#FBI employees ordered to immediately search for records related to Amelia Earhart, source says.

Employees at the FBI’s Washington Field Office received a highly unusual message from their leadership flagged with high importance late Tuesday telling them: “Per a priority request from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, please search any areas where papers or physical media records may be stored, to include both opening or closed cases, for records responsive to Amelia Earhart.”

FBI employees were given a priority deadline of Wednesday to respond to the request, which comes on the seventh day of an ongoing federal government shutdown.

Earhart was attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world when her plane went missing over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. She was declared lost at sea following a 16-day search.

President Donald Trump last month said he was directing his administration to “declassify and release all government records” related to Earhart.

“Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions. I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Earhart, the first female pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean, broke a number of aviation records, and she has been a source of public fascination during her life and after.

Conspiracy theories have developed since the aviator’s disappearance, but as CNN noted in 2024, the US government suspected that Earhart and her navigator crashed into the Pacific when the plane ran out of fuel.

Trump has previously ordered the release of documents related to other high-profile deaths that have sparked conspiracy theories, including records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Josh Campbell. CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.

Gaza peace talks enter second day on two-year anniversary of the beginning of the war.

The second day of indirect negotiations in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh are focused on a plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump last week that aims to bring about an end to the war in Gaza.

After several hours of talks Monday, an Egyptian official with knowledge of the discussions said the parties agreed on most of the first-phase terms, which include the release of hostages and establishing a ceasefire. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meetings.

The plan has received widespread international backing and Trump told reporters on Monday that he thought there was a “really good chance” of a “lasting deal.”

“This is beyond Gaza,” he said. “Gaza is a big deal, but this is really peace in the Middle East.”
Trump’s peace plan

Many uncertainties remain, however, including the demand that Hamas disarm and the future governance of Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long said Hamas must surrender and disarm, but Hamas has not yet commented on whether it would be willing to.

The plan envisions Israel withdrawing its troops from Gaza after Hamas disarms, and an international security force being put in place. The territory would then be placed under international governance, with Trump and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair overseeing it.

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251.

The devastating war that has ensued has upended global politics, resulted in the deaths of 67,160 Palestinians nearly 170,000 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and has left the Gaza Strip in ruins.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but says more than half of the deaths were women and children. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and the United Nations and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.

A growing number of experts, including those commissioned by a U.N. body, have said Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip amounts to genocide - an accusation Israel vehemently denies.

On Tuesday at the area attacked by Hamas two years ago, thousands of Israelis gathered to pay tribute to their loved ones who were killed and kidnapped. An explosion from Gaza echoed across the fields as they reflected, following the launch of a rocket in northern Gaza. No damage or injuries were reported.

In Gaza City, meantime, residents said Israeli attacks continued until the early hours of the morning on Tuesday, though there were no immediate reports of casualties.
A promise of humanitarian relief

Ahead of the resumption of talks on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to the hostilities, which have created “a humanitarian catastrophe on a scale that defied comprehension.”

“The recent proposal by US President Donald J. Trump presents an opportunity that must be seized to bring this tragic conflict to an end,” Guterres said.

“A permanent ceasefire and a credible political process are essential to prevent further bloodshed and pave the way for peace. International law must be respected.”

Mediators from Qatar and Egypt were facilitating the talks, meeting first on Monday with members of the delegation from Hamas, then later with those from Israel.

Israel’s delegation included Gal Hirsch, coordinator for the hostages and the missing from Netanyahu’s office, while Hamas representatives included Khalil Al-Hayya, the group’s top negotiator.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Monday that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were on hand to talk part in the talks and keep the president apprised.

She did not comment on a specific deadline for concluding the talks, but said it is important “that we get this done quickly.”

Part of the plan is to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza, where more than two million Palestinian are facing hunger and in some areas famine.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the organization was poised and ready to act.

“The machinery is cranked up and ready to go as soon as we get the green light,” Dujarric said. “There are many thousands of metric tons in the pipeline of goods ready to enter” from Jordan, the Israeli port of Ashdod and elsewhere, he added.

___

Samy Magdy and David Rising, The Associated Press

Rising reported from Bangkok. Melanie Lidman in Reim, Israel, Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this story.

Southern right whales awe admirers in Patagonia after coming back from brink of extinction.

Peninsula Valdes, located in the Patagonian province of Chubut, is globally important for the conservation of marine mammals and is home to a key breeding population of Southern right whales — an endangered species — as well as elephant seals and sea lions.

