Article snippet: Congress has until midnight Friday to strike a deal on a host of thorny issues before government funding is set to run out, but talks appear to be at a standstill and a stopgap spending bill is looking more likely. At the heart of it: the fate of nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants. Democrats insist that if Republicans want their support for a spending deal, it must include a legislative fix to help DACA recipients. Republicans maintain that DACA must be dealt with separately from spending negotiations. While a bipartisan group of senators claimed to have struck a deal that would shield DACA recipients from deportations and address Donald Trump roundly rejected their plan at an Oval Office meeting late last week. Talks got even more complicated after sources said -- and at least one Democratic lawmaker at the meeting publicly claimed -- that Trump had made disparaging remarks about accepting immigrants from African nations. On Sunday, Trump emphatically denied calling them "s---hole countries," adding that he is the "least racist person" reporters "have ever interviewed." He went on to blame Democrats for holding up negotiations, telling reporters, "Honestly, I don't think the Democrats want to make a deal. I think they talk about DACA, but they don't want to help the DACA people." And on Monday Trump tweeted: With Congress heading towards another government shutdown, all eyes are on negotiators as they scramble to come up with a spending d... Link to the full article to read more