Government shutdown updates: Senate vote marks step towards ending federal shutdown

After President Donald Trump suggested that the Senate should redirect Affordable Care Act funds away from insurance companies and "directly to the people,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune dodged giving any specific indication on how this would happen, but said it’s a conversation that the Senate would like to engage in only after the government is reopened.

"I think what's clear -- which is what's been clear all along -- that it is not going to be part of reopening the government,” Thune said. “It is a discussion that the president and all of us want to have. And I think he is now focused in on it and wants to have a solution to the healthcare crisis in this country, which is skyrocketing premiums. And so, you know, but that's got to -- that'll happen after the government reopens.”

Thune has repeatedly insisted that Senate Republicans would not negotiate on healthcare until the government is funded.

-ABC News’ Allison Pecorin

President Donald Trump said Saturday that senators should redirect Affordable Care Act funds away from insurance companies and suggested the money instad be sent “directly to the people.”

Trump claimed people could purchase their own “much better healthcare” and have money “left over” if funds weren’t allocated to “money sucking Insurance Companies” through the ACA.

“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

It’s unclear how senators would implement this directive.

Separately, Trump has continued to urge Senate Republicans to terminate the filibuster. The Senate will be in session on Saturday.

-ABC News’ Isabella Murray

President Donald Trump said no U.S. government official will attend the G20 Summit in South Africa later this month. In a post on Truth Social, the president continued to amplify false claims that there are racially motivated mass killings against white Afrikaners in the region.

The South African Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation said in response, “The characterisation of Afrikaners as an exclusively white group is ahistorical. Furthermore, the claim that this community faces persecution, is not substantiated by fact. … Drawing on our own journey from racial and ethnic division to democracy, our nation is uniquely positioned to champion within the G20 a future of genuine solidarity, where shared prosperity bridges deep inequalities.”

The G20 summit in Johannesburg will take place on Nov. 22 and Nov. 23.

Emerging from a closed-door conference meeting, Republican senators on Friday were palpably angered by Democrats' offer to allow government funding to advance if it included a one-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

It's clear that the offer, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrats made in a series of floor speeches earlier Friday, is going over like a lead balloon.

"A lousy, terrible, horrible idea," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said departing that meeting. "We're not going to continue for a year to load up insurance companies with taxpayer dollars to get an inferior outcome."

"There's just no way that the Democrats are coming out here and pounding their chest and playing tough guy," Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said. "It's outrageous."

So what's next?

The Senate will be in session on Saturday, starting at noon but it's not clear what, if anything, senators will vote on. At this point in time, there are no votes scheduled.

Earlier, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., who sits on the appropriations committee, said Republicans were aiming to hold a vote on a short-term funding bill this weekend that would include the three full-year spending bills within it -- if Democrats allow it advance.

Said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.: "I don't know what we do this weekend, because we've got to have stuff to vote on. And either they give unanimous consent, or we go through this long, drawn out debate process."

After the Senate adjourned Friday evening, some senators appeared to be preparing to depart D.C.

-ABC News' Allison Pecorin