President refuses to budge as shutdown reaches 25th day

WASHINGTON — With the government mired in shutdown week four, President Donald Trump rejected a short-term legislative fix and dug in for more combat Monday, declaring he would “never ever back down.”

Trump rejected a suggestion to reopen all government departments for several weeks while negotiations would continue with Democrats over his demands for $5.7 billion for a long, impregnable wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The president also edged further away from the idea of trying to declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress.

“I’m not looking to call a national emergency,” Trump said. “This is so simple we shouldn’t have to.”

No cracks were apparent in the president’s deadlock with lawmakers after a weekend with no negotiations at all. His ruling out the short-term option proposed by Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham removed one path forward, and little else was in sight. Congressional Republicans were watching Trump for a signal for how to move next, and Democrats have not budged from their refusal to fund the wall and their demand that he reopen government before border talks resume.

The impact of the 24-day partial government closure was being felt around the country. Some 800,000 federal workers missed paychecks, deepening anxieties about mortgage payments and unpaid bills, and about half of them were off the job, cutting off some services. Travelers at the Atlanta airport, the nation’s busiest, dealt with waits of more than an hour Monday as noshows by security screeners soared.