Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., talks with reporters as he arrives at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  Graham is one of eight senators who could sue the government over an FBI subpoena of his cell phone call logs, under a law passed to reopen the government. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House approved legislation Wednesday that would revoke part of a law Congress approved just last week, which for the first time allows senators to sue the federal government, potentially for millions of dollars, if their data is subpoenaed without their knowledge. 

The 426-0 vote sent the bill to the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., doesn’t appear inclined to put the measure on the floor for a vote, though he hasn’t entirely ruled it out. 

“You have an independent, co-equal branch of the government whose members were, through illegal means, having their phone records acquired, spied on if you will, through a weaponized Biden Justice Department,” Thune said. “That, to me, demands some accountability.”

Thune said he understands why several Republican senators were frustrated they didn’t know the provision was added to the funding package that ended the government shutdown.

“I take that as a legitimate criticism in terms of the process,” Thune said. “But I think, on the substance, I believe that you need to have some sort of accountability and consequence for that kind of weaponization against a co-equal branch of the government.”

Thune declined to say if he thinks it’s appropriate for senators to sue for millions in taxpayer dollars for having their phone call records pulled as part of the investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

“I don’t think there’s anybody that was targeted for whom the money matters,” Thune said. “I think it’s more about the principle.”

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of eight senators who could benefit, said shortly after the House wrapped up debate he plans to sue Verizon as well as the Department of Justice under the new provision. 

“The subpoena that was issued, I think, was fatally flawed. The judicial order saying if you told me (about the subpoena) I would tamper with witnesses or tamper with evidence is legally offensive,” Graham said. “I’m not going to take this crap anymore. I am going into court, and we’ll see what happens.”

Dispute among Republicans

Senate Republicans’ decision to include the lawsuit provision in the stopgap spending law that ended the 43-day government shutdown represented a rare public break between GOP congressional leaders.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said last week just after the House passed the funding law he was “very angry” the lawsuit language was added to the package without his knowledge or sign off. 

“I think that was way out of line. I don’t think that was the smart thing to do. I don’t think that was the right thing to do,” Johnson said at the time. “And the House is going to reverse it. We’re going to repeal that. And I’m going to expect our colleagues in the Senate to do the same thing.”

The provision, which will remain in effect unless the Senate passes the new bill and Trump signs it, allows senators who had their cell phone or other data subpoenaed without their knowledge to sue the federal government for $500,000 “for each instance of a violation.” 

The language is retroactive until Jan. 1, 2022, and allows the eight senators who had their cell phone call logs subpoenaed as part of the FBI’s 2023 investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election to sue for millions of dollars. 

The FBI reportedly obtained data for cell phone use between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021, for Graham and Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, as well as Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly. All are Republicans. 

The law allows judges to delay notification for 60 days if the information was pulled as part of a criminal investigation and if telling the senator would endanger someone’s safety or life, lead the lawmaker to flee prosecution, result in someone tampering with or destroying evidence, lead to witness intimidation, place the investigation in jeopardy, or unduly delay the trial. 

A judge could keep renewing that 60-day notification delay in criminal investigations if one or several of those elements continued to exist. 

Both parties object 

House debate on the two-page bill sponsored by Georgia GOP Rep. Austin Scott was broadly bipartisan, though Democrats and Republicans expressed frustration with the lawsuit language for different reasons. 

Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said the “troubling provision” in the spending law must be stricken.

“These provisions are not the right path to address the true concerns over the separation of powers,” Steil said. “Remember, Congress serves the American people, not the other way around.”

Steil said the FBI pulling cell phone call records for senators as part of its investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, known as Operation Arctic Frost, was an abuse of power that should be addressed. But he said allowing senators to sue for millions of dollars in taxpayer money was the wrong way to do that. 

“I’m committed to holding those involved accountable. No one benefited by the failures of the Biden administration,” Steil said. “However, that does not mean that elected officials should be financially benefiting from those failures now.”

New York Rep. Joe Morelle, ranking Democrat on the committee, said those eight senators’ cell phone logs were pulled because FBI agents believed the lawmakers “had knowledge of or even participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Efforts that culminated in a violent attack on this very institution.”

Morelle said anyone with a basic understanding of criminal investigations knows that phone records “are among the most routine tools used” to gain a better understanding of events. 

“They do not reveal the content of any conversations. They simply show which numbers were called, which numbers called them and when those calls were made,” Morelle said.

“If these Republican senators genuinely believe that their civil liberties were violated or if they are interested in changing the law relating to subpoenas, then they are better positioned than literally anyone on planet Earth to hold hearings, draft legislation and debate proposed changes in the open,” Morelle added. “But that’s not what this is all about. This is about ensuring the law applies to every other American, just not to them.”

Scott said House Republicans voted for the spending law to end the government shutdown, not because they supported the lawsuit provision, which he called “the most self-centered, self-serving piece of language that I have ever seen in any piece of legislation.”

He also rebuked Sen. Graham for saying during interviews that he plans to sue the federal government. 

“We have one senator, one, who maintains that this provision is good and is currently saying that he is going to sue for tens of millions of dollars,” Scott said. “I believe my side did the right thing in voting to open up the government. There are a select few people that did the wrong thing in putting language in the bill that would make themselves individually wealthy.”

Bombs, cows, the Postal Service and lawsuits

Graham, who was an Air Force Judge Advocate General officer before entering politics, compared having his cell phone data pulled as part of the investigation to a case he handled earlier in his career after the Air Force “dropped a bomb on a guy’s barn and killed his cow. And he was able to make a claim.”

Graham also compared it to someone suing the government after being hit by a U.S. Postal Service truck, when asked by a reporter what he plans to do with the millions of dollars he will likely receive if he were to win the case. 

“You do whatever you want to do with the money if you’ve been wronged,” Graham said.  

In addition to filing a lawsuit, Graham hopes to broaden the language so that organizations and private individuals can file suit against the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act if they feel they’ve been wronged similarly. 

“I will insist on a vote in the United States Senate to expand the ability of people to make claims that may have been harmed,” Graham said, adding that would likely include the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Republican National Committee and Turning Point USA.

Graham rejected criticisms of the lawsuit provision from fellow GOP lawmakers, saying it doesn’t represent “self-dealing.”

“I understand politics, but I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about getting the right outcome,” Graham said. “I mean, if you don’t want me to sue the government, that’s up to you. I’m going to sue, whether you like it or not. I’m not going to put up with this anymore, and people in my spot shouldn’t have to deal with this in the future.”

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., amid fog on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators began debating how to reduce health care costs for Americans during a hearing Wednesday, where experts’ varied recommendations and comments from lawmakers previewed the rocky and potentially long path ahead. 

Republicans on the Finance Committee argued the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has led to a spike in health insurance costs for individuals  that shouldn’t be offset by tax credits any longer. 

Democrats urged their colleagues to extend the enhanced subsidies for at least another year to give Congress more time to address larger, more complex issues within the country’s health insurance and health care systems. 

Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said the hearing marked “the first step in building the foundation for” health care reform.

“We need both short-term and long-term solutions,” Crapo said. “In the short term, we cannot simply throw good money after bad policy. If we keep advancing a system that drives up premiums, we will make this problem even harder to solve.”

“Instead, we should set the groundwork for giving Americans more control over their health care choices,” Crapo added. “Rather than accepting the current system of giving billions of taxpayer dollars to insurers, we should consider providing financial assistance directly to consumers through health savings accounts, which are now available on the Obamacare exchanges through a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Such tax-advantaged accounts are used to save money to pay for medical expenses and generally are used in conjunction with a high-deductible insurance plan, but an HSA “is a trust/custodial account and is not health insurance,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

The ACA, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, overhauled the U.S. health care system with the intent of reducing high rates of uninsured people and ending insurance industry practices such as exclusions based on pre-existing conditions and the sale of policies with high costs and skimpy coverage. The law also expanded Medicaid and, for individual coverage, introduced the health insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, that now are at issue.

According to the health organization KFF, the number of uninsured Americans fell from about 14% to 16% in the years preceding passage of the law to a record low of 7.7% in 2023.

Pessimism about health care action

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the panel, rebuked Republicans for focusing on other policy areas throughout the year instead of making improvements to health care.

“Sitting on your hands has consequences,” he said. 

Wyden doesn’t see a way for Congress to extend the enhanced tax credits set to expire at the end of the year for people who get their health insurance from the ACA marketplace, despite Democrats pressing for that during the 43-day government shutdown that ended in mid-November. 

Wyden expressed support for working with Republican senators to address health insurance companies’ structure, though he said he is “skeptical” his GOP colleagues will actually approve legislation on that particular issue in the months ahead. 

“Now if they are serious about taking on the crooks that dominate big insurance, like UnitedHealthcare, I’m all in,” Wyden said. “In my view that starts with a laser focus on lower costs for consumers, going after fraud where it truly exists, and cracking down on middlemen.”

‘Very little that this Congress can do’

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president at the center-right American Action Forum and former chief economist at the Council for Economic Advisers during the President George W. Bush administration, told the committee the structure of the Affordable Care Act poses problems. 

“As a piece of health policy, economic policy and budget policy, the ACA has always been a troubling construct,” Holtz-Eakin said, later adding there is “very little that this Congress can do to change the outlook” for 2026. 

Holtz-Eakin testified that Congress is long “overdue for a real rethinking of health care policy at the federal level” that he believes should focus on two primary areas. 

The first is to “rationalize the insurance subsidies” and the second is to address what he referred to as “high-value care,” which he said should include Medicare, the health program that covers 69 million Americans over 65 and some people with disabilities. 

“Medicare is a great budgetary threat, and so I encourage the committee and the Congress as a whole to take a hard look at that and make some progress toward better health care outcomes and better budgetary outcomes,” Holtz-Eakin said.  

