Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Wyoming Senator John Brasso, like many Republicans, is putting the looming shutdown on the Democrats.

“We need to keep the government open,” he tells a group of us here on Capitol Hill.

He says the government shouldn’t shut down and says Democrats will have the chance to vote to keep the government open later today.

Democrats want an agreement to renew the government health-insurance subsidies for low-income individuals that expire at the end of the year. Brasso is among the Republicans against renewing them.

“Those were set up as temporary and were supposed to end when Covid ended, and Covid has ended,” Brasso says.

Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

I’m here on Capitol Hill, which is eerily quiet. The hallways are basically empty, with very few lawmakers in sight.

But there’s still a palpable tension in the air, as a government shutdown becomes more likely as the hours pass.

At 12:01 ET Wednesday, the government will shutter if Republicans and Democrats can’t come to an agreement as to how to keep the government open.

As of now the parties, and the chambers, disagree on how to proceed.

And lawmakers walking the halls of the Capitol don’t seem confident a solution is imminent.

Stick with us and we’ll bring you the latest.

Cai Pigliucci
Reporting from Washington DC

Minority Leader in the Senate Chuck Schumer has just finishedspeaking on the Senate floor.

He says that Republicans have not tried tonegotiate a way out of the impasse between the two parties that could lead to agovernment shutdown.

“We stand at the precipice of a government shutdown becauseRepublicans are not serious about keeping the government open,” Schumersaid.

Republicans have argued that it’s Democrats that are “holdinghostage” the American people by not passing what’s known as a cleanContinuing Resolution.

That would extend the current government funding for ashort time period while the two sides work through a longer appropriationsprocess.

Schumer said Republicans have until midnight to “getserious” with Democrats on healthcare and funding the government. Headded, “But right now they’re not even talking to us seriously, they’resort of in la la land.”

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House Democrats have just held a briefing about the looming government funding deadline and their core concerns with the spending bill.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says Democrats are focusing on getting back funding for healthcare services.

“We’re not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people, not now, not ever,” Jeffries says.

“We’re here to cancel the cuts. We’re here to lower the cost. We’re here to save the health care of the American people.”

For context, Trump’s sprawling budget bill included additional restrictions to Medicaid, the healthcare programme relied upon by millions of disabled and low-income Americans.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nearly 12 million Americans could lose their health coverage by the end of the next decade as a result of changes.

• Read more: What are the key items in Trump’s sprawling budget bill?

There’s no shortage of political reaction to the looming government shutdown. So, let’s take a look at what some of the key players have said.

“We have very large differences on healthcare, and on their ability to undo whatever budget we agree to,” the US Senate’s top Democrat Chuck Schumer said.

Meanwhile, Vice-President JD Vance told the media: “You don’t use your policy disagreements as leverage.”

You can listen to more of what they had to say in the video above.

Anthony Zurcher and James FitzGerald

Not all of government will shut down if Congress doesn’t pass a spending bill by midnight.

Border protection, in-hospital medical care, law enforcement and air-traffic control would be expected to continue to operate during the stoppage.

While social security and Medicare cheques would still be sent out, benefit verification and card issuance could stop.

Generally, in a shutdown, essential workers continue as normal – some of them without pay for the time being – but government employees deemed non-essential are temporarily put on unpaid leave. In the past, these workers have then been paid retrospectively.

That means that services like the food assistance programme, federally-funded pre-school, the issuing of student loans, food inspections, and operations at national parks are expected to be curtailed or closed.

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

In terms of the substantive demands from each side, Republicans want a short-term extension of current spending levels – essentially kicking the legislative can a bit farther down the road.

They’re happy with the way things are going, particularly since the Trump administration has been implementing spending cuts on its own, without the help of congressional budget-setters.

Democrats want that practice to end.

What’s the point, they wonder, with negotiating spending-level agreements if Trump will just ignore them?

They also want a firm agreement to renew the government health-insurance subsidies for low-income individuals that expire at the end of the year – something Republicans have been reluctant to do so far.

Those are the negotiating positions of both sides, but government shutdown fights are about more than policy – they’re about politics.

Republicans think they have the political high ground.

The party that makes demands in exchange for keeping the government open – in this case the Democrats – typically gets the lion’s share of the blame when a shutdown happens.

Trump and Republican congressional leaders are already claiming that they are the reasonable ones.

They’re the ones, they say, who simply want to buy more time to negotiate without the adverse consequences of a shutdown.

Of course, Democrats don’t see it that way.

Earlier this morning, President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter about how many federal workers he plans to lay off if a government shutdown is not averted.

“Well, we may do a lot,” he said.

Trump blamed the Democrats, claiming they wanted more people to enter the US illegally.

White House budget chief Russ Vought recently circulated a memorandum explaining how the Trump administration would use a shutdown to make new, long-term reductions in federal spending and employment rolls.

Positions and government programmes deemed “nonessential” during the closure will be permanently shuttered – an expansion of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) cuts from earlier this year.

But Democratic leaders seem to believe the threats are a bluff or a negotiating tactic.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “an attempt at intimidation”.

“Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one – not to govern, but to scare,” Schumer said. “This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government.”

Anthony Zurcher and James FitzGerald

At this point, prospects for some kind of government shutdown appear high, and Vice-President JD Vance said as much after Trump met the congressional leaders on Monday.

On the Republican side, Trump administration officials have been unwilling, so far, to offer any substantive concessions.

They appear to believe Democrats, as the side making demands in exchange for keeping the government open, will bear the brunt of the public’s blame – as they have in some past shutdowns.

Democrats, meanwhile, believe their push for preserving health-insurance subsidies is a popular one.

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

The US is hurtling towards a government shutdown on Tuesday night, and there appears to be little appetite on either side of the partisan divide to avoid it.

A last-ditch meeting between President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders in Congress made little progress. If anything, both sides have been digging deeper into their positions.

“I think we’re headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters after the meeting at the White House. “You don’t put a gun to the American people’s head and say, ‘Unless you do exactly what Senate and House Democrats want you to do, we’re going to shut down your government’.”

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said there were still “very large differences” between his party and the White House.

No one sounded optimistic.

We’re covering all of the key developments in this story, so stick with us.

A major US government shutdown is looming as a Tuesday night deadline approaches for lawmakers to find a way to agree on a spending bill.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers have so far been holding a steady stalemate in their negotiations over certain aspects of the bill, like expiring health care subsidies. If they can’t reach an agreement by midnight, then parts of the federal government will come to a halt.

We’ll bring you the latest developments and analysis right here on this page – stay with us.