WASHINGTON — Judging by the behavior of the country’s leaders, it would be hard to tell the longest-ever full government shutdown was even happening.

The House hasn’t been in session in more than a month, an unprecedented and controversial decision by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to shutter all legislative business amid the standoff.

The Senate is deeply entrenched and barely working, taking doomed votes and leaving town every weekend. And the president is totally disengaged, focusing instead on demolishing parts of the White House complex to build a grand ballroom. He’s set to leave the country on Friday evening for a major five-day trip to Asia.

“All decisions come on the Republican side now from Donald Trump and the fact that Trump’s gonna leave town? What about the whole, like, ‘put America first’ junk?” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said on Thursday.

Asked about Democrats calling on Trump to step in and make a deal to end the shutdown, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters, “Good luck.”

The shutdown started Oct. 1 after Senate Democrats refused to vote for a House-passed funding bill because it omitted an extension of tax credits that help 22 million Americans pay their Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums.

Republicans maintain that any negotiations over extending expiring subsidies can only occur once the government is reopened. Democrats don’t trust that Republicans will hold up their end of the bargain and prevent Obamacare premiums from skyrocketing for millions of Americans next year unless Trump guarantees it. So far, he’s shown no interest in discussing the matter.

“I would like to meet with both of them, but I said only one little caveat, I will only meet if they let the country open,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

The pressure on Congress to act will only rise in the coming weeks. Roughly 1.4 million federal workers begin missing their first full paycheck this week, forcing many to take out loans. A pair of competing measures seeking to pay federal workers failed to advance in the Senate on Thursday amid the partisan gridlock.

And states have begun warning the country’s 42 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneficiaries they won’t get benefits next month, potentially damaging both household budgets and the broader economy.

Democrats have demanded the Trump administration pay the benefits, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost on Thursday he expected the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, to reconsider its contention it can’t find the funds.

Every day since the shutdown started, Speaker Johnson has held a morning press conference to repeat, among other things, the simple fact that most Senate Democrats voted against a clean government funding bill.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), second from left, along with his Republican colleagues addresses the government shutdown during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington on Thursday, Oct. 23.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

“The reason that we find it important to come out here every day and repeat, again, the same simple truth is because they’re trying so hard to to cover that up,” Johnson said Wednesday.

But on Friday, for the first time since the shutdown started, Johnson didn’t even bother with his usual weekday routine. A handful of reporters showed up and even C-SPAN was caught off-guard, saying in a chyron the speaker would soon speak on Day 24 of the shutdown.

Democrats are betting that Republicans will finally come to the table as more Trump supporters feel the growing pain of the shutdown, especially as Obamacare enrollees begin receiving notices of significantly higher premiums for 2026.

“Republicans are boycotting negotiations and boycotting Washington,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “They could just do the easy thing and sit down and talk with us about how to get this done, but they think Donald Trump is a king and that they don’t need Democrats and their boycott of negotiations is the biggest problem.”