The U.S. government officially began a partial shutdown after midnight on Wednesday, following a breakdown in budget negotiations between lawmakers and President Donald Trump.
The impasse, largely centered around Democratic demands for increased healthcare funding, brought key federal operations to a halt.
This marks the first government shutdown since the historic 35-day closure nearly seven years ago and will disrupt services across multiple federal agencies, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.
President Trump placed the blame on Democrats, warning that the shutdown could result in widespread public sector layoffs particularly targeting programs favored by progressives.
“We’d be laying off a lot of people who are going to be very affected. And they’re Democrats they’re going to be Democrats,” Trump said during a press briefing in the Oval Office. He also claimed the shutdown could bring positive change, saying it would allow him to eliminate “a lot of things we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things.”
The shutdown began at 12:01 a.m. (0401 GMT) after the Senate failed to pass a short-term funding bill that had already cleared the House of Representatives.
Last-minute talks at the White House earlier in the week failed to reach a compromise.
Although Congress frequently pushes budget deadlines to the brink, full shutdowns remain relatively rare.
Democrats, despite being in the minority in both chambers, sought to use their influence to restore healthcare funding, especially for Obamacare programs serving low-income Americans a key point of contention with the Trump administration, which has moved to cut these initiatives.
Republicans proposed a stopgap measure to keep the government running through late November, but Senate Democrats largely opposed the plan.
They voted down the seven-week extension late Tuesday night, just hours before the deadline.
This shutdown adds to a year of uncertainty for federal employees.
Anxiety had already been heightened after large-scale layoffs earlier this year by the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire Elon Musk.
While essential services such as the Postal Service, the military, Social Security, and food assistance programs will continue, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that as many as 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed without pay each day the shutdown continues.
The Senate was scheduled to return Wednesday, but any deal will be delayed due to the House being in recess all week.
The Senate will also adjourn Thursday for Yom Kippur but is expected to reconvene Friday and potentially remain in session through the weekend.
Since the modern budgeting process was adopted in 1976, there have been 21 government shutdowns.
Some lasted only a few hours; others, like the one in 2018 over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funding, stretched on for weeks leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers unpaid.
It remains unclear how long the current shutdown will last.
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