On Monday, President Trump will sit down with congressional leaders from both parties in a desperate bid to avoid a government shutdown that kicks in at the stroke of midnight Tuesday. But make no mistake: this meeting isn’t a gesture of goodwill. It’s a damage control session. Behind the scenes, the White House has already ordered federal agencies to craft reduction-in-force plans just in case funding isn’t restored. Democrats are demanding that any short-term funding deal include extensions of Affordable Care Act tax credits and rollbacks of Medicaid cuts that were in the Big Beautiful Bill. Republicans do not want to budge on that. They passed their bill and they intend to keep it. Could this be a way for the President to get the government layoffs he wanted in the first place? By allowing the government to inch toward a shutdown, Trump creates a pretext for “structural cuts.” We’ll know by Tuesday because if no agreement is reached, the shut down begins on Wednesday. The post Big Beautiful Standoff appeared first on Redacted.