Jason Levitis, senior fellow of the Health Policy Division at the left-leaning Urban Institute and a Treasury employee who led the ACA implementation at the department during the Obama administration, urged lawmakers to address the “too complicated and segmented” health insurance marketplace. 

Levitis said the best short-term option for Congress would be to extend the enhanced tax credits for ACA enrollees during 2026, despite the time crunch. 

“At this point the only feasible option is a clean extension of the existing enhancements,” Levitis said. “The marketplaces have already built that option and have been preparing for months for the possibility of an extension.” 

Former Trump adviser says ACA ‘failed’

Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute and a former special assistant to President Donald Trump at the White House National Economic Council, said bluntly that the Affordable Care Act has “failed.”

“The law entrenched an inefficient insurance-dominated health sector with massive subsidies flowing straight from the Treasury to health companies,” Blase said. 

The subsidies for ACA marketplace plans, he said, were “ill-designed and inflationary,” urging lawmakers not to extend them for another year.  

“The enrollee share of the premium is capped regardless of the total premium. When enrollees pay only a small slice of the premium or no premium at all, insurers face almost no price discipline,” Blase said. “Insurers can raise premiums knowing the taxpayers will absorb almost all of the increase.”

Blase said he believes the ACA’s regulations on health insurance companies are one of the reasons costs have spiked. 

“For example, under the medical loss ratio, insurers must spend a minimum share of premium revenue on medical claims. In other words, to increase profits, insurers must increase premiums,” Blase said. “The ACA’s essential health benefits require plans to cover the same set of services regardless of what people want or need. These rules increase premiums and wasteful spending.”

The medical loss ratio was included in the ACA in response to insurers who spent “a substantial portion” of premiums on administrative costs and profits, including executive salaries, overhead and marketing, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

‘We all believe we need to reform’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters separately from the hearing the debate over how to restructure health insurance to bring down costs has highlighted the “differences of opinion” among GOP lawmakers. 

“We’ve got a lot of people who have strong views, but the one thing that unites us is we all believe we need to reform, and we’ve got to do something to drive health care costs down,” Thune said. 

GOP leaders, he added, are “looking for solutions that will lower health care premiums, not increase them. And what we see today is just constant inflationary impacts from some of these policies of the past.”

Trump, who would need to support any health care overhaul bill for it to move through Congress, wrote in a social media post Tuesday that he wants lawmakers to send money straight to Americans, without detail on how that would work. 

“THE ONLY HEALTHCARE I WILL SUPPORT OR APPROVE IS SENDING THE MONEY DIRECTLY BACK TO THE PEOPLE, WITH NOTHING GOING TO THE BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES, WHO HAVE MADE $TRILLIONS, AND RIPPED OFF AMERICA LONG ENOUGH,” Trump wrote. “THE PEOPLE WILL BE ALLOWED TO NEGOTIATE AND BUY THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, INSURANCE. POWER TO THE PEOPLE! Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else. This is the only way to have great Healthcare in America!!! GET IT DONE, NOW. President DJT”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — David Richardson, the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has resigned and moved to the “private sector,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Monday. 

Karen Evans, the agency’s chief of staff, is expected to take on the role of acting administrator starting Dec. 1. 

“Mr. Richardson led FEMA through the 2025 hurricane season, delivering historic funding to North Carolina, Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Alaska, and overseeing a comprehensive review that identified and eliminated serious governmental waste and inefficiency, while refocusing the agency to deliver swift resources to Americans in crisis,” the spokesperson said.

Previous FEMA acting head ousted in May

President Donald Trump has yet to send the Senate a nominee for FEMA administrator, opting instead to have a string of officials serve as acting leaders of the agency that he hopes to overhaul in the months ahead. 

Cam Hamilton worked as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator until May, when he was let go one day after he testified before a House committee that he did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

Richardson, who was working as the assistant secretary of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office at the Department of Homeland Security, was then named as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at FEMA. 

Richardson testified before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee in July that FEMA’s response to the catastrophic Fourth of July floods in Texas was well managed.

“Texas got what they needed when they needed it,” he said at the time.

The Washington Post reported in September that “key staff members could not reach” Richardson for “about 24 hours in the early aftermath” of those floods, which killed more than 130 people. 

Trump review council misses deadline

The White House deferred questions about Richardson’s resignation to the Department of Homeland Security, opting not to say whether Trump would eventually send a FEMA administrator nominee to the Senate for confirmation. 

Trump has long criticized FEMA and created a review council earlier this year to assess how the agency performed during the last few years and suggest ways to rework its structure. 

The review council was supposed to send Trump its recommendations before Monday but missed the deadline. 

The Homeland Security spokesperson who confirmed Richardson’s resignation to States Newsroom said the administration expects the report to be released in the near future. 

“We anticipate the forthcoming release of the FEMA Review Council’s final report, which will inform this Administration’s ongoing efforts to fundamentally restructure FEMA, transforming it from its current form into a streamlined, mission-focused disaster-response force,” said the spokesperson.

A sign is seen outside the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center at Weaverville Town Hall on March 29, 2025 in Weaverville, North Carolina. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The review council that President Donald Trump tasked with overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency was supposed to release its recommendations before Monday but missed the deadline. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security declined to say when the report would be published, but wrote in a statement that it would “inform this Administration’s ongoing efforts to fundamentally restructure FEMA, transforming it from its current form into a streamlined, mission-focused disaster-response force.” 

A congressional staffer, not authorized to speak publicly, said the report could be published as soon as mid-December.  A spokesperson for Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a council member, said the review council will vote to finalize the report at an upcoming public meeting. 

Trump established the 12-person council through an executive order he signed back in January and tasked the group with releasing the report within 180 days of its first meeting, which it held on May 20. 

That should have meant a release this past weekend, though it’s possible staff writing the report were furloughed or tasked with other work during the 43-day government shutdown. 

Hegseth, Noem are co-chairs

The council, co-chaired by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, held three public meetings earlier this year, where members spoke about possible ways to restructure FEMA but didn’t preview what recommendations they would actually put in the report. 

Trump said in June “the FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment” and that he would like states to shoulder more of the responsibility for natural disaster response and recovery. 

“When you have a tornado or a hurricane, or you have a problem of any kind in a state, that’s what you have governors for,” Trump said. “They’re supposed to fix those problems. And it’s much more local. And they’ll develop a system. And I think it will be a great system.”

The FEMA Review Council’s report is supposed to include an 

• “assessment of the adequacy of FEMA’s response to disasters during the previous 4 years,”
• “comparison of the FEMA responses with State, local, and private sector responses” and
• “analysis of the principal arguments in the public debate for and against FEMA reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals,” among several other elements. 

FEMA action underway in Congress

Any major changes to FEMA would likely need to move through Congress before they could take effect. But a bipartisan group of lawmakers hasn’t waited for the review council’s suggestions to get started. 

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted 57-3 in September to send a bill to the floor that would make significant changes to FEMA, including making it a Cabinet-level agency. 

House GOP leaders have yet to schedule the legislation for a vote. If passed, it would need Senate approval and Trump’s signature to become law.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., left, accompanied by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., points to a poster depicting rising medical costs if Congress allows the Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire in December as he speaks to reporters following a Democratic policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Congress has roughly two months to find bipartisan agreement to curb rising health insurance costs if lawmakers want to avoid another government shutdown.

That herculean task would be difficult in the best circumstances, but is much more challenging after lawmakers spent the last 43 days criticizing each other instead of building the types of trust that are usually needed for large deals. Democrats maintained they wanted to address skyrocketing premiums for individual health care plans, while Republicans insisted those talks had to occur when the government was open.

At the same time, congressional leaders will try to wrap up work on the nine full-year government funding bills that were supposed to become law before Oct. 1 and weren’t included in the package that reopened the government. 

Congress must pass all of those bills or another stopgap measure before the new Jan. 30 deadline, regardless of how well or disastrous talks on a health care bill turn out. 

The two-track negotiations will push party leaders to compromise on issues they’d rather not, especially as next year’s November midterm elections inch closer. 

Early signs were not good.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a Wednesday night press conference the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits set to expire at the end of the year are a “boondoggle” and that “Republicans would demand a lot of reforms” before agreeing to extend those in any way. 

“We currently have 433 members of the House of Representatives. There’s a lot of opinions in this building. And on our side, certainly, a lot of opinions on how to fix health care and make it more affordable. I have to allow that process to play out,” Johnson, R-La., said. 

While Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., made a commitment to hold a vote on a health care bill before the end of December to conclude the shutdown, Johnson has avoided giving a timeline for when he would bring any similar legislation to the floor. 

President Donald Trump, aside from throwing insults at Democrats, largely stayed on the sidelines of the shutdown fight, though he suggested the funds used for the tax credits should in some way go directly to individuals instead of large insurance companies.

Pessimism over progress

The shutdown highlighted the stark differences Republicans and Democrats hold on health care as prices for insurance continue to spike, forcing millions of Americans to choose between taking care of themselves and breaking their budgets, States Newsroom found in interviews with members of Congress. 

GOP leaders held together throughout the funding lapse and didn’t negotiate on the expiring ACA marketplace tax credits, or anything else. 

Now that it’s over, Republicans will need to put something forward.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said her sense is that Congress will “probably be in the same place on January 30th that we are now.”

“We have two parties here, two sides,” DeLauro said. “In the past … we’ve had serious negotiation back and forth, and that’s what we need to do, and that’s not happening.”

While Republicans have unified control of government, major legislation needs the support of at least 60 senators to advance in that chamber. Republicans hold 53 seats at the moment, meaning at least some Democrats must support a bill for it to pass. 

