The White House is searching for a line of attack against Democrats in its border-funding fight, but can’t seem to find one that sticks.

President Donald Trump and his top aides have sought to blame Democrats in a slew of ways for the government shutdown, now in its ninth day. One minute, Trump aides and allies are accusing Democrats of staying out of talks. The next, they’re blaming House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s own bid to be speaker.

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They even tried, unsuccessfully, to drive a wedge between Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

At the same time, Republicans can’t say what kind of deal Trump would accept to reopen the government, or how he would work with Democrats once they retake the House in just four days.

Trump has made no public appearances in several days, only firing off tweets that blame Democrats for the shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have been largely silent as they await a cue from the president.

“It is clear that the White House is flailing,” Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s spokesman, said on Sunday. “They’ve repeatedly tried to shift blame in ways that are simply not credible. Amid the White House’s continuing incoherence, Democrats have stayed united and on message.”

Amid the disorder, a freewheeling Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) floated his own idea to end the standoff over border security that has halted roughly one-quarter of federal operations.

Graham, the next chairman of the influential Senate Judiciary Committee, pitched a plan on CNN on Sunday that would tie legal protections for young immigrants known as “Dreamers” to a $5 billion measure to fund a border wall.

“There is a deal to be had, I think, if the president would get behind it,” said Graham, a Trump confidant who planned to have lunch with the president on Sunday afternoon.

That proposal remains a long shot, especially after Trump himself called off a deal to revive the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program this spring in return for $25 billion for his border wall.

There is also little interest on Capitol Hill at the moment. Senate GOP leaders have not endorsed the idea, and Pelosi said this month that she was unwilling to trade legal status for so-called Dreamers for money for a border wall that she considers “immoral.”

Talks to reopen the government are virtually nonexistent as the partial shutdown enters its second full week.

The House will return for a pro forma session on Monday, though no business will conducted until lawmakers return on Thursday.

With the standoff lengthening, early polling shows that Trump is paying a political price.

More people blame him than Democrats in Congress for the shutdown. Forty-seven percent of people held Trump responsible, compared with 33 percent who blamed Democrats, according to a poll by Reuters/Ipsos released on Thursday.

And just 25 percent of people support Trump’s decision to shutter government operations over his border-funding demands.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s longtime adviser, said on Sunday that the president is ready to strike a broader deal on security whenever Democratic leaders are willing to resume talks, arguing that Democrats “completely walked away from the table.”

“We haven’t heard from them. It’s complete crickets,” Conway said on CNN.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House majority whip, specifically blamed Schumer in a Sunday appearance on Fox News.

“If the Senate’s got a different way and a better way to approach border security, they ought to put that plan on the table. Chuck Schumer was for this in 2006,” Scalise said, referring to a border security law that included fencing as well as new technology. “I’d be curious to know what changed. Is it just that Donald Trump’s the one now requesting it? But if he’s got a better way to keep this country safe, I think it’s incumbent upon him to show the American people what that plan is.”

But Democrats maintain that it’s up to the White House to offer any compromise that can actually pass the Senate. They point out that Republican leaders left town with negotiations completely stalled at the White House level, marking the House GOP’s final act of its eight-year majority.

“At this point, it’s clear the White House doesn’t know what they want when it comes to border security,” Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman said on Sunday. “While one White House official says they’re willing to compromise, another says the president is holding firm at no less than $5 billion for the wall. Meanwhile, the president tweets, blaming everyone but himself for a shutdown he called for more than 25 times.”

Pelosi’s office insists that she is ready to negotiate directly with Trump, who hasn’t reached out to her since Dec. 11. The next House speaker plans to return to her Capitol Hill office Monday and Tuesday, though any breakthrough is unlikely until Thursday, when Democrats officially retake the House.

During the first three days of the shutdown, Vice President Mike Pence and the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, did float a series of border-fence proposals that included less than $5 billion but were still far above the $1.3 billion that Democrats have said they would support.

Since then, neither side has budged.

The White House and GOP leaders have tried to blunt some of the political damage, with Trump personally urging his staff to find a workaround to pay the Coast Guard. Separately, Scalise intervened to make sure that homebuyers could still purchase flood insurance plans.

“Great work by my Administration over the holidays to save Coast Guard pay during this #SchumerShutdown,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “No thanks to the Democrats who left town and are not concerned about the safety and security of Americans!”

Still, agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency have exhausted their reserve funds, and are now shuttering operations until they receive their new budget. Federal workers are technically still paid for now, but that will end if a deal isn’t reached before the next pay period, on Jan. 11.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, acknowledged on Sunday that Republicans will lose leverage when they turn over control of the House this week, and that they will need to work better with Democrats.

