WASHINGTON - The US government, already shaken to its core by Donald Trump's radical reforms, could begin shutting down entirely at the weekend as Democrats face the stark option of opposing the president's federal funding plans -- even if it blows up in their faces.
With a Friday night deadline to fund the government or allow officials to begin shuttering its agencies and operations, the Senate is set for a crunch vote just hours before the midnight cut-off on a Trump-backed funding package passed Tuesday by the House of Representatives.
The bill would keep the lights on through September, but Democrats are under immense pressure from their own grassroots to defy Trump and reject a package they say is full of spending cuts that will hurt Americans.
"If it shuts down, it's not the Republicans' fault. We passed a bill... If there's a shutdown, even the Democrats admit it will be their fault," Trump told reporters on Thursday.
A handful of moderate Democrats in states won by Trump in last year's election have not revealed which way they intend to vote.
Some appeared ready to back down -- and run the gauntlet of an angry Democratic base demanding resistance to Trump -- fearing that it would be risky to force a government stoppage with no obvious exit ramp.
Tuesday's House vote marked a big victory for Trump, who turned the political thumbscrews on some holdouts among the fractious House Republicans ahead of the vote -- effectively stamping out a rebellion on his own side.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson -- who voted against a bill averting a shutdown as recently as 18 months ago -- called on Senate Democrats to "put partisan politics aside and do the right thing."
"When the government shuts down, you have government employees who are no longer paid, you have services that begin to lag. It brings great harm on the economy and the people," he told Fox News.
- 'Huge backlash' -
The funding fight is focused on Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), unofficially spearheaded by tech billionaire Elon Musk, which is working to dramatically reduce the size of the government.
Republicans control 53 seats in the 100-member Senate.
Legislation in the upper chamber requires a preliminary ballot with a 60-vote threshold -- designed to encourage bipartisanship -- before final passage, which only needs simple majority.
The funding bill is likely to need support from at least eight Democrats in the Senate, but its Republican authors ignored the minority party's demands to protect Congress's authority over the government's purse strings and rein in Musk.
Grassroots Democrats, infuriated by what they see as the SpaceX and Tesla CEO's lawless rampage through the federal bureaucracy, want their leaders to stand up to DOGE and Trump.
Washington progressive Pramila Jayapal told CNN there would be a "huge backlash" against Senate Democrats supporting the bill.
"The Republicans have the White House, the Senate and the House," added her New York colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
"If they want to do this, and if they want to screw over the American people, they can do this with their votes and their party. I do not believe that Democrats should participate."
Several top Democrats have warned, however, that a shutdown could play into Trump and Musk's hands, distracting from DOGE's most unpopular actions, which now include firing half the Education Department's workforce.
Democratic strategists have been mulling backing the preliminary vote but then withdrawing support on final passage, allowing the Republicans to pass the bill on their own.
But it is not clear that this would shield them from the criticism that they bowed down to Trump.