DeLauro did not rule out another shutdown, saying Democrats plan to take the next few months “one day at a time,” while closely watching what Republicans are willing to do on the nine full-year appropriations bills and health care costs. 

Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, former House majority leader and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, said Republican leaders keeping that chamber in recess for nearly two months leading up to and during the shutdown significantly delayed work on the full-year government funding bills. 

Hoyer said that scheduling decision was a clear “indication they’re not interested in solving the problem.”

“If they were, they would have had members here working on appropriation bills,” Hoyer said. “And the only way you’re going to ultimately solve this problem is to pass appropriation bills.”

Hoyer said the real question facing Congress now isn’t whether there is time to work out agreement on the remaining nine government spending bills, but whether there’s a will to make the types of compromises needed. 

Untangling spending bills

The spending package that reopened the government included three of the dozen full-year bills, funding the Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration, Legislative Branch, military construction projects and Department of Veterans Affairs.

The remaining appropriations bills will be considerably tougher to resolve, especially because the House and Senate have yet to agree on how much they want to spend across the thousands of programs. Trump proposed major cutbacks in multiple programs in his budget request earlier this year that Democrats have strongly resisted.

The Defense, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS-Education and State-Foreign Operations bills will be some of the more difficult to settle. 

Congress could always lean on another stopgap spending bill to keep funding relatively flat for the departments and agencies not covered by a full-year bill before Jan. 30. But lawmakers will need bipartisan support to advance in the Senate.

Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Republicans don’t seem to grasp how much Americans are struggling with the cost of living, including for health insurance and health care. 

“My constituents are already telling me that they’re making that choice between having health insurance or having a house to live in, and they’re going to choose the house,” Jayapal said. 

Whether or not a partial government shutdown begins in early 2026 will likely depend on whether Republican lawmakers from swing districts force bipartisanship on a health care bill. 

“I really don’t know,” Jayapal said. “I think it depends on these vulnerable House Republicans, who are not going to be able to go back to their constituents without telling them that they’ve done something on health care.”

Political juice and a backbone

Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico said she wouldn’t be surprised if Congress is unable to strike a deal on government funding and winds up in a partial shutdown by February. 

“Do I think that the Republicans have the political juice to get … the rest of their appropriation bills across the finish line and a health care deal? No,” Stansbury said. 

She added that she hopes a handful of Republicans decide to join Democrats on the discharge petition bill that would force a floor vote on a bill to extend the ACA marketplace subsidies for three years. 

“We gotta find a few brave Republicans who still have a backbone and some guts to stand up to this administration and actually care for their constituents,” Stansbury said. 

But any bipartisan deal to extend those health care tax credits seems fraught, as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries slammed Republicans as having “zero credibility on this issue.”

He pointed to Republicans trying several times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including their last attempt in 2017, when GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and the late John McCain of Arizona crossed party lines to vote against repealing the 2010 law.

“There’s no evidence that they’re serious about extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits,” Jeffries, of New York, said. “Republicans have zero interest in fixing the health care crisis that they’ve created.”

‘No point in taking 41 days to cave’

When Democrats controlled both chambers, temporary health care subsidies were originally passed as part of the COVID-19-era American Rescue Plan in 2021 for two years. 

With Democrats still controlling both chambers, lawmakers approved the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 signature climate policy bill from the Biden administration, that extended those health care subsidies for three years, expiring at the end of December 2025.

The outcome of the just concluded shutdown is shaping some House Democrats’ views.

Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott said if there is a new shutdown come February, Senate Democrats will have to decide whether they’re going to “cave again, or at least engage in negotiations.” 

“When the (Senate) Democrats say: ‘Our strategy wasn’t working,’ it wasn’t working because they assume you’re going to cave, which you just proved,” Scott told States Newsroom. “Their strategy worked — trying to get them to negotiate and talk to you doesn’t because they know you’re going to cave.”

Scott said “there’s no point in taking 41 days to cave,” pointing to the eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus who broke ranks to advance and later approve the package to reopen the government. 

“Why don’t you just cave right at the beginning, on February 2nd?” he said. “If the Republican strategy is: ‘We’re not going to negotiate at all because you’re going to cave,’ you have to show them that you’re not going to cave, then you can have a discussion.”

Scott said the same health care issues will still exist if nothing happens between now and the package’s Jan. 30 government funding deadline.  

“By then, we’ll know that several million people don’t have health insurance, we’ll know that rural hospitals are beginning to suffer,” Scott said. 

Delaware Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride said that “from today through November (2026) and after, we will continue to be talking about health care, to be fighting for health care.”

“I think what you’ve seen over the last several months, you will continue to see from us through November and then, God willing, once we’re in a majority, we’ll do all that we can to reverse these cuts and restore care and expand access to it,” she said. 

Furloughed federal workers stand in line for hours ahead of a special food distribution by the Capital Area Food Bank and No Limits Outreach Ministries on Barlowe Road in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The longest shutdown in U.S. history ended Wednesday night when President Donald Trump signed a spending package that  reopens the government and funds most of it through January.

The Oval Office ceremony came just hours after the House voted to approve the legislation, which senators passed earlier in the week. 

“I hope we can all agree that the government should never be shut down again,” Trump said, before urging Senate Republicans to eliminate the rule that requires bills to garner the support of at least 60 lawmakers to advance. “Terminate the filibuster.”

The 222-209 vote marked the first time that chamber took up a bill since mid-September, when Republican leaders recessed after members approved a stopgap spending measure they knew couldn’t advance in the Senate. 

That stalemate, centered around sharply rising health care costs, led to a 43-day shutdown that affected nearly every corner of the country through delayed funding for nutrition programs for millions of Americans, no pay for federal workers, flight delays tied to staffing shortages and much more. 

But after nearly six weeks of failed procedural votes, seven centrist Senate Democrats and one independent broke with party leaders on Sunday to advance the reworked spending package and then voted to approve the legislation Monday. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who said throughout the shutdown he was interested in a bipartisan path forward on health insurance costs after the shutdown ended, committed to hold a floor vote on a Democratic bill “no later than the second week in December.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said repeatedly throughout the funding lapse GOP lawmakers have ideas to improve the health care system. However, he didn’t detail any of those publicly and hasn’t committed to a floor vote. 

“We have volumes of ideas on how to do this, on how to fix it, on how to drive costs down and how to increase access to care and quality of care, and you’re going to see all that vigorous debate,” Johnson said during a brief press conference after the vote.

House debate on the spending package that will reopen government was largely along party lines, though Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida voted against the bill.

Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Adam Gray of California, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state and Tom Suozzi of New York voted for passage. 

Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., urged support for the legislation ahead of the vote, saying “history reminds us that shutdowns never change the outcome.” 

“Over the last 43 days the facts did not shift, the votes required did not shift, the path forward did not change,” Cole said. “The only thing that did move was the level of pain Democrats inflicted on the nation.”

Much higher premiums predicted 

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the spending panel, rejected the legislation and said it does nothing to address the rising cost of health care. 

“More than 20 million Americans will have to pay double, even triple, their monthly insurance premium in just a matter of weeks,” DeLauro said. “And this bill leaves families without even a glimmer of hope that their costs might go down.”

The Senate significantly reworked the stopgap bill the House originally passed in mid-September into what is now a 394-page package, adding in three of the full-year government funding bills and changing the date of the stopgap measure to Jan. 30, among many other provisions. The original stopgap was set to last through Nov. 21. 

The updated measure gives Congress a couple more months to work out agreement on the remaining nine appropriations bills that were supposed to become law before the start of the current fiscal year on Oct. 1. 

Lawmakers could create a partial government shutdown if they’re unable to agree on approving the remaining appropriations bill before the new government funding deadline at the end of January.

Democratic discharge petition

Trump will turn his attention toward the rising cost of health care that Democrats highlighted during the shutdown, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a Wednesday briefing, though she didn’t put a firm timeline on when he’ll release any plans.

“Once the government reopens, the president, as he’s always maintained, is absolutely open to having conversations about health care,” Leavitt said. “And I think you’ll see the president putting forth some really good policy proposals that Democrats should take very seriously to fix, again, the system that they broke.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters following a closed-door meeting that Democrats will try to get the necessary signatures on a discharge petition to force a floor vote on legislation to extend tax credits for three years for people who buy their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

The New York Democrat said the extension mirrors how long the enhanced tax credits were set to last initially in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. 

Temporary health care subsidies were originally passed as part of the COVID-19-era American Rescue Plan in 2021 for two years. The Inflation Reduction Act, the signature climate policy bill from the Biden administration, then extended those health care subsidies for three years, expiring at the end of December 2025. 

“The legislation that we will introduce in the context of a discharge petition will provide that level of certainty to working-class Americans who are on the verge of seeing their premiums, co-pays and deductibles skyrocket,” Jeffries said. 

Democrats will need the support of at least a handful of Republicans in order to get the 218 signatures needed to force a vote on the bill. The discharge petition was released mid-afternoon.

What’s in the new bill

The spending package wraps in several different bills and provisions, such as the three full-year funding bills that cover the Agriculture Department, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Legislative Branch, military construction projects and Department of Veterans Affairs.

Included are:

• A stopgap spending bill that will keep the rest of the federal government running through Jan. 30;
• $30 million for the U.S. Capitol Police to enhance protections for lawmakers, $30 million for the U.S. Marshals Service to bolster security for members of the judicial and executive branches, and $28 million for enhanced safety for Supreme Court justices;
• Language requiring the Trump administration to reinstate the thousands of workers it sent layoff notices to during the shutdown and preventing officials from firing those workers through January;
• Provisions mandating the Trump administration provide back pay to all federal workers, including those furloughed during the shutdown. Trump at one point during the shutdown had threatened to yank that back pay, though it is required by law.

