.

“I sense that people are tired of this shutdown and all that flows from it,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 party leader, who added that the bipartisan interlocutors he has spoken to “seem more optimistic.”

But Durbin warned the major sticking point for his party — health care — remains unresolved.

The outlines of the agreement under discussion by rank-and-file senators would fall short of what many Democrats have drawn as a red line: a firm bipartisan agreement to extend Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies that will expire Dec. 31.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer showed no signs of backing down during a floor speech Monday. He knocked President Donald Trump and Republicans for not coming to the negotiating table even after the open enrollment shopping period opened Saturday, exposing many ACA enrollees to markedly higher premiums.

“It was a bitter, stressful weekend for millions of Americans, but you would never guess it listening to Donald Trump,” Schumer said of the “sticker shock.”

And amid signs that their colleagues could be preparing to concede, a cadre of Senate progressives warned that Democrats need to keep fighting.

“We have the moral responsibility to stand up and fight for the 15 million people who are about to lose health care,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an interview Monday. “What the polling tells me, and what I believe to be true, is that the vast majority of the American people are behind us not to give in to Trump or the Republicans.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he believed Democrats should continue to fight until they get an agreement to extend the subsidies. He predicted that the results of Tuesday’s off-year elections would confirm that “the American people want us to fight for them.”

“Donald Trump and the Republicans need to come to the negotiating table,” added Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

In another signal of impending movement, some rank-and-file Senate Democrats who have been involved in the bipartisan talks tried to sell senior House Democrats on a potential off-ramp to the shutdown, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

But many House Democrats, especially in leadership circles, are still opposed to any deal that doesn’t include a concrete legislative solution to extending the ACA subsidies. The developing Senate deal would likely include the promise of a Senate floor vote that would probably fail, paired with a possible framework for subsequent bipartisan negotiations.

“It won’t be pretty if they vote ‘yes’ over a promised process versus outcome,” one of the people involved in the conversations said, describing the view of many House Democrats. “But they’re trying.”

In addition to Shaheen and Slotkin, Democratic Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Gary Peters of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada attended the Monday night meeting, as well as Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Some who attended, but not all, are also part of the bipartisan group of senators who talked through the weekend. Their conversations have focused on passing a new funding patch to reopen agencies, reaching an understanding on moving full-year appropriations bills and scheduling a vote on ACA subsidies. Republicans have also pledged that Trump will meet with Democrats after the shutdown ends.

Cortez Masto and King have already voted multiple times to advance a House-passed stopgap spending bill that would fund the government through Nov. 21. But there is widespread agreement that this measure is now out of date and will have to be revised to extend the deadline into mid-December at least.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he hoped to be able to send a revised stopgap back to the House by the end of the week. Under the most optimistic timeline, if the Senate can strike a deal and pass an amended bill by Thursday, the House would return early next week to vote on sending it to Trump, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

But there are divisions on the Republican side that could complicate that plan.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) is pushing for a new deadline of Dec. 19, which she hopes would build momentum to pass a package of full-year funding bills in the coming weeks. She and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), along with other GOP appropriators, have in recent days been trying to build support for such a plan with Democrats.

But House and Senate GOP leaders are pushing hard against a December deadline, as they face pressure from conservative hard-liners wary of a holiday jam.

“You can’t go to December,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Monday. “It has to be longer.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wrote on X Monday that he believed the new deadline has to go past Jan. 15.

Republicans could be forced to swallow the December date if it’s the only compromise available in the Senate, but Democrats need to get on the same page, too. Durbin didn’t close the door Monday to a January deadline, but Shaheen said she wanted it to end in December.

“Those people who are arguing for a January CR are those people who want a full-year continuing resolution,” Shaheen said, referring to an extension of current funding levels that would sideline appropriators. “I don’t think that’s in anybody’s interest.”

Collins was among those who struck an optimistic note Monday. “It’s too soon to declare that this nightmare of a shutdown is over, but I’m very cautiously hopeful,” she told reporters.

Later, though, Collins added, “who knows — it could all fall apart again.”

Calen Razor and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.