White House says lawmakers invited back for shutdown talks Friday

A spokesman for President Trump on Thursday said congressional leaders have been invited back to the White House for talks to resolve the partial government shutdown.

White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters an invitation has been extended to lawmakers to return to the executive mansion on Friday at 11:30 a.m.

{mosads}Newly elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) will attend the meeting, according to their offices.

The second meeting was originally floated on Wednesday by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who said Trump made a verbal invitation to leaders during a contentious meeting this week over border security.

The meeting did little to end the 13-day funding impasse caused by Trump’s demand for $5 billion in border wall funding.

Democrats left the meeting saying they would refuse to grant the president’s request and urged him to sign a spending bill that would reopen most of the government agencies that are shuttered.

The White House on Thursday reiterated that Trump would not support that agreement, which would fund the Department of Homeland Security until Feb. 8 in order to buy more time to negotiate over border security.

“At this point to keep kicking this down for another 30 days — we want to get this done and it’s time for action now,” said White House communications adviser Mercedes Schlapp. “We don’t want to go towards a short-term [continuing resolution]. We want to negotiate, get to a better number and get the government reopened.”

— Mike Lillis contributed to this report, which was updated at 8:32 p.m.