“I’ve seen whales in Canada and California, but this was the best and probably the largest number of whales I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Tino Ventz, a German tourist who recently visited the peninsula with his girlfriend.

The Southern right whale was nearly exterminated by hunting expeditions up until the last century. Before large-scale whaling began, the population in southern waters was estimated at around 100,000, before it was decimated to about 600. Since then, it has slowly recovered to roughly 4,700 whales around Peninsula Valdes today.

Whale-watching season in the south American country peaks between August and September. This year, more than 2,000 whales have been spotted, though the actual number is likely higher, scientists say.

Ventz, 24, and his partner joined Argentine Andrea Delfino and her children on a boat trip. Southern winds stirred the whales into more acrobatic breaching, a spectacle that leaves an indelible impression on those who witness it.

Other tourists preferred to watch the whales from the shore, as is common in neighbouring Brazil or Uruguay.

Watching from the beach, Agustina Guidolín, fulfilled her dream of witnessing “the immensity that borders on the magical and the wild.” The tourists were at El Doradillo Park, a protected natural area in Puerto Madryn where whales give birth very close to the shore with their young after giving birth.

In addition to Peninsula Valdes and other points in Patagonia, the whales’ migration route extends along Uruguay’s eastern coast and southern Brazil.

Santiago Fernández, a biologist with Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, is part of a project that since 1999 has carried out two to three aerial surveys each year along 640 km (400 miles) of Patagonian coastline. This year’s count recorded 2,100 whales — 863 of them mothers with calves, and the rest solitary individuals.

“We’re underestimating the number of whales in the area,” Fernández said of the census, noting that it represents only a snapshot, since whales move in and out of the same region as they migrate.

He explained that in 1999 “about 500 whales were counted along that same route,” and that “we’re currently seeing a three per cent annual growth rate.”

Fernández added that another project, “Following Whales,” conducted by several national and international organizations, tracks individual whales via satellite telemetry within the San Matias Gulf to the north, the San Jorge Gulf to the south, and beyond, to better understand their routes.

From that project, which began in 2014, scientists learned that once the calves grow, the mothers lead them deeper into the gulfs — whales that are therefore not included in the aerial census.

The growing population is leading to a dispersal — especially of juveniles and mothers that have already calved — toward the San Matias and San Jorge gulfs, and even as far north as the coast of Buenos Aires province.

This expansion also brings the whales closer to risks posed by human activity, such as fishing nets and boat propellers, researchers have found, based on injuries suffered by whales unable to return to Antarctica at the end and beginning of their natural cycle.

Víctor Caivano And Ramiro Barreiro, The Associated Press

5 Nobel-worthy scientific advances that haven’t won the prize.

Prizes in chemistry, physics, and physiology or medicine, established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago, will be announced this week, along with prizes in peace and literature.

The awards are a pinnacle of scientific achievement. But predicting who will win is largely guesswork.

The short list and nominators remain a secret, and documents revealing the details of the selection process for the accolades are sealed from public view for 50 years.

There is, however, no shortage of worthy scientific advances from which the Nobel Prize committees can pick. Here are five life-changing breakthroughs and discoveries that experts think are Nobel-worthy.
Groundbreaking treatments for obesity

The development of blockbuster type-2 diabetes and weight-loss drugs that mimic a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP-1, has shaken up the world of health care.

One in 8 people in the world live with obesity — a figure that has more than doubled since 1990 — and the medication, which lowers blood sugar and curbs appetite, has the potential to usher in a new era for obesity treatment and related conditions such as type 2 diabetes.

Three scientists — Svetlana Mojsov, Dr. Joel Habener and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen — involved in the development of the drug, known as semaglutide, won the 2024 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, often considered an indicator of whether a specific breakthrough or scientist will win a Nobel Prize.

Mojsov, a biochemist and associate research professor at Rockefeller University, and Habener, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, helped identify and synthesize GLP-1. Knudsen, chief scientific adviser in research and early development at Novo Nordisk, played a pivotal role in turning it into an effective drug promoting weight loss that millions of people take today.

The same three scientists, along with Dr. Daniel Drucker, an endocrinologist and professor at the University of Toronto, and Danish physician Dr. Jens Juul Holst, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, were awarded the Breakthrough Prize, founded by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg and others, in life sciences in April.
Quantum computing pioneers

Quantum computing is an emerging field that is ripe for some Nobel recognition, according to David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information.

Pendlebury identifies “Nobel-worthy” individuals by analyzing how often fellow scientists cite their key scientific papers throughout the years.