The Trump administration issued a Statement of Administration Policy a few hours before the House voted, saying the administration strongly supports the bill, describing the measure as “a fiscally responsible package that provides the full-year funding necessary to support the Nation’s veterans, farmers, and rural communities.”

The package also “ends disruptions to programs the American people rely on and ensures the thousands of Federal employees who have been forced to work without a paycheck, such as air traffic controllers, will be promptly paid,” the administration added. 

The Agriculture and Military Construction-VA spending bills include tens of billions of dollars in earmarks requested by lawmakers from both political parties, important to them as midterm elections loom in 2026.

‘Legislative self-dealing’ in Senate attacked

But not every Republican on Capitol Hill is happy with how the full-year bills turned out. 

Speaker Johnson announced mid-afternoon that the House would take a separate vote later this month to remove language from the package that will allow senators to file suit against the federal government if their data is subpoenaed.

“We are putting this legislation on the fast track suspension calendar in the House for next week,” Johnson wrote in a social media post. 

The provision, tucked into the full-year Legislative Branch spending bill, is retroactive to January 1, 2022, and would apply to the eight senators who had their cell phone records subpoenaed during a 2023 investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The FBI reportedly obtained data for cell phone use between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021, for Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, as well as Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania. 

Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said during floor debate the bill “contains the single most corrupt provision for legislative self-dealing that anyone in this chamber today has ever voted on.”

“This provision is an affront to our taxpayers, to the rule of law, to everyone who believes that we in public office must be the servants of the people, not the masters of the people who get special legal rights and privileges and multi-million-dollar payoffs,” Raskin said. 

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters earlier in the day that he will “definitely” be filing a lawsuit after the new provision becomes law. 

“And if you think I’m going to settle this thing for a million dollars? No. I want to make it so painful no one ever does this again,” Graham said, later adding he wasn’t sure if he’d win such a case.

Dissatisfaction among GOP lawmakers with that provision was on full display on social media, where Florida’s Steube responded to Speaker Johnson’s post by writing that the “Senate will never take up your ‘standalone’ bill. This is precisely why you shouldn’t let the Senate jam the House.”

 

Jeff Garland, right, gives a tour of Papa G’s Organic Hemp Farm in Crawford County, Indiana, on June 23, 2022. Jeff and his son started the farm in 2020.  At left is Lee Schnell of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  (NRCS photo by Brandon O’Connor)

WASHINGTON — Kentucky’s two U.S. senators sparred this week over the future of the country’s hemp industry — one arguing that a provision attached to the package that will reopen the government will close a problematic loophole and the other contending the language will regulate the industry “to death.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell ultimately prevailed and was able to keep the section in the Agriculture appropriations bill cracking down on hemp that Sen. Rand Paul tried to remove during floor debate. Both are Republicans.

The appropriations bill is riding along with a stopgap spending bill that will end the government shutdown and is expected to be voted on by the House as soon as Wednesday. The hemp measure has raised alarm in farm states benefiting from a robust hemp growing industry.

Hemp plants have 0.3% or less of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, while cannabis or marijuana plants have higher concentrations of that substance, which is what gives users the “high or stoned” feeling. 

A summary of the bill put together by Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins’ staff says the new language would prevent “the unregulated sale of intoxicating hemp-based or hemp-derived products, including Delta-8, from being sold online, in gas stations, and corner stores, while preserving non-intoxicating CBD and industrial hemp products.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a warning page on its website cautioning “that delta-8 THC products have not been evaluated or approved by the FDA for safe use in any context.”

Farm Bill origins

McConnell explained he is targeting hemp because its uses have expanded beyond what was intended. 

“I led the effort to legalize industrial hemp through the 2014 pilot program and the 2018 Farm Bill,” McConnell said. “Unfortunately, companies have exploited a loophole in the 2018 legislation by taking legal amounts of THC from hemp and turning it into intoxicating substances, and then marketing it to children in candy-like packaging and selling it in easily accessible places, like gas stations and convenience stores all across our country.”

McConnell said the new provision, which won’t take effect until a year after the bill becomes law, would “keep these dangerous products out of the hands of children while preserving the hemp industry for farmers.”

Paul and Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley urged their colleagues to remove that McConnell provision from the larger spending package, but were unsuccessful. 

“This is the most thoughtless, ignorant proposal to an industry that I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Paul said. 

The new language would change the definition of what makes a hemp plant legal, a move Paul said would mean “every plant in the country will have to be destroyed.” 

“This bill’s per-serving THC content limit would make illegal any hemp product that contains more than point four milligrams,” Paul said. “That would be nearly 100% of the existing market. That amounts to an effective ban, because the limit is so low that the products intended to manage pain or anxiety will lose their effect.”

State laws said to be nullified

The legislation, Paul added, will negatively impact the nearly two dozen states that have set higher limits on hemp production.

“Currently, Maine limits THC to three milligrams per serving. That will be overruled. My home state limits THC to five milligrams in beverages; that will be overruled. Minnesota, Utah, Louisiana also have five milligrams per serving. Alabama and Georgia have 10 milligrams. Tennessee has 15 milligrams,” Paul said. “The bill before us nullifies all these state laws.”

Merkley said the new provision in the larger spending package would eliminate the hemp industry, which Congress took steps to establish more than a decade ago.

“I support my other colleague from Kentucky who doesn’t want intoxicated products produced from hemp,” Merkley said. “But the definition that is in this bill does far more than that, and it has to be fixed. So for now, it needs to be stripped out.”

The Senate voted 76-24 to table, or set aside, Paul’s amendment after McConnell moved to block it from being taken up directly. 

The Agriculture funding bill is one of three full-year government spending bills included in the stopgap spending package that will end the government shutdown once the House approves the measure later this week and President Donald Trump signs the bill. 

Trade group warns of hundreds of thousands of jobs affected

Hemp Industry & Farmers of America Executive Director Brian Swensen wrote in a statement released last week that McConnell’s provision would have a devastating impact on the industry and its workers. 

“Congress legalized hemp, Americans built an industry, and now Washington wants to pull the rug out from under hardworking farmers and small business owners. The industry wants a solid regulatory package that protects kids, but instead, Congress wants to place industry-killing caps on cannabinoids. Congress is not listening to the industry they created — they’re dismantling an industry with over 325,000 jobs and driving consumers to an unregulated, unsafe, and untaxed black market.”

John and Kara Grady, owners of Slappyhappy Hemp Company, said during an interview with the Missouri Independent the new language could hinder their business, possibly forcing them to close down.

“You’re sick to your stomach all day long,” said Kara Grady, “knowing your hard work is for not.”

Zack Kobrin, a Fort Lauderdale attorney with the firm of Saul Ewing who works in the hemp and cannabis industry, told the Florida Phoenix that many in the industry “are surprised it was such a sudden and sweeping measure.”

“I think for those that are cowboys, they will just maximize on making as much as they can until they can’t,” Kobrin said. “I think for those hemp operators that were trying to work with regulators and trying to follow the rules, this will be a real blow.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters while walking to his office on Nov. 10, 2025 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate approved a stopgap spending bill Monday that will end the longest government shutdown in American history once the measure becomes law later this week.

The 60-40 vote sends the updated funding package back to the House, where lawmakers in that chamber are expected sometime during the next few days to clear the legislation for President Donald Trump’s signature. 

Shortly before the vote, Trump said he plans to follow the agreements included in the revised measure, including the reinstatement of thousands of federal workers who received layoff notices during the shutdown. 

“I’ll abide by the deal,” Trump said. “The deal is very good.”  

Republicans, he added, will soon begin work on legislation to provide direct payments to Americans to help them afford the rising cost of health insurance, one of the core disagreements between the political parties that led to the shutdown. 

“We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “And I tell you, we are going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time.”

House members told to head to D.C.

Earlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson urged representatives to begin traveling back to Capitol Hill as soon as possible to ensure they arrive in time to vote on the bill to reopen the government, after the measure arrives from the Senate. 

The Louisiana Republican’s request came as airlines were forced to delay or cancel thousands of flights on the 41st day of the shutdown, a situation that could potentially impact a House vote on the stopgap spending bill if members don’t follow his advice. 

“The problem we have with air travel is that our air traffic controllers are overworked and unpaid. And many of them have called in sick,” Johnson said. “That’s a very stressful job and even more stressful, exponentially, when they’re having trouble providing for their families. And so air travel has been grinding to a halt in many places.”

Johnson then told his colleagues in the House, which hasn’t been in session since mid-September, that lawmakers from both political parties “need to begin right now returning to the Hill.”

Trump threatens air traffic controllers

Trump took a markedly different tone over the challenges air traffic controllers have faced during the shutdown in a social media post that he published several hours before he spoke to reporters about the deal to reopen government. 

“All Air Traffic Controllers must get back to work, NOW!!! Anyone who doesn’t will be substantially ‘docked,’” Trump wrote, without explaining what that would mean for workers who had to take time off since the shutdown began Oct. 1. 

Trump added that he would like to find a way to provide $10,000 bonuses to air traffic controllers who didn’t require any time off during the past six weeks.

“For those that did nothing but complain, and took time off, even though everyone knew they would be paid, IN FULL, shortly into the future, I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country,” Trump wrote. “You will have a negative mark, at least in my mind, against your record. If you want to leave service in the near future, please do not hesitate to do so, with NO payment or severance of any kind!” 

An end in sight

The Senate-passed package will provide stopgap funding for much of the federal government through January 30, giving lawmakers a couple more months to work out agreement on nine of the dozen full-year spending bills.  

The package holds several other provisions, including the full-year appropriations bills for the Agriculture Department, the Legislative Branch, military construction projects and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. 

