Mass layoff, major service disruption feared as US government shuts down

The federal government shut down at 12:01 a.m. ET Wednesday, amid a bitter spending deadlock between President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress that will disrupt federal services and leave many federal workers furloughed.

It was the first federal shutdown since 2019, when parts of the government were shuttered for 35 days in a standoff between congressional Democrats and Trump over the president's demand to fund a wall at the southern border.

This time, the dispute is over Democrats' demand that the president agree to extend expiring health care subsidies and restore Medicaid cuts enacted over the summer as part of Trump's marquee tax cut and domestic policy law.


The shutdown became all but inevitable on Tuesday night after Senate Democrats voted just hours before a midnight deadline to block Republicans' plan to keep federal funding flowing.

In back-to-back Senate votes that reflected how acrimonious the funding dispute has become, each party blocked the other's stopgap spending proposal, just as they had earlier in September.

On a 55-45 vote, the GOP plan, which would extend funding through Nov. 21, fell short of the 60 needed for passage. Republicans also blocked Democrats' plan, which would extend funding through the end of October and add more than $1 trillion in health care spending, in a 53-47 vote.

Shortly afterward, Russell Vought, the White House budget director, directed agencies in a memo to "execute their plans for an orderly shutdown."

Democrats said they were resolute in their determination to continue the standoff until Republicans relented to their demands, which include the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as the reversal of cuts to Medicaid and other health programs that Republicans included in the tax cut legislation.

But instead of any negotiation, lawmakers in both parties spent the hours before the spending deadline pointing fingers at one another for the coming crisis, and Trump issued threats from the White House.

The president said he would move during a shutdown to enact measures that are "bad" for Democrats. Later in the Oval Office, he said that "a lot of good can come down from shutdowns," including laying off federal workers who are Democrats and undermining initiatives they support.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.