Buckle in — this shutdown might last a while.

With federal agencies closed going into a second workweek, there are vanishingly few signs that a bipartisan breakthrough is imminent. To the contrary, all indications are that leaders in both parties are only digging in deeper, and efforts to forge a compromise among the Senate rank-and-file are so far sputtering.

Already some lawmakers are eyeing Oct. 15 — the date when active-duty military members could miss their next paycheck — as the next real deadline for action.

Democrats are insisting they will not vote to reopen the government without some kind of an agreement around soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies impacting more than 20 million Americans, and party leaders have been emboldened by flash polling giving them a modest advantage.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, said Republicans are “losing in the court of public opinion” and vowed to continue “standing up for the health care of hard-working American taxpayers.” A CBS News poll released Sunday was the latest of several new surveys showing a small majority of respondents taking the side of Democrats in the shutdown blame game.

Republican leaders, meanwhile, continue to insist any discussions about health care can happen only after Senate Democrats reopen the government by passing a House-approved seven-week stopgap.

Speaker Mike Johnson said in an MSNBC interview Sunday that lawmakers “need the month of October” to hammer out a deal on the subsidies: “There’s a lot of thought that’s gone into that on both sides of the aisle. But we need folks in good faith to come around the table and have that discussion. And we can’t do it when the government is shut down.”

Those talking points have barely shifted from a week ago, when Congress was still on the precipice of plunging into a shutdown. Now, more than five days in, some leaders have their eyes on some key dates they believe could force action.

Most federal workers will miss their first paychecks Friday if agencies don’t reopen by then. Active-duty military members will miss their pay the following Wednesday if Congress does not act.

Speaking to House Republicans on a private conference call Saturday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise identified that latter date as a key pressure point and urged members to hammer Democrats as it approached.

President Donald Trump also alluded to the sensitivity of troop pay in a speech Sunday to a crowd of sailors and others celebrating the Navy’s 250th anniversary: “I want you to know that despite the current Democrat-induced shutdown, we will get our service members every last penny. Don’t worry about it.”

Trump and his deputies are seeking to add to the pressure by threatening to proceed with mass layoffs of federal employees as the shutdown wears on. Top economic adviser Kevin Hassett described potential firings Sunday as a sort of Sword of Damocles that will hang over Democrats in the coming days.

“We think that the Democrats, there’s a chance that they’ll be reasonable once they get back into town on Monday,” he said on CNN. “And if they are, I think there’s no reason for those layoffs.”

But the layoff threats have only caused Democrats to dig in more. Many inside their ranks are calling the spectre of firings a bluff, arguing Trump has no more legal authority to carry out such firings in a shutdown than he would otherwise and that any such moves would be quickly challenged in court.

And even swing-state Democrats are growing comfortable fighting for the position Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have staked out for them: extending the insurance subsidies ahead of Nov. 1, when open enrollment begins for next year’s plans offered on Affordable Care Act exchanges.

“Twenty-four million Americans are going to have their premiums increase. Millions of them are going to lose their coverage,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in an interview. “Any answer to the shutdown has to involve fixing that.”

Gallego has been part of a bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators who have been holding informal conversations about finding a way out of the shutdown. But so far the discussions have remained nebulous.

While leadership talking points have hardened, there are tensions inside both parties that could grow over the coming days and weeks and bring matters to a head.

House GOP leaders decided Friday not to return to session this week — driven by both a belief that they have nothing further to do after approving the seven-week stopgap last month and concern that having members of the more boisterous chamber together on Capitol Hill would not help the party stick to its message. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) flatly said the House would only make things “worse.”

“This is not a game,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol last weekend. “I don’t know why this is so complicated.”

In contrast, some in the speaker’s leadership circle quietly bristled at Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s decision to recess his own chamber for the weekend after another stopgap vote failed Friday, according to three people granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

They privately argued Senate Republicans were giving up an opportunity to keep hammering Democrats. The House’s absence continued to fuel Democratic attacks over the weekend.

“House Republicans continue to be on vacation, spread out across the country and the world and this makes no sense,” Jeffries told reporters Friday. He brought his own members back to town last week but has not made similar plans for this week; House Democrats are set to hold a conference call Monday evening.

In past shutdowns, the majority party has often held votes to reopen particularly popular parts of the federal government in a bid to put pressure on the minority. Senate GOP leaders have no such plans at this point, but Johnson and Thune could bring up legislation to pay troops as the Oct. 15 paycheck deadline nears. Some Republicans, though, still believe Democrats will fold before then.

“We might not even be in a shutdown at that point,” said one senior GOP leadership aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal thinking.

The more profound GOP divide, however, concerns the health insurance subsidies. Republicans from the White House to Capitol Hill leadership suites privately admit the party is increasingly vulnerable on health care but are now committed to an argument that they cannot undertake any negotiations until the shutdown ends while also accusing Democrats of wanting to protect services for undocumented immigrants.