Seven Democrats and one independent broke ranks Sunday on a procedural vote that advanced the package, drawing condemnation from some House members and outside advocacy groups unhappy that no solution was arrived at to counter skyrocketing health insurance premium increases for people in the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, where bipartisanship is required for major bills to move forward under the 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a floor speech Monday he was “grateful that the end” of the stalemate was in sight. 

“We’re on the 41st day of this shutdown — nutrition benefits are in jeopardy; air travel is in an extremely precarious situation; our staffs and many, many other government workers have been working for nearly six weeks without pay,” Thune said. “I could spend an hour talking about all of the problems we’ve seen, which have snowballed the longer the shutdown has gone on. But all of us, Democrat and Republican, who voted for last night’s bill are well aware of the facts.”

Schumer bid for deal on health care costs fails

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was far less celebratory after his bid to get Republicans to negotiate a deal on health care costs by forcing a shutdown failed. 

“The past few weeks have exposed with shocking clarity how warped Republican priorities truly are. While people’s health care costs have gone up, Republicans have come across as a party preoccupied with ballrooms, Argentina bailouts and private jets,” Schumer said. “Republicans’ breach of trust with the American people is deep and perhaps irreversible.” 

“And now that they have failed to do anything to prevent premiums from going up, the anger that Americans feel against Donald Trump and the Republicans is going to get worse,” Schumer added. “Republicans had their chance to fix this and they blew it. Americans will remember Republican intransigence every time they make a sky-high payment on health insurance.” 

Schumer was insistent throughout the shutdown that Democrats would only vote to advance a funding bill after lawmakers brokered a bipartisan deal to extend tax credits that are set to expire at the end of December for people who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

That all changed on Sunday when Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada voted to move the bill toward a final passage vote.

Maine independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, also voted to advance the legislation.  

Jeffries still supports Schumer

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during a press conference Monday afternoon that he still believes Schumer is effective and should keep his role in leadership, despite the outcome. 

“Leader Schumer and Senate Democrats over the last seven weeks have waged a valiant fight on behalf of the American people. And I’m not going to explain what a handful of Senate Democrats have decided to do. That’s their explanation to offer to the American people,” Jeffries said. 

“What we’re going to continue to do as House Democrats, partnered with our allies throughout America, is to wage the fight, to stay in the coliseum, to win victories in the arena on behalf of the American people notwithstanding whatever disappointments may arise,” he said. “That’s the reality of life, that’s certainly the reality of this place. But we’re in this fight for all the right reasons.” 

Speaker Johnson said earlier in the day that the “people’s government cannot be held hostage to further anyone’s political agenda. That was never right. And shutting down the government never produces anything.”

Johnson reiterated that GOP lawmakers are “open to finding solutions to reduce the oppressive costs of health care,” though he didn’t outline any plans to do that in the weeks and months ahead. 

Blister packs of hormone replacement therapy medication. (Getty photos)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Monday it plans to remove warnings from hormone replacement therapy drugs that can be used to address symptoms of menopause, saying the statements are no longer needed. 

The black box warning, the strongest caution possible from the FDA, was added in the early 2000s after a study from the Women’s Health Initiative showed an uptick in rates of blood clots, breast cancer, heart attacks and strokes for women who used certain types of hormone replacement therapy. 

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said during a press conference the change for estrogen-related products “is based on a robust review of the latest scientific evidence.”

Makary rebuked the medical establishment for not putting enough effort into researching women’s health conditions, including menopause. 

“A male-dominated medical profession, let’s be honest, has minimized the symptoms of menopause, and as a result, women’s health issues have not received the attention that they deserve. More than 80% of women have notable severe symptoms lasting up to eight years. How could the medical establishment get it so wrong for so long?” Makary said. “Women deserve the same rigorous sciences as is used for men.”

Study criticized

Department of Health and Human Services Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health Director Alicia Jackson said the black box warning on estrogen was based on “the flawed, overgeneralized and misinterpreted WHI study.” 

Jackson said menopause leads to a series of complicated and often painful experiences for women, including “sleepless nights, derailed careers, painful sex, broken bones and a loss of wellbeing.”

Jackson explained that when the level of estrogen drops throughout and after menopause, “a cascade of disease and aging begins.”

“A preponderance of data now shows that estrogen, when started early, acts as a protective shield for the brain, lowering risks of memory loss, mental health decline and neurodegenerative disease, even Alzheimer’s,” Jackson said.  

Makary said women should talk with their doctors and can request their estrogen levels be monitored as they approach the age where menopause typically begins and throughout that years-long process. 

He said that sometimes doctors can prescribe microdosing for hormone replacement therapy, followed by a half-dose and eventually a full dose as a woman’s estrogen levels decrease over time. 

Makary didn’t say how many of the companies that produce hormone replacement therapies plan to remove the black box warning but said he expects nearly all will do so. 

“Companies are, generally speaking, very excited when the FDA tells them they can remove a scary warning on your product,” he said. 

Review by panel

The FDA’s process for removing the black box warning requirement, Makary said, began with an expert panel earlier this year. The FDA’s subject-matter experts then conducted a “comprehensive review of the literature” and recommended the agency remove the requirement, which Makary accepted. 

The scientists who were part of the expert panel, he said, have written an article that will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

President of the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists Steven J. Fleischman wrote in a statement that he “commends the HHS leadership for improving the lives of perimenopausal women by making the estrogen products they need more accessible to them.”

“The modifications to certain warning labels for estrogen products are years in the making, reflecting the dedicated advocacy of physicians and patients across the country,” Fleischman wrote. “The updated labels will better allow patients and clinicians to engage in a shared decision-making process, without an unnecessary barrier, when it comes to treatment of menopausal symptoms. ACOG has long advised clinicians to counsel patients based on an individual’s unique risk factors and treatment goals; this announcement does not change ACOG’s guidance on estrogen therapy.”

The U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats urged Republican leaders Wednesday to pass a bill to extend critical food assistance for the most vulnerable Americans during the ongoing government shutdown.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Democrats would support a standalone bill introduced by GOP Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. And New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján attempted to pass by unanimous consent his bill to fund two major nutrition assistance programs.

“Let’s end this hunger crisis before it begins,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. 

But Senate Majority Leader John Thune objected to Luján’s proposal, and the government shutdown entered its fifth week with lawmakers of both parties showing no signs of the agreement needed to reopen the government in time to avoid putting 42 million people at risk of losing their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits Saturday.

Beneficiaries of SNAP, which covers low-income people, children and those with disabilities, are supposed to receive payments Nov. 1. But the shutdown and the Trump administration’s contention it cannot release contingency funding to cover the cost of November benefits mean many will go without.

Democrats held several press conferences Wednesday, the shutdown’s 29th day, raising concerns about the loss of SNAP benefits and slamming the U.S. Department of Agriculture for not tapping into its multi-year contingency fund to approve food assistance for November. 

The move has caused states to scramble to provide aid, strained local food banks and has resulted in a lawsuit from dozens of state officials this week to force the agency to release funds for SNAP.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, urged Thune, a South Dakota Republican, to bring Hawley’s bill to the Senate for a floor vote. The bill would fund SNAP amid the funding lapse. 

Thune declines to bring standalone bills

But Thune has rejected considering bills that fund single programs during the shutdown. He has instead pushed for Democrats to approve a House-passed GOP measure to temporarily reopen the government.

“We’re not going to pick winners and losers,” he said after objecting to Lujan’s bill.”It’s time to fund everybody who’s experiencing the pain from this shutdown.”

Thune said on the Senate floor that he will only call another vote on the House-passed GOP stopgap measure if Senate Democrats “tell me they have enough votes to fund the government.”

The Senate this week, for the 13th time, failed to reach the 60-vote threshold to move forward on a measure to extend government funding through Nov. 21. 

Democrats have voted against the short-term funding bill in an effort to spark negotiations on tax credits that will expire at the end of the year for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Republicans have said those talks can begin when the government is funded. 

Open enrollment for the ACA marketplace starts Nov. 1 in most states. Democrats have predicted that when people start getting their quotes for health insurance and seeing significantly higher prices for out-of-pocket premiums, it will force Republicans to negotiate on tax credits. 

“We are days away from a health care crisis,” Schumer said.  

Shutdown to become ‘very real’

House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a morning press conference the government shutdown “gets very real” Saturday when the federal government will no longer pay out SNAP benefits. 

“You’re talking about tens of millions of Americans at risk of going hungry, if the Senate Democrats continue this gambit,” Johnson said. 

The Louisiana Republican, who voted against the stopgap spending bill that ended the 2018-2019 shutdown, repeatedly urged rank-and-file Democratic senators to “do the right thing.”

“I think Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are irredeemable at this point,” Johnson said, referring to the top Democrats in both chambers. “I’ve given up on the leadership. So we’re trying to appeal to a handful of moderates or centrists who care more about the American people and will put the people’s interest over their own and do the right thing in the Senate.”

Johnson also disparaged a lawsuit filed by Democratic attorneys general that asked a federal judge to require funding for SNAP be paid out during the government shutdown. 

“Instead of taking a simple vote to fund the government, which Senate Democrats have now had more than a dozen opportunities to do, Democrat attorneys general are suing the federal government to try to compel SNAP benefits to flow, despite the government being closed and despite the fact that there is no money to do that,” Johnson said.

Freeze on SNAP contingency fund questioned

Luján held up a printed out copy of USDA’s Sept. 30 shutdown contingency plan during an early afternoon press conference, saying the agency’s refusal to tap into its emergency funds for SNAP recipients was nonsensical.

He slammed the agency for removing its own contingency plan from its website, which verifies that in case of a funding lapse, USDA would use its roughly $6 billion in contingency funds to cover SNAP benefits during a government shutdown.

