US government shuts down as midnight deadline passes
The US government has officially shut down for the first time in nearly seven years, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican funding package unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.
It marks the first time the US government has shuttered since a 35-day shutdown that lasted from late 2018 into early 2019 during Donald Trump’s first presidency.
Here’s my colleague Chris Stein with the full story:
Key events
-
Closing summary
-
Kamala Harris and Democrats take aim at Republicans
-
Health, national parks, FDA: what are agencies planning in shutdown?
-
Democratic leaders blame Trump for shutdown
-
US government shuts down as midnight deadline passes
-
Senate adjourns
-
OMB sends letter to federal agencies as midnight shutdown set to take effect
-
Senate fails to pass a stopgap funding bill, as government careens towards a midnight shutdown
-
Senate rejects Democratic resolution to keep government funded
-
Bondi to appear before Senate judiciary committee next week
-
‘We have no choice’: Trump says layoffs are inevitable if the government shuts down
-
Trump signs executive order to use AI in pediatric cancer research
-
Qatar, Egypt and Turkey urge Hamas to accept Trump’s Gaza proposal – report
-
Federal judge says that Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian activists violates the First Amendment
-
‘We’ll probably have a shutdown,’ Trump says in Oval Office press conference
-
Democrats call out Republicans for postponing votes on Capitol Hill
-
Trump announces agreement with Pfizer to lower medication prices
-
What was in Trump and Hegseth’s astonishing speeches to US top military brass?
-
Major reforms to military acquisitions and sales are coming, Trump says
-
Trump suggets ‘dangerous cities’ should be used ‘as training grounds’ for the military and national guard
-
Trump says ‘straightening out’ US cities will be ‘a major part for some of the people in this room’
-
Trump tells military generals ‘we’re under invasion from within’
-
Trump says he wants to get Putin and Zelenskyy together
-
Trump says Hamas ‘has to agree’ to US proposal for Gaza, adding ‘if they don’t it’s going to be very tough on them’
-
Trump says he’s never seen ‘a room so silent before’ as he address top military brass
-
Hegseth tells generals if they do not agree with him, ‘do the honorable thing and resign’
-
Hegseth says that if new military standards prevent women from serving in combat, ‘it is what it is’
-
Pentagon will review its definitions of ‘toxic leadership’, ‘bullying’ and ‘hazing’, says Hegseth
-
‘No more beardos,’ Hegseth tells military leaders they must look professional
-
‘Fat troops are tiring to look at’: Hegseth orders top officers to focus on fitness
-
Combat troops will have to meet ‘highest male standard’, Hegseth says
-
‘We are done with that shit’: Hegseth says military is done with diversity efforts in extraordinary speech to generals
-
‘You might say, we’re ending the war on warriors,’ says Pete Hegseth in speech to military leaders
-
Trump and Hegseth to address unprecedented gathering of military leaders
-
Trump gutting protected status for immigrants will strain US healthcare, Democrats warn
-
Donald Trump to preside over gathering of US military’s top commanders in Quantico, Virginia
-
US justice department sues Minnesota over sanctuary city policies
-
Pentagon review reportedly confirms Aukus submarines pact is safe
-
US deports planeload of Iranians after deal with Tehran, New York Times says
-
US government to shut down within hours if no funding deal agreed
Closing summary
This blog is now closing but round-the-clock live coverage of the US government shutdown continues in our new live blog. Please join us for the latest news and developments here.
The US government shut down much of its operations on Wednesday as deep partisan divisions prevented Congress and the White House from reaching a funding deal, setting off what could be a long, gruelling standoff that could lead to the loss of thousands of federal jobs.
The shutdown is the first since a 35-day closure that began in December 2018 and extended into the new year, during Trump’s first term. It comes as Democrats look to regain their footing with voters, who re-elected Trump last year and relegated them to the minority in both chambers of Congress.
-
Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.
-
The Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have blamed Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, saying they “do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people”.
-
The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”
-
Russ Vought, director of the White House office of management and budget, released a letter blaming “Democrats’ insane policy demands” for a shutdown. “It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict,” Vought wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the heads of federal offices and agencies.
-
Democratic leaders say they are not backing down, but signs have emerged of dissent within their ranks. Three members of the Democratic caucus voted for the Republican proposal on Tuesday evening – two more than when the bill was first considered earlier this month. “I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration,” said Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
Continued from previous post:
The EPA’s shutdown contingency plan, first written a decade ago and slightly updated for this year, says 905 employees are considered essential because they are necessary to protect life and property or because they perform duties needed by law. An additional 828 employees can keep working because they aren’t funded by the annual federal budget and instead get their pay from fees and such.
EPA officials won’t say how many employees they have cut – former officials now at the Environmental Protection Network say it’s 25% – but the Trump administration’s budget plan says the agency now has 14,130 employees, down 1,000 from a year ago. The administration is proposing cutting that to 12,856 in this upcoming budget year and Zeldin has talked of going to levels of around Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which started at about 11,000.
