WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump and senior Democrats failed to strike a deal in talks on Friday to end a partial shutdown of the U.S. government as they again fought over Trump’s request for $5 billion to fund his signature wall on the Mexican border.

After Democratic congressional leaders turned Trump down at a meeting in the White House Situation Room, the Republican president threatened to take the controversial step of using emergency powers to build the wall without approval from Congress.

Trump is withholding his support for a bill that would fully fund the government until he secures the money for the wall. As a result around 800,000 public workers have been unpaid, with about a quarter of the federal government closed for two weeks.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats had told Trump during the meeting to end the shutdown. “He resisted,” Schumer said. “In fact, he said he’d keep the government closed for a very long period of time, months or even years.”

Trump confirmed that comment but painted a more positive picture of the meeting, the first since a new era of divided government began when Democrats took control of the House of Representatives on Thursday.

“We had a very, very productive meeting, and we’ve come a long way,” Trump said.

But raising the stakes in his tussle with the newly emboldened Democrats, Trump threatened extraordinary measures to build the wall, which he says is needed to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump works at his desk in the Oval Office as he prepares to speak to reporters in the Rose Garden after a meeting with U.S. Congressional leaders about the government shutdown at the White House in Washington.