US administration shuts down after Democrats’ first real challenge to Trump

The threat was carried out this time. At 12:01 a.m. this Wednesday, with no agreement in the Senate to approve an extension of federal funding, the partial government shutdown arrived — the first in nearly seven years. It came after Senate Democrats refused to compromise by approving a stopgap measure that would have kept the government’s funding flowing for seven weeks until the next budget test on November 21.

The reason? They were seeking a commitment from Republicans that part of the pandemic-era subsidies tied to the law known as Obamacare — which extended medical coverage to millions of Americans without private insurance — would not be eliminated at the end of the year. They also demanded the reversal of cuts to Medicaid and other health programs included in Donald Trump’s sweeping tax reform, dubbed the “big, beautiful bill.”

These demands stemmed both from the urgent need to signal to their voters that, nearly a year after their electoral defeat, they are ready for a fight with Trump, and from their confidence that rallying around healthcare spending will pay off in the 2026 midterm elections.

Republicans, for their part, pushed until the end for approval of the extension, during which, with the government open, they promised to discuss those demands.

The last hours before the shutdown — a recurrent though not entirely uncommon phenomenon (the government has closed 21 times in the last 50 years) — were spent less in a frantic last-minute negotiation than in a sluggish acceptance that there was no turning back, and with the two parties exchanging accusations.

There was also a pair of somnambulant votes in the Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats (compared to their rivals’ 47) and needed 60 votes to reach a qualified majority. In the House of Representatives, conservatives hold a simple majority and had already passed the stopgap measure earlier, so House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home on recess to wait for the inevitable.

Around 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday it became clear there would be no last-minute deal, when the final vote on the Republican proposal ended with 55 in favor and 45 against. Four senators broke ranks: Democrats John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), independent Angus King (Maine), and Republican dissenter Rand Paul (Kentucky), who sided with the Democrats.

On Monday, Trump had met with the House and Senate leaders from both parties at the Capitol to discuss how to avoid the shutdown. It didn’t help much, except that Trump did not miss the chance to overshadow the closed-door talks by posting, just hours later, an offensive message on his social network, Truth Social. It was a clip in which he used artificial intelligence to deliberately alter, with racist intent, the video of statements by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

He added a Mexican hat and a cartoonish mustache to Jeffries, and made Schumer appear to say that what Democrats really wanted with their demands was to give “free medical care to illegal immigrants” in order to make them vote Democrat, even though the law does not allow it. “They can’t even speak English, so they won’t realize we’re just a bunch of woke pieces of shit,” the president’s message added.

In 2018, Trump became the first president in history to see his administration shut down even while his party controlled Congress. Not only that — a few months later, he faced another shutdown. On Tuesday, as he was about to go through that same ordeal for the third time, he said “a lot of good” can come from a crisis that undermines the livelihood of tens of thousands of people and disrupts public services. He added that this time it would allow him to make “irreversible” cuts that Democrats would come to regret, given their lack of control over the Capitol — control that, in the early months of his second presidency, has otherwise been limited.

Last week, the president of the United States threatened to use the federal funding deadlock to indefinitely dismiss thousands of employees — as many as 200,000. This would allow him to continue dismantling the federal administration, a process he began upon returning to power, with the creation of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he placed under Elon Musk’s leadership.

White House threats

Any government shutdown temporarily suspends the employment and pay of many federal workers (for example, 89% of the Environmental Protection Agency staff and 87% at the Department of Education). The difference this time is that these employees might never return to work if the White House follows through on its threats. Additionally, October 1 marked the end of the period for public employees who had continued to receive pay before their DOGE-ordered dismissals, which began between late winter and spring, became effective. Since Trump’s return to power, it is estimated that over 200,000 people have been fired or taken incentivized leave.

Another distinction from previous shutdowns — when the administration centralized information about which services would continue — is the uncertainty over which parts of the federal apparatus will remain paralyzed until further notice. Based on past precedent, this could last several weeks. The longest shutdown in history occurred under Trump’s previous administration, beginning in late 2018 and ending in early 2019, lasting 34 days.

What is certain is that tens of thousands of federal employees will be sent home, adding an even more ghostly atmosphere to Washington, already weakened by DOGE layoffs and still patrolled by the National Guard, which Trump deployed in August to combat crime.

It is also expected that museums, national parks, and monuments will close — from the Smithsonian museums in the capital to, for example, the Statue of Liberty. Or Joshua Tree, where in 2019 some tourists took advantage of the lack of oversight to cut down trees that take 50 years to regrow. Visa and passport services, as well as food inspection and regulatory tasks, will also be affected.

Many “essential” services will continue as usual: Social Security, Medicare health benefits, unemployment aid, support for veterans, immigration agents, the Border Patrol, and official weather forecasting. Air traffic is also considered a priority, but in past shutdowns, many air traffic controllers, who can work but do not get paid until the shutdown ends, chose not to, causing delays and flight cancellations.

Until the full scope of the federal government’s disruption is known — which for millions of Americans outside Washington may go unnoticed in daily life — it is also unclear how long the shutdown might last. Nor is it clear how the two parties will reach an agreement, given the heated tone of the debate.

In the meantime, the fight will be over who controls the political narrative and manages to pin the blame for the shutdown, its economic consequences, and the trauma for tens of thousands of affected people on the other side. In other words: will this go down in history as Trump’s shutdown, or the Democrats’?

Republicans insist that it was in their rivals’ power to prevent it. The Democrats argue that a party controlling all three branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial (six of the nine Supreme Court justices are conservative) — is always in a position to avoid a shutdown. The long-feared Washington shutdown has now come to pass.

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