The agency’s shutdown plan calls for it to stop doing non-criminal pollution inspections needed to enforce clean air and water rules. It won’t issue new grants to other governmental agencies, update its website, issue new permits, approve state requests dealing with pollution regulations or conduct most scientific research, according to the EPA document. Except in situations where the public health would be at risk, work on Superfund cleanup sites will stop.
Marc Boom, a former EPA policy official during the Biden administration, said inspections under the Chemical Accident Risk Reduction program would halt. Those are done under the Clean Air Act to make sure facilities are adequately managing the risk of chemical accidents.
“Communities near the facilities will have their risk exposure go up immediately since accidents will be more likely to occur,” Boom said.
He also said EPA hotlines for reporting water and other pollution problems likely will be closed. “So if your water tastes off later this week, there will be no one at EPA to pick up the phone,” he said.
How shutdown will affect EPA’s work
The Environmental Protection Agency was already reeling from massive stuff cuts and dramatic shifts in priority and policy. A government shutdown raises new questions about how it can carry out its founding mission of protecting America’s health and environment with little more than skeletal staff and funding.
Jeremy Symons, a former EPA policy official under President Bill Clinton, said it’s natural to worry that a shutdown will lead “the worst polluters” to treat it as a chance to dump toxic pollution without getting caught.
“Nobody will be holding polluters accountable for what they dump into the air we breathe, in the water we drink while EPA is shut down,” said Symons, now a senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Network.
“This administration has already been implementing a serial shutdown of EPA,” Symons said. “Whittling away at EPA’s ability to do its job.”
A scientific study of pollution from about 200 coal-fired power plants during the 2018-2019 government shutdown found they “significantly increased their particulate matter emissions due to the EPA’s furlough”.
Kamala Harris and Democrats take aim at Republicans
The former Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris took aim at Republicans over the shutdown, posting on X:
President Trump and Congressional Republicans just shut down the government because they refused to stop your health care costs from rising. Let me be clear: Republicans are in charge of the White House, House, and Senate. This is their shutdown.
Congresswoman Shontel Brown said Donald Trump and Republicans alone are responsible for the shutdown. She said in a statement:
Washington Republicans have totally and completely failed in their responsibility to fund the government. House Republicans weren’t even in Washington this week as the government was close to shutting down. This was no accident; it was a deliberate choice.
We came to work to save health care – they went on vacation.
Every day this shutdown drags on, families, workers, and communities in Northeast Ohio will pay the price: service members and federal employees will miss paychecks, Social Security and veterans’ services could be delayed, and small business loans will stall.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett said Republicans “chose chaos” in a post on X:
Make no mistake: Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. This is THEIR shutdown. They had every tool to govern and chose chaos instead. The American people are the ones paying the price.
Health, national parks, FDA: what are agencies planning in shutdown?
Continued from previous post:
Health and Human Services will furlough about 41% of its staff out of nearly 80,000 employees, according to a contingency plan posted on its website. As part of that plan, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would continue to monitor disease outbreaks, while activities that will stop include research into health risks and ways to prevent illness.
Research and patient care at the National Institutes of Health would be upended. Patients currently enrolled in studies at the research-only hospital nicknamed the “house of hope” will continue to receive care. Additional sick patients hoping for access to experimental therapies can’t enroll except in special circumstances, and no new studies will begin.
As the shutdown neared, the National Park Service had not yet said whether it will close its more than 400 sites across the US to visitors. Park officials said Tuesday afternoon that contingency plans were still being updated and would be posted to the service’s website.
Many national parks including Yellowstone and Yosemite stayed open during a 35-day shutdown during Trump’s first term. Limited staffing led to vandalism, gates being pried open and other problems including an off-roader mowing down one of the namesake trees at Joshua Tree national park in California.
At the Food and Drug Administration, its “ability to protect and promote public health and safety would be significantly impacted, with many activities delayed or paused”. For example, the agency would not accept new drug applications or medical device submissions that require payment of a user fee.
Which agencies keep operating and which might be affected?
Now that a lapse in funding has occurred, the law requires agencies to furlough their “non-excepted” employees. Excepted employees, which include those who work to protect life and property, stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.
The White House Office of Management and Budget begins the process with instructions to agencies that a lapse in appropriations has occurred and they should initiate orderly shutdown activities. That memo went out Tuesday evening.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed, with the total daily cost of their compensation at roughly $400m.
FBI investigators, CIA officers, air traffic controllers and agents operating airport checkpoints keep working. So do members of the Armed Forces.
Those programs that rely on mandatory spending generally continue during a shutdown. Social Security payments still go out. Seniors relying on Medicare coverage can still see their doctors and health care providers can be reimbursed.
Each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan, outlining which workers would stay on the job and which would be furloughed.
White House website displays ticking clock as Republicans blame Democrats for shutdown
A timer has been added to the top of the White House’s official website with a banner that reads “Democrats Have Shut Down the Government”. The timer started as the midnight deadline and counts the time the government has been shut down.
“Democrats have officially voted to CLOSE the government,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson posted to X.
Johnson continued:
Results: Moms and kids now lose WIC nutrition. Veterans lose health care and suicide prevention programs. FEMA has shortfalls during hurricane season. Soldiers and TSA agents go UNPAID. The only question now: How long will Chuck Schumer let this pain go on — for his own selfish reasons?