This year, he tipped two physicists for their work on quantum bits, or qubits, the basic unit of information used to encode data in quantum computing: David P. DiVincenzo, a professor at the Institute for Quantum Information at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, and Daniel Loss, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

“There’s certainly, of course, a lot of anticipation of quantum computing, and probably, for that matter, a lot of hype, but I went back to these extremely highly cited papers, and I think this one by DiVincenzo and Loss was cited almost 10,000 times, an astronomical number,” Pendlebury said, referring to a 1998 study in the journal Physical Review A. “Their insight was to use qubits as the fundamental mechanism of making a quantum computer.”

Other pioneers in the field include David Deutsch, a visiting professor of physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation at the UK’s University of Oxford, who shared the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics.
Finding a treatment for cystic fibrosis

Two years ago, the Make-A-Wish Foundation announced that the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis was no longer automatically a qualifying condition for the children with fatal diseases it seeks to help.

That’s largely because of life-changing advances in how the disease is treated that three scientists helped to pioneer. The disease causes an overabundance of mucus, trapping infections and blocking airways in the lungs.

Dr. Michael J. Welsh, a professor of internal medicine-pulmonary, critical care and occupational medicine at the University of Iowa, revealed how the protein that underlies this lethal genetic disease functions and what can go wrong with it in people with the illness.

This discovery allowed two other researchers to find ways to correct the misbehaving protein that culminated in a drug combination that has turned cystic fibrosis into a manageable condition. Jesús (Tito) González, a physical organic chemist formerly at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, pioneered a system used to screen for promising compounds, and cell biologist Paul Negulescu, who works at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, led and championed the research, according to a statement from the Lasker Foundation.

The trio won the 2025 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in September.
Understanding the gut microbiome

Trillions of microbes — bacteria, viruses and fungi — live on and in the human body, collectively known as the human microbiome.

With advances in genetic sequencing in the past two decades, scientists have been better able to understand what these microbes do and how they talk to one another and interact with human cells, particularly in the gut.

The field is another one long overdue for Nobel recognition, Pendlebury said.

Biologist Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, is a pioneer in the field.

Gordon strove to understand the human gut microbiome and how it shapes human health, starting with lab research in mice. He led work that found that the gut microbiome plays a role in the health effects of undernutrition, which affects almost 200 million children globally, and he is developing food interventions that target improved gut health.
Next-generation DNA sequencing

One often discussed candidate for the Nobel Prize is the mapping of the human genome, an audacious project that launched in 1990 and was completed in 2003. Cracking the genetic code of human life involved an international consortium of thousands of researchers in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan and China.

The endeavor has had a far-reaching impact on biology, medicine and many other fields. But one reason the project may not have earned a Nobel Prize is the sheer number of people involved in the feat. According to the rules laid down by Nobel in his 1895 will, the prizes can only honor up to three people per award — a growing challenge given the collaborative nature of much scientific research.

In the same vein, Pendlebury said it was possible that the Nobel committee might recognize the work of chemists Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman at the University of Cambridge in the UK and French biophysicist Pascal Mayer of the University of Strasbourg for their work on next-generation sequencing technologies that can decode millions of fragments of DNA at once.

Before their inventions, sequencing a full human genome could take months and cost millions of dollars. Today, the process can be completed within a day and for only a few hundred dollars.

This work has transformed many fields, including medicine, biology, ecology and forensics, and means that doctors can understand the genetic underpinning of disease more easily, leading to personalized medicine and other treatments, Pendlebury said.

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine will be announced on Monday, followed by the physics prize on Tuesday and the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday. The Nobel Prize for literature will be announced on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The International Criminal Court on Monday convicted the first militia leader ever put on trial for war crimes committed in Sudan's Darfur region more than 20 years ago.

#Madagascar's President Andry Rajoelina led rallies championing reform when he came to power in a 2009 coup. Now, the former DJ and media mogul risks being toppled by student protesters frustrated by endemic corruption and a comatose economy.

#Balloons carrying smuggled cigarettes over Lithuania closed Vilnius Airport for hours.

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Up to 25 small hot-air balloons, some of them confirmed to be carrying smuggled cigarettes, entered Lithuanian airspace late Saturday and forced the shutdown of Vilnius Airport, delaying flights for hours, authorities said.

The balloons interfered with 30 flights, impacting some 6,000 passengers, according to Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center. Flights resumed at 4:50 a.m. (0150 GMT) Sunday.