“This is the bulls–t, taking these plans down to try to lie to the American people and justify why it’s okay for people to go hungry,” Luján said. 

Luján’s bill that he tried to get approval through unanimous consent, would have funded SNAP during a government shutdown as well as the USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.

Senate Agriculture Committee ranking Democrat Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, said that Democrats are ready to support Lujan’s bill or Hawley’s bill. She added that she and several other Democrats plan to co-sponsor Hawley’s bill. So far, Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont is the only Democrat to co-sponsor the bill.

The 10 Senate Republicans who have co-sponsored Hawley’s bill include Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted of Ohio, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and John Cornyn of Texas. 

Colorado Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse argued during a midday press conference that Trump administration officials have “made a conscious and deliberate choice to suspend SNAP benefits.”

“It is outrageous that the Trump administration can come up with $40 billion to bail out Argentina and refuses to spend the money that Congress has appropriated to feed hungry families in America,” Neguse said. 

House Agriculture Committee ranking member Angie Craig, D-Minn., said the law regarding SNAP’s contingency fund “is clear and unambiguous” and that Trump’s “actions display a pattern of callous disregard for America’s hungry seniors, children and veterans.”

Craig said the USDA should use the contingency fund to pay most of the November benefits. The department should then use some of the $23 billion in another account referred to as Section 32 to cover the rest of the cost, Craig said. 

Craig also pushed back against criticisms of SNAP, saying it provides about ​​$6.20 a day for food.

“This does not come close to covering even one trip to the grocery store a month for most American families, especially as this administration has started a trade war that is driving up costs for everyone in our country,” Craig said. “So this is exactly the point.”

Shutdown projected to hurt economy

Because of the ramifications for federal programs like SNAP and delayed paychecks for federal workers, the ongoing shutdown is expected to have a negative impact on the economy, according to an analysis the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released Wednesday.

Director Phillip L. Swagel wrote in an eight-page letter to House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, that the funding lapse “will delay federal spending and have a negative effect on the economy that will mostly, but not entirely, reverse once the shutdown ends.”

The federal government spent $33 billion less than it would have during the first four weeks of the shutdown. The funding lapse lasting for six weeks would result in a $54 billion drop in outlays and if it goes on for eight weeks, it would lead the federal government to put $74 billion less into the economy. 

“Those amounts include delayed spending for employee compensation, goods and services, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Swagel wrote. “CBO expects that when appropriations resume, the spending that did not occur during the shutdown will be made up.”

Swagel cautioned that the projections “are subject to considerable uncertainty. 

“The effects of the shutdown will depend on decisions made by the Administration throughout the shutdown, including decisions about which executive branch activities continue and which are halted.”

A sign with a notice of closure is seen pinned on the fence to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 12, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) 

WASHINGTON —  The Trump administration cannot carry out layoffs that it announced after the government shutdown began Oct. 1 and is barred from issuing any new layoff notices under a court order issued Tuesday. 

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said at the end of an hour-long hearing in the Northern District of California she granted the preliminary injunction because the reductions in force are unlawful and “intended for the purpose of political retribution.”

Illston referenced a social media post by President Donald Trump that said, “I can’t believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”

Michael Velchik, a Justice Department attorney representing the government, argued against the judge issuing a preliminary injunction. 

Velchik said statements from Trump and other administration officials were an expression of policy differences with Democrats and were not evidence of attempted political retribution. 

The hearing was the latest step in a lawsuit filed in late September. In the month since, attorneys for labor unions have contended the Trump administration’s actions violate federal law, while lawyers for the government have said it’s well within the scope of their authority. 

Illston, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton, granted a temporary restraining order in mid-October that she clarified and expanded days later amid a misunderstanding within the administration about its impact.

Some layoffs planned pre-shutdown, government says

Illston said during Tuesday’s hearing that she’s likely to schedule an evidentiary hearing over claims that some layoff notices that have gone out during the shutdown were planned before it began, and shouldn’t be subject to any court orders in this lawsuit. 

Danielle Leonard, an attorney representing the labor unions that brought the case, said she believed that type of hearing could help all involved “get to the heart of” the disagreement. 

Leonard requested the preliminary injunction cover employees at the Interior Department, Commerce Department’s patent office and the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights from layoffs until after the judge scheduled that evidentiary hearing. 

Illston didn’t respond directly to that proposal, but said she planned to release a written version of the preliminary injunction she issued from the bench as soon as Tuesday. 

Illston said the injunction didn’t apply to employees at the Small Business Administration who received layoff notices in late September, before the shutdown began. 

Velchik contended that layoff notices issued since the shutdown began were well within the administration’s authority, saying the country does not “have a fossilized executive branch where we cannot reduce the size.”

Velchik also told the judge that efforts to lay off federal employees during the shutdown were “the right thing to do, morally. And it’s the democratic thing to do.” 

Canned foods on grocery store shelves. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

WASHINGTON — The stakes of the ongoing government shutdown rose Monday as the U.S. Department of Agriculture doubled down on its position that food benefits for November could not be paid and a union for federal workers implored lawmakers to pass a stopgap measure.

As the government shutdown entered day 27, President Donald Trump’s administration sought to add pressure on U.S. Senate Democrats to approve the House Republicans’ stopgap government funding bill by refusing to use USDA resources to stretch critical food assistance benefits to the most vulnerable Americans. 

USDA confirmed over the weekend it will not follow its own contingency plan — which the department has removed from its website — to tap into its multi-year contingency fund to cover food assistance for more than 42 million people for November. 

The department also pinned a fiery message to its website blaming Democrats for the lapse in benefits and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson called on Democrats to approve a stopgap funding measure to restore food assistance.

Democrats have voted against the GOP short-term spending bill to draw attention to and force negotiations on tax credits that will expire at the end of the year for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.

“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” according to the banner across USDA’s website. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 1. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”

The banner falsely indicated that Democrats’ sole goal was to provide health insurance to immigrants in the country without legal authorization and transgender patients.

Reversal on SNAP contingency

But the move represents a reversal from the administration’s own policy, laid out in a Sept. 30 contingency plan on the eve of the shutdown that States Newsroom reported Friday. 

The plan detailed how the agency would use the contingency fund provided by Congress to continue benefits. The fund holds roughly $6 billion, about two-thirds of a month of SNAP benefits, meaning USDA would still have to reshuffle an additional $3 billion to cover the remainder for November.

Hundreds of Democratic lawmakers, and the top Senate Republican appropriator, Susan Collins of Maine, have pressed USDA to use its contingency fund. 

Democrats, such as New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, have also criticized the Trump administration for refusing to use its resources, despite the contradiction in its own Sept. 30 contingency plan and its shuffling of funds for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.

“We know that Trump has the resources to continue SNAP and other programs like WIC,” Booker said. “Weaponizing food assistance is, simply put, a new and disgusting low.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed that sentiment in a floor speech Monday.

“The administration is making an intentional choice not to fund SNAP this weekend,” the New York Democrat said. “The emergency funding is there. The administration is just choosing not to use it.”

USDA did not respond to a request for comment Monday. 

Millions of vulnerable people, such those who have low incomes or are living with disabilities, rely on SNAP. About 40% of SNAP recipients are children 17 and younger.   

Union calls for stopgap

Another form of pressure on Democrats arrived Monday with the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, calling for lawmakers to strike a deal to reopen the government.  

As the shutdown nears a month, most of the roughly 2 million civilian federal workers have already missed paychecks. 

The AFGE is typically more politically aligned with Democrats and had held off on publicly weighing in in favor of a stopgap until Monday when Everett Kelley, the union’s president, called for Congress to end the government shutdown and pass a continuing resolution to resume funding.

“Because when the folks who serve this country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of this shutdown, they aren’t looking for partisan spin,” Kelley said in the statement. “They’re looking for the wages they earned. The fact that they’re being cheated out of it is a national disgrace.” 

Johnson added that he hopes the recent statement from the union representing 800,000 federal workers pushes Senate Democrats to approve the House’s stopgap.

“They understand the reality of this,” he said. 

Johnson defends USDA move

Johnson defended USDA’s decision not to use its contingency fund for SNAP during a morning press conference.

USDA has argued that those funds can only be used for natural disasters or similar emergencies. 

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, agreed with that reasoning.

“It certainly looks legitimate to me,” he said. “The contingency funds are not legally available to cover the benefits right now. The reason is because it’s a finite source of funds. It was appropriated by Congress, and if they transfer funds from these other sources, it pulls it away immediately from school meals and infant formula. So … it’s a trade off.” 

USDA earlier this month reshuffled funds to several nutrition programs, including WIC,  the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. 

States scrambling

States are demanding answers about why USDA has paused SNAP benefits. On Friday, 23 state attorneys general sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and questioned the legal basis for the agency to pause benefits for SNAP.

In the face of disappearing federal funds, states may choose to spend more on food assistance,  

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Monday she would “fast-track” $30 million in state emergency food assistance to supplement SNAP benefits.

Johnson said that if Senate Democrats are worried about SNAP benefits not being available for November, they should pass the House’s stopgap government funding bill. 

“The best way for SNAP benefits to be paid on time is for the Democrats to end their shutdown, and that could happen right now, if they would show some spine,” Johnson said. 

The U.S. Capitol building and Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., at sunset on Oct. 14, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Some members of Congress are asking for their salaries to be withheld during the government shutdown, while federal workers on Friday missed their first full paycheck since many operations closed on Oct. 1.

With no movement toward a deal to end the shutdown, the House remained on a prolonged break from Capitol Hill, the Senate left for its usual long weekend and President Donald Trump prepared to depart for a trip to China, where he will likely focus much more on foreign policy and tariffs than the funding lapse. 