Shutdown will halt some work at education department
Already diminished by cuts by the Trump administration, the US education department will see more of its work come to a halt because of the government shutdown.
The department says many of its core operations will continue in the shutdown. Federal financial aid will keep flowing, and student loan payments will still be due. But investigations into civil rights complaints will stop, and the department will not issue new federal grants. About 87% of its workforce will be furloughed, according to a department contingency plan.
Since he took office, President Donald Trump has called for the dismantling of the education department, saying it has been overrun by liberal thinking.
In a shutdown, the administration has suggested federal agencies could see more positions eliminated entirely. In past shutdowns, furloughed employees were brought back once Congress restored federal funding. This time, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers.
One of the department’s major roles is managing the $1.6tn federal student loan portfolio. Student aid will be largely unaffected in the short term, according to the department’s shutdown contingency plan. Pell Grants and federal loans will continue to be disbursed, and student loan borrowers must continue making payments on their debts.
About 9.9 million students receive some form of federal aid, spread across about 5,400 colleges, according to the department. Within the Office of Federal Student Aid, the department plans to furlough 632 of the 747 employees during the shutdown, although it didn’t say which ones. For most student loan issues, borrowers work with loan servicers hired by the department rather than directly with FSA staff.
Democratic leaders blame Trump for shutdown
The Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have blamed Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, saying they “do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people”.
Jeffries and Schumer said in a joint statement:
After months of making life harder and more expensive, Donald Trump and Republicans have now shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people.
Democrats remain ready to find a bipartisan path forward to reopen the government in a way that lowers costs and addresses the Republican healthcare crisis. But we need a credible partner.
Over the last few days, President Trump’s behavior has become more erratic and unhinged. Instead of negotiating a bipartisan agreement in good faith, he is obsessively posting crazed deepfake videos.
The country is in desperate need of an intervention to get out of another Trump shutdown.
What would it take to end the US government shutdown?
A deep impasse between Donald Trump and congressional Democrats prevented Congress and the White House from reaching a funding deal. So what will take to end the shutdown?
What Republicans want
Trump’s Republicans control both the House and the Senate, and have already scored some big budget wins this year. The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ passed in July and it boosted spending for defense and immigration enforcement, rolled back spending on green energy and other Democratic priorities, while making major cuts in the Medicaid healthcare program for low-income and disabled people to help pay for tax cuts focused mainly on the wealthy. Republicans also have broadly supported the White House’s efforts to claw back money that had already been approved by Congress for foreign aid and public broadcasting, even though that undermines lawmakers’ constitutional authority over spending matters. They have said they would vote for a continuing resolution that would extend funding at current levels through 21 November to allow more time to negotiate a full-year deal.
What Democrats want
As the minority party, Democrats do not have much power. But Republicans will need at least seven Democratic votes to pass any spending bill out of the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to advance most legislation in the 100-seat chamber.
This time, Democrats are using that leverage to push for renewing expanded healthcare subsidies for people who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Their proposal would make permanent enhanced tax breaks that are otherwise due to expire at the end of the year and make them available to more middle-income households. If those tax breaks were to expire, health insurance costs would increase dramatically for many of the 24 million Americans who get their coverage through the ACA, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Democrats also want language inserted into any funding bill that would prohibit Trump from unilaterally ignoring their ACA provisions or temporarily withholding funds.
They also want to roll back other restrictions on ACA coverage that were enacted in the so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’. Those changes would provide health coverage for seven million Americans by 2035, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but also increase government healthcare spending by $662bn over 10 years. Republicans say they are open to considering a fix for the expiring tax breaks, but say the issue should be handled separately. Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to use the stopgap funding bill to open the gates for government healthcare subsidies for immigrants in the US illegally.
About 750,000 federal workers could be furloughed amid shutdown
As the government shuts down, the US faces a new cycle of uncertainty.
Many offices will be shuttered, perhaps permanently, as Donald Trump vows to “do things that are irreversible, that are bad” as retribution. The economic fallout is expected to ripple nationwide in what could be a long standoff with no clear path out of the impasse.
Agencies warned that the 15th government shutdown since 1981 would halt the release of a closely watched September employment report, slow air travel, suspend scientific research, withhold pay from US troops and lead to the furlough of 750,000 federal workers at a daily cost of $400m.
US government shuts down as midnight deadline passes
The US government has officially shut down for the first time in nearly seven years, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican funding package unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.
It marks the first time the US government has shuttered since a 35-day shutdown that lasted from late 2018 into early 2019 during Donald Trump’s first presidency.
Here’s my colleague Chris Stein with the full story:
About an hour before the US government was scheduled to shut down this evening, Donald Trump posted on social media that he was watching golf.
At 11:01pm ET, Trump responded to a video of the European Ryder Cup team, which won the 2025 Ryder Cup tournament held last weekend. In the video, members of the team ask “Are you watching, Donald Trump?” while holding aloft their trophy. In his post, Trump wrote: “Yes, I’m watching. Congratulations!”