While the balloons turned out to be ferrying cigarettes, Europe is on high alert after intrusions into NATO’s airspace reached an unprecedented scale last month. Some European officials described the incidents as Moscow testing NATO’s response, which raised questions about how prepared the alliance is against Russia.

Lithuania and the rest of the Baltics are especially concerned. On July 10, a drone identified as a Russian-made Gerbera flew into Lithuania from Belarus and crashed in Vilnius County.

Another crashed at a military training ground on July 28 and was found a week later. The military later said it was carrying an explosive device. After those incidents, the parliament voted to allow the armed forces to shoot down any unmanned drone violating its airspace.
18,000 packs of smuggled cigarettes were recovered

Two of the balloons flew above Vilnius Airport, according to spokesperson Darius Buta. More than two dozen reached the wider Vilnius County. The balloons were recorded flying between roughly 8:45 p.m. Saturday and 4:30 a.m. Sunday.

Border police recovered 11 balloons and some 18,000 packs of smuggled cigarettes in various locations, Buta told The Associated Press.

Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, is located some 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the border with Russian ally Belarus. Belarusian smugglers are increasingly using the balloons, which are much cheaper than drones, for smuggling cigarettes into the European Union, Buta said.

Similar incidents, but with fewer balloons, were reported in August. Last year, 966 hot-air balloons entering from Belarus were intercepted by Lithuanian authorities. There have been 544 recorded this year.

“Both smuggling balloons and drones are criminal activities, but not as provocations or acts of sabotage,” Buta said.

Liudas Dapkus, The Associated Press

France unveils new government amid political deadlock. The new cabinet lineup was unveiled nearly a month after the appointment of Lecornu, Macron’s seventh prime minister.

The latest premier risks being toppled by the opposition in a deeply divided parliament despite his efforts to obtain cross-party support, and opposition leaders on the right and left were livid on Sunday night.

Bruno Le Maire, who served as economy minister from 2017 to 2024, was named defence minister at a deeply sensitive time of tension with Russia over Ukraine.

Roland Lescure, a Macron loyalist, was named to take over the economy portfolio, with the difficult task of delivering an austerity budget plan for next year.

But many of the other key ministers kept their jobs.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot retained his post, the presidency said.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who has vowed to crack down on illegal immigration, and Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin both stayed put.

Rachida Dati, a scandal-ridden culture minister who is set to stand trial for corruption next year, also remained in place.

The presidency unveiled a total of 18 names, with more appointments to be announced at a later stage.
‘Procession of revenants’

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said the new cabinet lineup was “pathetic”.

Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old leader of Le Pen’s National Rally party, also mocked the government and reiterated the threat of censure.

“We made it clear to the prime minister: it’s either a break with the past or a vote of no confidence,” he said on X.

Bardella said the cabinet lineup was “decidedly all about continuity and absolutely nothing about breaking with the past”.

Le Pen, whose party senses its best chance to come to power, has said she is waiting to hear Lecornu’s general policy speech on Tuesday before deciding on any further course of action.

Boris Vallaud, head of Socialist lawmakers, accused Macron’s supporters of seeking to plunge France “further into chaos”.

“They lose elections but they govern. They don’t have a majority but refuse to compromise,” he said on X.

The head of the hard-left France Unbowed group, Jean-Luc Melenchon, slammed what he described as a “procession of revenants” mostly hailing from the right, which he said “will not last.”

“The countdown to get rid of them has begun,” he said on X.

Some opposition leaders have urged Macron to call snap legislative elections or even resign.

Macron, who has just 18 months left in power and is enduring his worst-ever popularity levels, has insisted he will serve out his term in full.
‘What a mess’

Lecornu might be toppled by the end of next week, Mujtaba Rahman, Europe director at risk analysis firm Eurasia Group, told AFP.

“His odds of surviving are dwindling,” he said. “The mood is darkening.”

Paul Taylor, a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, said that French politics was increasingly driven by “anger and emotion rather than rationality”.

“If Lecornu fails, I don’t see much alternative to a dissolution,” he told AFP. “What a mess France is stuck in until 2027, and maybe longer.”

Lecornu’s two immediate predecessors, Francois Bayrou and Michel Barnier, were ousted in a legislative standoff over France’s austerity budget.

France’s public debt has reached a record high, official data showed last week.

France’s debt-to-GDP ratio is now the European Union’s third-highest after Greece and Italy, and is close to twice the 60 percent permitted under EU rules.

France has been mired in deadlock since Macron gambled on snap elections in the middle of last year in the hopes of bolstering his authority.