“We’re gonna have to negotiate,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I think that we ought to see what do the Democrats really want. We’ve got to move away from the blame game — blaming the president, blaming the Democrats, Pelosi and Schumer and others — and get back to doing what we’re sent there to do, to fund the government.”

Quint Forgey contributed to this report.

A mysterious grand jury subpoena case has been working itself through the D.C. courts since August. Doughty reporting by Politico linked the grand jury case to special counsel Robert Mueller. Some of us, connecting the dots, wondered whether Mueller’s antagonist in this secret subpoena battle might be President Donald Trump himself. Speculation heightened two weeks ago when the D.C. Circuit cleared an entire floor of reporters assembled for the oral argument, in order to protect the identity of the litigants.

Four days later, the D.C. Circuit judges burst the speculative bubble with a decision that halfway revealed the identity of the party litigating against the government: not Trump, but an unnamed corporation (“the Corporation”) owned by an unnamed foreign state (“Country A”). Although the case is still plenty mysterious (What foreign state? What records of what transactions? Why the hard-fought litigation?), the evident fact that Trump was not directly involved in the litigation seemingly drained further proceedings of direct suspense. Mueller watchers headed off for the holidays.

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And then, last week, on the Sunday before Christmas, Chief Justice John Roberts personally intervened in this matter.

That’s right: The chief justice of the United States himself issued an order on a Sunday, in this very case. If you think that’s highly unusual, you’re right. And the action he took was equally unusual. At least for the moment calling into question the unanimous decisions of the courts below, the chief justice blocked the District Court’s order requiring the foreign corporation to comply with the grand jury subpoena, until the government’s lawyers could respond to the Corporation’s briefings.

So now, in abrupt fashion, Mueller’s investigation has suddenly reached the Supreme Court, and with the personal attention of the chief justice, no less.

What does this all mean? Let’s try to unpack it.

This month’s three-page summary D.C. Circuit decision revealed a fairly dry set of legal issues that just might conceal a juicy core. The dry issues involved matters of jurisdiction and statutory interpretation fathomed only by elite appellate lawyers, but the potentially juicier underlying issues hinted of fascination: Somewhere, a corporation (a bank? a communications firm? an energy company?) owned by a foreign state (Russia? Turkey? Ukraine? United Arab Emirates? Saudi Arabia?) had engaged in transactions that had an impact in the United States and on matters involved in the special counsel’s investigation.

Intriguingly, the decision revealed that a regulator from Country A had filed a submission claiming that compliance with the subpoena would cause the Corporation to violate Country A’s law. So whoever Country A is, this matter captured its officials’ attention and prompted them to send filings to a faraway country to block the subpoena. Why does Country A care? And, what is it trying to hide?

So, from the D.C. Circuit’s decision we learned that a foreign government was actively involved in blocking Mueller’s investigation. That fact is intriguing enough. In the ordinary course, that should have been the end of it. The state-owned Corporation filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which receives roughly 7,000 petitions a year but acts in fewer than 200 of them. There was unanimity below — all four judges (the District Court judge and the three Circuit Court judges) had agreed that the Corporation and Country A’s legal claims of sovereign immunity and of contrary foreign law were without merit. There was little reason for judicial watchers to expect anything beyond a quiet return to the grand jury and further proceedings there. We headed off for the holidays.

And then came Roberts’ surprise Sunday decision. He is the “circuit justice” for the D.C. Circuit, meaning he is the justice assigned to receive emergency and other petitions arising from that circuit. Under Supreme Court rules, the circuit justice may act without consulting his or her colleagues to dispose of routine rulings. So, we should not read too much into the fact that it is the chief justice in particular who acted here.

But we can read a good deal into his decision to intervene at all. Although every judge below agreed there was ultimately no merit to the Corporation’s legal claims, Roberts evidently harbors some doubt. Something in the Corporation’s papers caught his attention. So rather than consigning this appeal to the discard pile with thousands of others, he has blocked the lower courts’ decisions until he can receive the government’s briefs defending those decisions. Those papers must be filed no later than New Year’s Eve. Once he receives the full briefing, he can reject the Corporation’s appeal or he can advance the matter to the full court for consideration.

Until then, we can only wonder at the remarkable circumstance that the chief justice of the United States has personally intervened, at the request of a foreign government through its corporate entity, in Mueller’s investigation. Only two days before, court observers noted that in a high-profile asylum decision, Roberts had sided with his four liberal colleagues against the Trump administration. Many observers took that as evidence that Roberts was carefully seeking to preserve the court’s institutional neutrality, integrity and balance.

What are we to make of his pre-Christmas intervention on behalf of Country A and the Corporation, and against Mueller’s office? We may know soon. Mueller’s office filed its submission early, on Friday evening. We’ll keep our eyes glued to the docket.