Washington: President Donald Trump has declared he could keep parts of the government shut down for ‘months or even years’ after he and Democratic leaders again failed to resolve his demand for billions of dollars for a border wall with Mexico.

They did agree to a new round of weekend talks between staff members and White House officials.

Trump met in the White House Situation Room with congressional leaders from both parties as the shutdown hit the two-week mark amid an impasse over his wall demands. Democrats emerged from meeting, which both sides said was contentious at times, to report little if any progress.

Trump says he could declare a national emergency to build the wall without congressional approval, but would first try a ‘negotiated process.’

The Trump administration says it’s exploring ways to prevent a pay raise for senior White House staff and cabinet officials during the government shutdown.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says the administration ‘is aware of the issue’ and is ‘exploring options to prevent this from being implemented while some federal workers are furloughed.’

The raises are the result of a pay freeze for top federal officials that is expiring because of the shutdown. They were first reported by The Washington Post.

Trump had told reporters earlier in the day that he ‘might consider’ asking cabinet secretaries and other top officials to forgo the raises. Vice President Mike Pence said he would.

President Donald Trump says he’s considered using executive authority to get a wall built on the southern border.

Trump told reporters Friday that he could officially declare a national emergency to build a border wall but wants to try to negotiate a border wall with Congress.

Trump said: ‘I can do it if I want. We can call a national emergency. I may do it.’

He says he thinks the standoff over the border wall, which has resulted in a partial government shutdown, is going to be over sooner than people think.

President Donald Trump says that he told congressional leaders the partial government shutdown could go on for months or years. But he said he didn’t think it would.

The government is in its 14th day of a partial government shutdown over Trump’s insistence for funding of his proposed wall at the US-Mexico border.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters their nearly two-hour meeting with Trump was ‘somewhat contentious.’ Trump called it ‘productive.’

In the Rose Garden after the meeting Friday, Trump said he wouldn’t end up reopening the closed government agencies until he gets border security. ‘We have to get a structure built,’ he said.

President Donald Trump says he has designated a team that will meet over the weekend with lawmakers to resolve the standoff over his demand for a border wall that has led to a partial government shutdown.

Trump spoke in the Rose Garden on Friday after emerging from more than two hours of somewhat contentious talks with Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. Vice President Mike Pence says there is a crisis at the border.

Trump said that the official ports of entry are strong, but there are miles and miles of unprotected areas along the border where drug and people smugglers enter the United States. He says the only way to stop it is to have a solid concrete or steel structure to close off the open areas.

The government is in its 14th day of a partial government shutdown.

President Donald Trump told congressional leaders he’d keep the government closed ‘for a very long period of time, months or even years.’ That’s according to Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who was among those meeting with Trump at the White House on Friday.

The partial government shutdown over Trump’s demand for money to build a border wall with Mexico is in its 14th day.

Schumer said the Democratic leaders ‘told the president we needed the government open. He resisted.’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it a ‘lengthy and sometimes contentious’ meeting. She said, ‘We cannot resolve this until we open up government.’

Trump convened the Democratic and Republican leaders for the second negotiation this week. The president is insisting on $5 billion for the border wall, but legislation for that does not have support from Congress.

Congressional leaders are arriving at the White House to meet with President Donald Trump amid an extended partial government shutdown over his funding demands for a border wall.

Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi both arrived at the White House Friday for another meeting on the 14th day of the shutdown. Democratic Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer and House Republican Minority leader Kevin McCarthy also arrived for the meeting.

Leaders came to the White House earlier this week for a briefing on border security that ended in impasse. Trump and Democrats are at odds over funding for Trump’s proposed wall at the US-Mexico border.

The meeting comes as GOP senators up for re-election in 2020 voiced discomfort with the extended shutdown.

On their first day in the majority, House Democrats have passed a plan to re-open the government without funding President Donald Trump’s promised border wall.

The largely party-line votes Thursday night came after Trump made a surprise appearance at the White House briefing room, pledging to keep up the fight for his signature campaign promise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump and Senate Republicans should ‘take yes for an answer’ and approve the border bill, which was virtually identical to a plan the Senate adopted on a voice vote last month. Pelosi told reporters: ‘We’re not doing a wall.’

President Donald Trump has taken just as firm a stance not to re-open the government unless money is provided for a wall on the border.

Amid signs of Republican unease over the prolonged partial government shutdown, congressional leaders planned to meet Friday with President Donald Trump after House Democrats muscled through legislation to fund the government but not his border wall.

The impasse over paying for Trump’s proposed wall at the US-Mexico border extended the shutdown into a 14th day, but some GOP senators up for re-election in 2020 voiced discomfort. Several are from states where voter views on Trump are mixed.

Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado said Congress should pass bipartisan bills to fund government ‘while we continue to fight for more border security money.’ And Republican Susan Collins of Maine said she saw ‘no reason why the bills that are ready to go and on which we’ve achieved an agreement should be held hostage to this debate over border security.’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the measures are non-starters on his side of the Capitol without the president’s support.

Adding to the unease are economic jitters as analysts warn of the risks of closures that are disrupting government operations across multiple departments and agencies at a time of other uncertainties in the stock market and foreign trade.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump and Senate Republicans should ‘take yes for an answer’ and pass the legislation — without money for the wall — that the Senate approved on a voice vote last month.

‘We’re not doing a wall. Does anyone have any doubt that we’re not doing a wall?’ Pelosi said Thursday night.

But the White House line was still firm. Vice President Mike Pence told Fox News late Thursday, ‘Bottom line, if there’s no wall, there’s no deal.’

In their first votes of the new Congress, House Democrats approved bills Thursday night to re-open government at previously agreed upon levels. Several Republicans crossed over to join them.

Friday’s White House meeting with Trump includes eight leaders — the top two Democrats and Republicans of both chambers. A session earlier in the week produced finger pointing with no breakthroughs.

Republicans said the new round of talks might be more productive now that Pelosi is speaker. But Democrats said the problem isn’t with them but with Trump, who once boasted of the shutdown but now must try to explain blocking the effort to re-open government with bills Republicans had earlier approved.

Trump on Wednesday told the leaders he would ‘look foolish’ for conceding without money for the wall along the US-Mexico border.

On Thursday, Trump made a surprise appearance at the White House briefing room, pledging to keep up the fight for his signature campaign promise.

‘You can call it a barrier, you can call it whatever you want,’ Trump said. ‘But essentially we need protection in our country. We’re going to make it good. The people of our country want it.’

Trump is demanding billions of dollars to build his wall along the US border with Mexico.

Asked if she would give Trump $1 for a wall to reopen the government, Pelosi said: ‘One dollar? Yeah, one dollar. The fact is a wall is an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation.’

Polls show a majority of Americans oppose the border wall, although Republicans strongly support it.

White House and Department of Homeland Security officials have spent recent days trying to make both a public and private case that the situation at the border has reached a crisis point that demands more money than Democrats have offered.

Trump tweeted an ominous video Thursday with images of what appeared to be migrants trying to rush the border and clashing with law enforcement, beneath the words ‘crisis at the border,’ ‘‘drugs’ and ‘crime.’ The video concludes with footage of Trump at the border along with audio from one of his rallies in which he vows to build his promised border wall and the crowd chants ‘Build the wall!’

Trump has said the partial shutdown, which began Dec. 22, will last ‘as long as it takes’ to get the funding he wants.

The White House said he made calls Thursday to the family of Cpl. Ronil Singh, the Newman, California, police officer shot to death during a Dec. 26 traffic stop. The suspected shooter is a Mexican man accused of living in the US illegally. Republicans have seized on the case to call for tougher border security.