The move backfired, with voters electing a parliament fractured between three rival blocs.

In appointing Lecornu in early September, Macron plumped for one of his closest allies rather than seeking to broaden the appeal of the government across the political spectrum.

For the past month, the new prime minister has held a series of consultations with centrist allies and opposition leaders on the right and left in a bid to agree on a non-aggression pact in parliament and adopt the budget.

In recent days, he has announced a number of concessions, including a pledge not to ram his austerity budget through parliament without a vote, but opposition leaders said they wanted more.

#Israel and #Hamas prepare for negotiations in Egypt ahead of possible ceasefire.

U.S. President Donald Trump has welcomed the militant group’s statement accepting some elements of the U.S. peace plan. Israel has said it supported the new U.S. effort. Under the plan, Hamas would release the remaining 48 hostages -- about 20 believed to be alive -- within three days. It would give up power and disarm.

Monday’s discussions will focus on the proposed exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, Egypt’s foreign ministry said. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff is joining the talks, according to an Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief reporters.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the current situation is “the closest we’ve come to getting all of the hostages released.” But he warned that “there are a lot of opportunities here for whoever wants to sabotage it to do so.”

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” he described two phases after Hamas accepts Trump’s framework: The hostages are released and Israel pulls back in Gaza to the “yellow line,” where it was in August.

Rubio told CBS that Hamas should release hostages as they are ready, and that bombardment needs to end so they can be released.

The U.S. plan also addresses Gaza’s future. In a text exchange with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Trump said there would be “complete obliteration” if Hamas stayed in power there. Trump also texted that Netanyahu was on board for ending the bombing and peace in Gaza but added, “soon on the rest.”
Support for a ceasefire grows

“I hope that we are closest to a hostage deal since the (ceasefire) deal in January,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in a speech Sunday.

Anxious relatives of hostages gathered near Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem, with some urging Trump to continue to apply pressure. Israel’s recent military offensive in Gaza City led many to fear for the hostages’ lives.

“We cannot allow such a historic agreement to be sacrificed again,” said Michel Ilouz, father of Guy Ilouz.

As hundreds of thousands of people marched across several European cities and elsewhere Sunday in support of Palestinians, the foreign ministers of eight Muslim-majority countries issued a joint statement welcoming steps toward a possible ceasefire.

In backing Hamas’ willingness to hand over the running of Gaza to a transitional committee, the ministers called for an “immediate launch of negotiations to agree on mechanisms to implement the proposal.”

They also underlined their commitment to the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, unifying Gaza and the West Bank and reaching an agreement on security leading to a “full Israeli withdrawal” from Gaza.

Rubio told ABC that decisions regarding a governing structure or international group to manage Gaza can take place simultaneously with the first step of the ceasefire.

“That’s the part that I think is going to be a little tougher to work through, but that’s what’s going to provide permanency to the end of the conflict,” he said.
At least 12 killed in Gaza on Sunday

Trump has ordered Israel to stop bombing Gaza, but residents and local hospitals said strikes continued across the territory.

“While certain bombings have actually stopped inside of the Gaza Strip, there’s no ceasefire in place at this point in time,” Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Badrosian told journalists. She also said Netanyahu is in “regular contact” with Trump and that the prime minister has stressed that the talks in Egypt “will be confined to a few days maximum, with no tolerance for maneuvers that will delay talks by Hamas.”

At least eight people were killed Sunday in multiple strikes in Gaza City, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the casualties.

Four other people were shot dead near an aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, according to Nasser Hospital. The Israeli military said it was not involved in the shooting and did not immediately comment on the strikes.

“We’re on the brink, and we don’t know whether one will die of a strike or starvation,” said Mahmoud Hashem, a Palestinian father sheltering in a tent in Gaza City.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll in the war reached 67,139 on Sunday, with nearly 170,000 injured. The ministry does not differentiate how many of those killed were civilians or combatants, but says women and children make up about half of the dead. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and the U.N. and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.

The Israeli military said Saturday it is continuing to work to dismantle Hamas infrastructure across the strip and warned residents not to return to northern Gaza.

Samy Magdy And Melanie Lidman, The Associated Press

Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer Andrew Wilk contributed from Istanbul.

#Government shutdown enters fifth day as Democrats and Republicans remain at an impasse.

Leaders in both parties are betting that public sentiment has swung their way, putting pressure on the other side to cave. Democrats are insisting on renewing subsidies to cover health insurance costs for millions of households, while U.S. President Donald Trump wants to preserve existing spending levels and threatening to permanently fire federal workers if the government remains closed.

