The secret meeting that ended the U.S. government shutdown

The turning point in the government’s longest shutdown didn't involve President Trump or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

- Lindsay Wise, Natalie Andrews & Siobhan Hughes

President Trump signs the funding bill to reopen the US government, in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

(AP)

Instead, after the Senate adjourned for the day and most reporters had emptied out of the halls, a small group of breakaway Democrats and anindependent slipped unnoticed into the office of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R,,S.D)).

The shutdown wasnearing the one-month mark and the group was growing antsy as federal workers missed paychecks and food-aid programs ran out of money. Two nights before Halloween, the senators sat down with Thune, ready to reopen the government, people familiar with the meeting said. “It was a group of people trying to solve a problem,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and helped lead negotiations.

The mecting—one of several—had been requested by King and other centrists, including New Hampshire’s Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, all former governors. Republicans in attendance were Thune and Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, also a former governor and senior member of the powerful appropriations committee.

The group told Schumer they were talking to Thune and read him into their discussions, but Schumer didn’t participate directly, according to senators involved. Schumer wanted to extend the shutdown, arguing Trump would eventually engage in talks himself and they would get a better deal—one that would address expiring Obamacare health-insurance subsidies that Democrats had made their central demand in the shutdown fight, people familiar with Schumer’s position said.

The talks between the centrists and Republicans ultimately produced an agreement that would end the standoff but divide Democrats, with some seeing it as a failure of Schumer's gamble that he could hold his caucus together long enough to force Trump to the negotiating table.