The president, lawmakers and federal judges all receive their regular paychecks during government shutdowns, unlike the 2 million civilian federal employees and thousands of staffers who work in the legislative branch. Members of Congress are paid $174,000 a year and leaders are paid more.

Active duty military members would also normally miss their paychecks, but the Defense Department reprogrammed $8 billion earlier this month to avoid a missed payday for U.S. troops. It’s unclear if the Pentagon can do that again ahead of the Oct. 31 pay date or if there was enough money left to cover those salaries. 

Pay for Congress

Unlike most federal workers, members of Congress have the option to receive their pay as normal, donate their salaries to charity, give the money back to the Treasury, or have their checks withheld during this shutdown.  

Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Gabe Amo posted a letter Thursday evening from House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine L. Szpindor confirming that House members’ salaries can be held back until after the funding lapse ends. 

Szpindor wrote that legal requirements, including the 27th Amendment, entitle members of Congress to their pay and that any lawmaker who has their check withheld during a shutdown can request it be distributed at any time. Szpindor did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted said the Senate Financial Clerk told their office that while senators are required to be paid, officials can withhold his check until after the shutdown ends, at his request. 

The Senate disbursing office will continue to cut the check, but Husted will not pick it up until after Congress funds the government, the spokesperson said. 

Husted doesn’t believe members of Congress should receive their salaries on time when other federal workers cannot, the spokesperson said. 

A different Senate staffer, speaking on background about the issue, told States Newsroom the salary for another senator was transitioned from direct deposit to a physical paycheck so it could be held by the disbursing office for the duration of the shutdown, at that senator’s request. 

Members of Congress who have asked for their salaries to be withheld include Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim, Oklahoma Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice and Oregon Democratic Rep. Janelle Bynum, among others.  

Spokespeople for Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., did not respond to a request for comment about whether they are having their salaries withheld during the shutdown. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he is having his paycheck held back.

Can lawmakers’ salaries legally be withheld?

Congress has voted several times over the years to officially withhold members’ salaries during a shutdown, but none of the bills have ever become law. There have been questions during past funding lapses about whether members’ paychecks could legally be withheld.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office wrote in a letter to Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst just before the shutdown began that member pay “is required by the Constitution and is considered mandatory spending.” 

“Thus, Members of Congress would continue to be paid during a lapse in discretionary appropriations,” CBO Director Phillip L. Swagel wrote. 

That assessment lines up with a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, updated in August, that says “Members of Congress continue to receive their pay during a lapse in appropriations for a number of reasons.”

Lawmaker salaries “have been provided by a permanent, mandatory, appropriation since” 1981, the report says.

The U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 6, Clause 1, says: “Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”

And the 27th Amendment to the Constitution says: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”

The CRS report quotes the Government Accountability Office’s principles of federal appropriations law as saying, “The salary of a Member of Congress is fixed by statute and therefore cannot be waived without specific statutory authority.”

But the report also points out nothing prevents a member of Congress from accepting the salary and then donating all or part of it back to the Treasury.

No options and no paychecks for feds

That same choice isn’t available for the people who work for members of Congress or those at departments and agencies throughout the executive branch. 

They must go without their paychecks until after Congress and the president broker a deal to fund the government and end the shutdown. 

Any worker who manages national security issues, or the protection of life or property, is considered exempt and continues working until the shutdown ends. Any federal employee not in that category is placed on furlough. 

The Senate was unable to advance multiple bills Thursday that would have provided salaries to some federal employees and contractors during the shutdown. 

Absent new congressional action, both exempt and non-exempt federal workers are supposed to receive back pay under a 2019 law once government reopens, though Trump and administration officials have cast doubt on whether they will do that for employees in the executive branch. 

Guidance from the House Committee on Administration says that all employees who work within the legislative branch will receive back pay once a funding bill becomes law. 

“Neither essential nor furloughed employees are authorized to receive compensation during a lapse in government funding,” the report says. “Federal law statutorily requires retroactive pay for furloughed and essential employees following the end of a lapse in government funding.”

 

An excavator works to clear rubble Oct. 23, 2025 after the East Wing of the White House was demolished. The demolition is part of President Donald Trump's plan to build a ballroom on the eastern side of the White House. (Photo by Eric Lee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Workers this week demolished the East Wing of the White House, originally built in 1942, to make room for construction of a ballroom that President Donald Trump had said wouldn’t impact the building. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the roughly $300 million project during a Thursday briefing, saying it is the next in a long line of additions and renovations to the campus that have taken place throughout the country’s history. 

“Just trust the process,” Leavitt said. “This is going to be a magnificent addition to the White House for many years to come and it’s not costing the taxpayers anything.”

The project is being fully financed by Trump and several private donors, including Amazon, Apple, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Caterpillar Inc., Comcast Corporation, Google, Lockheed Martin, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Union Pacific Railroad, investors Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, among others. 

Trump said later in the day that he plans to allocate “millions of dollars” to the ballroom and has spent his own money on other White House projects, including floors and lighting in the Palm Room. 

“I spent millions of dollars on this building, taking care of it,” he said. “It was not properly maintained and now it’s starting to gleam like it should. It should really gleam.”

Photos from The Associated Press appeared to show the ballroom demolition, which was first reported Monday, complete.

Leavitt said tearing down the East Wing did not need approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, according to a legal opinion from that organization, an executive-branch agency responsible for managing federal construction projects in and around Washington, D.C. 

“Their general counsel has said when it comes to phase one of this project, the tearing down of the current East Wing structure, a submission is not required legally for that,” Leavitt said. “Only for vertical construction will a submission be required and that’s a legal opinion from them and we are following that legal opinion.”

Design modified

Trump said in late July that construction of the ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building” and ballparked the price at $200 million.  

“It will be near it but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” Trump said at the time. “It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”

Leavitt, when pressed Thursday why the president didn’t tell Americans he would need to demolish the entire East Wing, said designs were modified throughout the process. 

“The plans changed when the president heard counsel from the architects and the construction companies, who said that in order for this East Wing to be modern and beautiful for many, many years to come, for it to be a truly strong and stable structure, this phase one that we’re now in was necessary,” Leavitt said.

She didn’t offer an explanation for why the price had increased by $100 million, repeatedly saying no taxpayer money would go toward the ballroom. 

Security plans, official name unknown

Leavitt declined to say whether the project will include upgrades to the bunker that sits below the East Wing, known as the president’s emergency operations center, citing security concerns. 

“Like any security enhancements that are made on the White House grounds, those will be made and maintained by the United States Secret Service,” she said. 

Trump is also deciding what exactly to name the new ballroom, though Leavitt declined to detail what he’s considering.  

“There will be an official name,” she said. “I will let the president announce that once he firmly decides on it.”

Trump is not currently considering any other major construction or renovation projects on the White House grounds, though Leavitt didn’t rule out that could happen during the remainder of his term, which will last until Jan. 20, 2029. 

“Not to my knowledge, no,” Leavitt said. “But he is a builder at heart, clearly. And so his heart and his mind is always churning about how to improve things here on the White House grounds. But at this point in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president’s main priority.” 

Call for preservation

The nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation sent a letter earlier this week urging an immediate halt to demolition of the East Wing “until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes, including consultation and review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, and to invite comment from the public.”

President and CEO Carol Quillen wrote the 90,000-square-foot ballroom could easily dwarf the 55,000-square-foot White House. 

“As we approach the 250th Anniversary of our country’s founding, the preservation of historic places that represent our nation’s history has never been more relevant or important,” Quillen wrote. “We urge you to take into account the deep reverence that all Americans hold for this iconic place, and to initiate the review process that can ensure the preservation of the historic White House for future generations.”

The National Capital Planning Commission could not be reached for comment Thursday since it is closed due to the ongoing government shutdown. The Commission of Fine Arts did not immediately return a request for comment. 

The White House Historical Association writes on its website that the East Wing was constructed in 1942 “to house additional staff and offices, reflecting the growing complexity of the federal government during World War II.” 

“The East Wing’s construction was highly controversial due to its timing during wartime,” the website states. “Congressional Republicans labeled the expenditure as wasteful, with some accusing (President Franklin D.) Roosevelt of using the project to bolster his presidency’s image. The secretive nature of the construction, tied to military purposes, further fueled suspicions. However, the East Wing’s utility in supporting the modern presidency eventually quieted critics.”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters inside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The government shutdown became the second longest in U.S. history Wednesday, though the mounting repercussions for dozens of federal programs, including food aid for some of the country’s most vulnerable residents, failed to spur any momentum in Congress. 

The Senate was unable for the 12th time to advance a stopgap spending bill that would have reopened the government and kept funding mostly on autopilot through Nov. 21. 

The 54-46 vote was nearly identical to those that have come before, a predictable outcome since neither Republicans nor Democrats are talking to each other. The legislation needed at least 60 votes to advance under the Senate’s legislative filibuster. 

Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, both Democrats, and Maine independent Sen. Angus King voted with Republicans to advance the legislation. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted no.

The vote came shortly after Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley held the floor for nearly 23 hours, speaking at length about his concerns and objections to President Donald Trump’s administration. 

The government staying shut down much longer will lead to a funding shortfall for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which is relied on by 42 million low-income Americans, nearly 40% of them children younger than 17. 

Despite that looming deadline, congressional leaders remain in their political silos, just as they have since before the shutdown began 22 days ago. They’ve repeatedly held press conferences and meetings with their own members instead of making the types of compromises needed to keep government functioning on the most basic level. 

Republican leaders are waiting for Democrats to help advance the stopgap spending bill in the Senate and say they won’t negotiate on anything until after that happens. 

Democrats maintain they won’t support the House-passed continuing resolution until there is bipartisan agreement to extend tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. 