The squabble comes at a moment of troubling economic uncertainty. While the U.S. economy has continued to grow this year, hiring has slowed and inflation remains elevated as Trump’s import taxes have created a series of disruptions for businesses and employers have hurt confidence in his leadership. At the same time, there is a recognition that the nearly $2 trillion annual budget deficit is financially unsustainable yet there has to be a coalition around the potential tax increases and spending cuts to reduce borrowing levels.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, among those appearing on the Sunday news shows, said there have been no talks with Republican leaders since their White House meeting Monday.

“And unfortunately, since that point in time, Republicans, including Donald Trump, have gone radio silent,” Jeffries said. “And what we’ve seen is negotiation through deepfake videos, the House canceling votes, and of course President Trump spending yesterday on the golf course. That’s not responsible behavior.”

Trump was asked via text message by CNN’s Jake Tapper about shutdown talks. The Republican president responded with confidence but no details.

“We are winning and cutting costs big time,” Trump said in a text message, according to CNN.

His administration sees the shutdown as an opening to wield greater power over the budget, with multiple officials saying they will save money as workers are furloughed by imposing permanent job cuts on thousands of government workers, a tactic that has never been used before.

Even though it would Trump’s choice, he believes he can put the blame on the Democrats for the layoffs because of the shutdown.

“It’s up to them,” Trump told reporters on Sunday morning before boarding the presidential helicopter. “Anybody laid off that’s because of the Democrats.”

While Trump rose to fame on the TV show “The Apprentice” with is catchphrase of “You’re fired,” Republicans on Sunday claimed that the administration would take no pleasure in letting go of federal workers, even though they have put funding on hold for infrastructure and energy projects in Democratic areas.

“We haven’t seen the details yet about what’s happening” with layoffs, House Speaker Mike Johnson said on NBC. “But it is a regrettable situation that the president does not want.”

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said that the administration wants to avoid the layoffs it had indicated could start on Friday, a deadline that came and went without any decisions being announced.

“We want the Democrats to come forward and to make a deal that’s a clean, continuing resolution that gives us seven more weeks to talk about these things,” Hassett said on CNN. “But the bottom line is that with Republicans in control, the Republicans have a lot more power over the outcome than the Democrats.”

Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California defended his party’s stance on the shutdown, saying on NBC that the possible increase in health care costs for “millions of Americans” would make insurance unaffordable in what he called a “crisis.”

But Schiff also noted that the Trump administration has withheld congressionally approved spending from being used, essentially undermining the value of Democrats’ seeking compromises on the budgets as the White House could decline to not honor Congress’ wishes. The Trump administration sent Congress roughly $4.9 billion in " pocket rescissions " on foreign aid, a process that meant the spending was withheld without time for Congress to weigh in before the previous fiscal year ended last month.

“We need both to address the health care crisis and we need some written assurance in the law, I won’t take a promise, that they’re not going to renege on any deal we make,” Schiff said.

The television appearances indicated that Democrats and Republicans are busy talking, deploying internet memes against each other that have raised concerns about whether it’s possible to negotiate in good faith.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said that a video putting Jeffries in a sombrero and thick mustache was simply a joke, even though it came across as mocking people of Mexican descent as Republicans insist that the Democratic demands would lead to health care spending on immigrants in the country illegally, a claim that Democrats dispute.

Immigrants in the U.S. illegally are not eligible for any federal health care programs, including insurance provided through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. Still, hospitals do receive Medicaid reimbursements for emergency care that they are obligated to provide to people who meet other Medicaid eligibility requirements but do not have an eligible immigration status.

The challenge, however, is that the two parties do not appear to be having productive conversations with each other in private, even as Republicans insist they are in conversation with their Democratic colleagues.

On Friday, a Senate vote to advance a Republican bill that would reopen the government failed to notch the necessary 60 votes to end a filibuster. Johnson said the House would close for legislative business next week, a strategy that could obligate the Senate to work with the government funding bill that was passed by House Republicans.

“Johnson’s not serious about this,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on CBS. “He sent his all his congressman home last week and home this week. How are you going to negotiate?”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Sunday that the shutdown on discretionary spending, the furloughing of federal workers and requirements that other federal employees work without pay will go on so long as Democrats vote no.

“They’ll get another chance on Monday to vote again,” said Thune on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“And I’m hoping that some of them have a change of heart,” he said.

Josh Boak, The Associated Press