Asked about his position on the subsidies, Trump said Sunday, “We want to fix it so it works.” He said the ACA in general was “not working” and “has been a disaster for the people,” but there is little appetite inside the White House or the GOP generally for reopening the landmark 2010 health law.

Inside the White House, even some of Trump’s most hard-line deputies are coming around to the political realities they face with the coming insurance cliff. Policy officials are readying proposals around the expiring tax credits — one, according to three people granted anonymity to comment on the proposals ahead of an announcement, could include grandfathering in current beneficiaries and cutting off boosted subsidies for new enrollees.

Democrats are dealing with internal splits of their own, with Schumer caught in the middle. Some of his moderate members want to find a quick exit from the shutdown and are exploring a framework deal that could open the government and set up further talks on the ACA subsidies. But others — including Jeffries — want nothing less than an ironclad legislative deal in writing to extend the subsidies first.

“We’ve seen the president — once Democrats and Republicans have agreed on budgets — come along later to rescind those things. So we need something more, much stronger than a promise,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) told reporters last week.

Schumer, for now, is content to highlight the divides on the Republican side — and he is pushing Trump to get involved in talks now.

“Johnson and a whole lot of his caucus don’t like the ACA, don’t want to do the extensions. A lot of Republican senators in the Senate do, but they’re not enough,” Schumer said Friday. “You need Johnson, and you particularly need Trump, to get it done.”

Jordain Carney, Nicholas Wu and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

The government shutdown will go into a second week.

Senators rejected another opportunity Friday to reopen agencies and are now out of session until Monday, when leadership is expected to force a fifth vote on a House-passed proposal to fund the government through Nov. 21.

The stalemate comes as the fallout from the shutdown is growing: White House budget director Russ Vought announced Friday he was targeting funding in Illinois, another largely Democratic state, following cuts made earlier in the week to infrastructure projects in New York. The administration is also on the precipice of enacting its widely telegraphed plans to carry out mass firings of federal employees.

So far, however, congressional leaders and the White House are locked in a cold war, with no sign that, left to their own devices, they would be able to find a way to reopen the government anytime soon.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune played down the chances of a rumored meeting Friday with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, saying he didn’t think it would be productive unless the top Senate Democrat is ready to declare a detente.

“I don’t think there’s at this point a lot to negotiate, and I think at this point a lot of the more productive conversations are happening outside of the leader’s office,” Thune said Friday.

That was a reference to a bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators that has been talking for days about finding a path out of the shutdown. But while those conversations are ongoing, involved GOP senators said Friday, they don’t believe enough Democrats are ready to break ranks with party leadership to support the House-passed stopgap bill.

“I’m not optimistic that we have the numbers at this stage of the game, but it really depends on if any of our colleagues want to get to yes,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a key player on the Democratic side, said only, “We’re talking.” She was spotted huddling with some of her GOP counterparts, including Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), around the Senate Friday.

Schumer, in a Friday floor speech, showed no signs of backing down, saying that Congress needs to “act now” on extending health insurance subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Democrats warn that Congress can’t wait past Nov. 1 to extend the subsidies because open enrollment for Affordable Care Act plans will start before then.

“We’re ready to work on a path forward to lower health care costs for the American people and fund the government,” Schumer said.

Rounds agreed that any ACA deal needs to be “done by about Nov. 1” but suggested that Democrats were in a self-defeating position by refusing to reopen the government and allow negotiations to proceed. “Their time is running out as well,” he said.

Therein lies the chicken-and-egg nature of the stalemate: Democrats are demanding a deal on the insurance subsidies to reopen the government, while Republicans insist there can be no deal so long as the government is closed. Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson held a joint new conference on Friday morning to reiterate that message.

“Open the government. Open the discussions,” said Thune’s top spokesperson, Ryan Wrasse, in an X post Friday.

Republicans, instead, are hoping that they can peel off enough Democratic senators to support the GOP-led funding bill by offering them something short of an ACA deal attached to the stopgap spending measure.

Ideas being tossed around the bipartisan group include seeking commitments on moving full-year appropriations bills once the government reopens. They’ve also talked about reaching an understanding about how the ACA negotiations could work — again, only once the government is open. Democrats have also raised their desire to block any White House efforts to claw back already-approved funding for the length of the stopgap bill.

But the talks remain unsettled, and no additional Democrats broke ranks Friday to vote for the House-passed stopgap. The GOP bill failed 54-44, falling short of the 60 votes needed to move forward. Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) voted for the GOP bill, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted against it — same as a Wednesday vote taken just hours after the shutdown began.

Republicans also rejected a Democratic proposal for the fifth time, in a 52-46 vote. That bill would link funding the government through the end of October to various Democratic health care priorities, including an extension of the ACA subsidies and a rollback of some provisions in the GOP megabill enacted this summer.

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.”