US government shuts down amid health care standoff

What happened

Much of the U.S. government shut down at midnight after the Senate failed to approve rival stopgap spending measures. Democrats said they won’t vote for a deal that doesn’t renew Affordable Care Act health care subsidies for 24 million people; Republicans said they won’t negotiate during a shutdown. This is the 15th shutdown since 1981, the first since 2019 and the first full government closure — Congress has passed zero annual spending bills — since 2013.

Who said what

This “could be a long, grueling standoff,” with “no clear path out of the impasse,” Reuters said. After cursory negotiations with President Donald Trump earlier this week, The New York Times said, “lawmakers in both parties” spent Tuesday night “pointing fingers at one another for the coming crisis,” while Trump “issued threats from the White House, appearing to relish the prospect of a shutdown” he warned would be “bad” for Democrats.

“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible,” Trump said, “like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.” His budget director, Russell Vought, has told federal agencies to prepare to fire some of the roughly 750,000 workers expected to be furloughed during the shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump’s firings probably wouldn’t hold up in court but his threats were an admission “he is using Americans as political pawns.”

Democrats have “put health care at the center” of their funding demands, Politico said, but “another motivation for not backing down” is Trump’s “snowballing efforts” to usurp congressional spending power. The White House has refused to spend billions of dollars approved and earmarked by Congress, and “nobody has any incentive to reach a deal if it’s not going to be honored,” said Sen Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

What next?

The White House has “broad latitude to determine which federal offices remain open and which are sidelined” during a shutdown, The Washington Post said. Trump’s immigration crackdown and “military deployments to major American cities will continue,” as will mail service and Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid payments, but many other “crucial government functions” will “shutter until lawmakers approve more money.”

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