WASHINGTON – After weeks of making little progress to end the government shutdown, senators are spending their first weekend working overtime since the crisis started.

Normally, they travel back to their states at the end of the week – a fact that has stayed the same for more than a month even as the funding crisis, now the longest of its kind, has devolved with each passing day, harming millions of Americans.

But lawmakers are growing increasingly anxious about reopening the government amid mounting flight cuts, growing food insecurity and hundreds of thousands of federal workers who've gone without paychecks for nearly 40 days.

President Donald Trump weighed in on the situation Friday afternoon, urging lawmakers to stay in Washington until they figure a way out of the crisis.

“The United States Senate should not leave town until they have a Deal to end the Democrat Shutdown,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

In a sign of lawmakers coming at least slightly closer together, Democrats offered Republicans a compromise on Friday: a short-term funding measure that would likely keep the government open into next year while extending Obamacare subsidies for one year.

"All Republicans have to do is say yes," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, on Friday.

Instead, they balked at the proposal, essentially guaranteeing the shutdown will drag into next week.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, said Friday his party has had enough of the situation.

"I am tired of political games," he said.

Asked Friday night whether a revised bill to potentially end the shutdown could come together Saturday, he said he was hopeful but it "remains to be seen." Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, said the Senate would vote Saturday afternoon.

Hunger looms for millions of Americans on SNAP

For the tens of millions of Americans who rely on SNAP food assistance, the delayed benefits spell hunger.

"I don't understand how they want us to survive," Tonya LaFarr, 47, a SNAP benefit recipient from Des Moines, Iowa, told USA TODAY.

Some funds have gone out to states. But distribution for the month of November has been hampered by inaccurate information sent out by USDA, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell.

SNAP food assistance is available to households who make 130% or less of the federal poverty line, which comes out to $2,888 a month or less for a family of three.

-- Cybele Mayes-Osterman and Sarah D. Wire

Senators strike down federal worker pay bill again

On Friday evening, senators narrowly voted down a bill to pay federal workers amid the shutdown.

The bill, which was introduced by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, and endorsed by the American Federation of Government Employees, failed on a 53-43 vote. Several Democrats, including Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, broke with their party to support the measure.

The defections emphasized an increasing wariness of the crisis among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Trump administration says it will provide full SNAP benefits for November

The Trump administration says it is working to comply with a federal judge’s order to provide full SNAP benefits for November to the program’s 42 million recipients amid the government shutdown.

A Friday memo from the Department of Agriculture said the agency is “working towards implementing November 2025 full benefit issuances.” The memo said the department will “later today” make full funds available for the SNAP program.

The move comes after Rhode Island federal Judge John McConnell said in a Nov. 6 hearing the Trump administration has not worked quickly enough to release the funds.

The USDA had earlier agreed to distribute only partial SNAP benefits after the same judge ordered the administration to tap into the USDA’s contingency funds to cover SNAP benefits.

-Joey Garrison

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Senators work the weekend to negotiate over shutdown. Live updates

Reporting by Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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