Johnson warns funding process at risk

The stalled short-term spending bill is supposed to give lawmakers more time to work out agreement on the dozen full-year government funding bills, which Congress was supposed to pass by the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year. 

But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warned during a morning press conference that lawmakers may scrap that process for a second year in a row if Democrats don’t advance the continuing resolution soon. 

“We’re getting closer to November. It is going to be more and more difficult with each passing hour to get all the appropriations done on time,” Johnson said. “We acknowledge that, but we have to do this on a day-by-day basis.”

House Democratic leadership dismissed the notion of a longer temporary spending bill or continuing resolution, possibly for a full year, during an afternoon press conference. 

Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, of Massachusetts, said her message to Republicans is, “Why are you talking about the length of the (continuing resolution)? Come to the table and negotiate with us. End this health care crisis, help the American people.”

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sidestepped specifics when asked about a longer stopgap funding bill.

“At this point, we need to reopen the government. We need to enact a spending bill that actually meets the needs of the American people in terms of their health, their safety and economic well-being, particularly in terms of driving down the high cost of living, while at the same time decisively addressing the Republican health care crisis that grows greatly by the day,” the New York Democrat said.

Lawmakers have been unable to approve all the annual funding bills on time since 1996 and have consistently relied on stopgap spending bills to give themselves more time to work out agreements between the House and Senate. 

The alternative to full-year government funding bills is to use a series of stopgap spending bills, or one that lasts the entire year that keeps spending mostly on autopilot. 

Either option requires bipartisanship to gain the support of at least 60 senators, since Republicans control 53 seats. That means the only solution to the shutdown is for Republican and Democratic leaders to compromise. 

But that seemed like a remote possibility Wednesday. 

Democrats criticize layoffs

House Democrats’ Steering and Policy Committee held a mock hearing where they railed against Republicans and Trump for how they’ve managed unified control of government. 

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., rebuked Trump administration officials for trying to lay off federal workers by the thousands and for canceling funding to projects in regions of the country that vote for Democrats. 

“It is a corrupt abuse of power that they have chosen to carry out,” DeLauro said. 

White House budget director Russ Vought and Trump, she said, “have launched a scorched earth campaign to decimate the federal government and the programs and services the American people depend on.”

Rob Shriver, managing director of the civil service strong and good government initiatives at Democracy Forward, who worked as deputy director at the Office of Personnel Management during the Biden administration, said the layoffs could negatively affect federal operations for years. 

“The government has had historic challenges in recruiting young people and recruiting tech talent, and what this administration is doing is turning it into a workforce that doesn’t try to recruit the best and the brightest, but that tries to recruit the most loyal,” Shriver said. 

Lawsuit gains more unions

The Trump administration’s efforts to lay off thousands of workers during the shutdown have been on hold since last week, when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that was later expanded.  

The lawsuit was originally brought by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. It expanded last week to include the National Federation of Federal Employees, the National Association of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union.

The updated restraining order issued by U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Susan Illston applies to any federal department or agency that includes employees represented by those unions, even if the Trump administration doesn’t recognize their contracts. 

Illston on Wednesday granted a request to add the National Treasury Employees Union, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and American Federation of Teachers to the case. 

Illston wrote that she found “good cause exists to modify the existing TRO without a written response from defendants due to the emergency nature of this case.” 

Those three unions represent hundreds of thousands more federal workers, including those at the departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice and Veterans Affairs. 

Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Social Security Administration are also represented by the three new unions seeking to join the case. 

The next stage in the lawsuit comes on Oct. 28, when the judge has set a hearing to determine whether to issue a preliminary injunction in the case. 

‘Patently illegal’

AFGE National President Everett Kelley wrote in a statement released Wednesday that the “administration’s move to fire thousands of patriotic civil servants while the government is shut down is patently illegal, and I’m glad we are able to expand our lawsuit to protect even more federal workers from facing termination.”

“President Trump has made no secret that this is about punishing his political enemies and has nothing to do with the actual work that these employees perform,” Kelley added. “Data provided by the administration under court order illustrates how vast and unlawful these intended firings are and validates our union’s determination to challenge this illegal action.”

Ashley Murray contributed to this report. 

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington. D.C., on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON —  On day 21 of the federal government shutdown, the political tensions and policy differences that contributed to it appeared likely to destroy any chance for the GOP-controlled Congress to find the bipartisanship needed to pass the dozen bills needed to fund the government. 

While that is very inside baseball, failing to approve the 12 appropriations bills will block lawmakers’ funding requests for high-profile projects in their home states, known as earmarks, from becoming law—like highway construction, water systems, education projects, research facilities and more. 

A full-year stopgap spending bill would also cause significant headaches for departments throughout the government that have faced challenges adjusting to the series of stopgaps that funded the government for the last year, even without the turmoil of the layoffs and funding cancellations enacted by the Donald Trump administration.

The full-year spending bills are also the best chance Congress has to exercise its constitutional authority over government spending and are supposed to spur debate about where taxes paid by Americans can most help the country. 

Skipping that process and avoiding tough conversations about where funding is most needed, and where it is not, absolves lawmakers of a core job responsibility — securing money to help their constituents have better lives. 

As of Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans appeared nowhere near any kind of deal to reopen the government, which has been shuttered since Oct. 1. Members of the House are not in session and last voted on Sept. 19. The Senate has voted unsuccessfully 11 times on the same House-passed stopgap spending bill, failing to gain the 60 votes needed for it to advance. 

‘Extremely harmful’ effect of another stopgap 

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she’s opposed to using what’s called a continuing resolution for the rest of the fiscal year instead of working out an agreement on the full-year government funding bills. 

“The impacts of another year-long CR would be extremely harmful to federal programs, particularly the Department of Defense, and should be avoided at all costs,” Collins said. 

Congress used three continuing resolutions to keep government funded during the last fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. 

Lawmakers have relied on stopgap spending bills to fund the government for the entire fiscal year a handful of times during the past several decades. 

But Congress has not used stopgap spending bills for two consecutive years since the late 1970s, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. 

Senate Republicans lunch with Trump

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said after a lunch at the White House with President Donald Trump and other GOP senators that talks about the full-year government funding bills can only begin after the shutdown ends. 

“We want a normal appropriations process. We want to give them an opportunity to sit down and litigate some of the issues they want to talk about,” Thune said. “But that can’t happen until the government gets opened up again.”

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven, chairman of the Agriculture appropriations subcommittee, said a full-year continuing resolution is “absolutely” possible if the process doesn’t start moving forward soon. 

But Hoeven declined to say if he’d vote for a stopgap spending bill that voids the appropriations process for the second year in a row. And said he’s “of course” concerned about the negative impacts of a full-year continuing resolution. 

“I don’t want to get ahead of the process. What I want to do is get government open and get back to regular order,” Hoeven said. 

Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee and a senior appropriator, said it will take real leadership in both chambers to get any movement on the full-year bills. He also said he’s vehemently opposed to a stopgap spending bill for the entire year. 

“I think if we vote for a full-year CR, we’ve fully abdicated our responsibility, constitutionally, to be the power of the purse,” Reed said. 

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said he “could not support a full-year CR.”

“We’ve gotten so much of the work done, and now it’s just a matter of whether or not Democrats allow us to bring them to the floor,” Rounds said, referring to the full-year Defense spending bill that failed to advance last week. 

Rounds said he thinks Democrats are struggling to figure out a way to end the government shutdown, which would potentially allow work on the full-year bills to get going again. 

“I think they made a very serious strategic error when they decided to jump on and to shut down government in the first place,” Rounds said. “And now they don’t have a graceful way out, and that’s a problem.”

Process, interrupted

Normally, by now, Republicans and Democrats would have agreed how much to spend on defense and domestic programs and divvied up that roughly $1.8 trillion to the dozen full-year government spending bills. 

The lawmakers tasked with writing those appropriations bills would have started meeting to work out spending levels and policy differences between the original House bills and the original Senate bills. 

That is all on hold because of the shutdown and may never even happen, potentially leading Republicans to write a stopgap spending bill for the rest of the year. 

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, said she wants Democrats to vote to reopen the government, so she can get back to working on her full-year appropriations bill. 

“I want to do my job, which is why I am so frustrated that we didn’t get to move forward with appropriations bills on Thursday,” Britt said, also referring to the Defense bill. “I think it was incredibly short-sighted of my Democratic colleagues to vote that down, because this is our opportunity to actually do work for the American people. And I think we should get our job done, not pass the buck.” 

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, the top Democrat on the State-Foreign Operations appropriations subcommittee, said he still has “hope for the appropriations process.”

“Obviously, we have to get through the shutdown, but there’s bipartisan desire to get something done and to avoid a full-year CR,” Schatz said, adding that it’s hard to do anything with the House out of session. 

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Agriculture appropriations subcommittee, opposes using a full-year continuing resolution over negotiating bipartisan versions of the full-year government funding bills. 

“I am concerned about a full-year CR, and I do think that we should get back to the appropriations process and get those bills done,” Shaheen said. “I think there’s interest on both sides of the aisle to do that.”

Uncharted waters

Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the top Democrat on the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations subcommittee, said that GOP leaders will have to accept the regular give-and-take of bipartisan negotiations if they want to get anything through the upper chamber. 

“I think first and foremost, we have to really make sure that Speaker (Mike) Johnson recognizes that the only way forward with appropriations and other matters is a bipartisan way forward,” Baldwin said. “That’s the only way you pass things that require 60 votes in the Senate.”

Baldwin said that means both chambers should use the total spending level that received bipartisan backing in the Senate Appropriations Committee, not the lower spending level used by the House panel. 

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, was far more pessimistic than many of his colleagues.

“I think you’re living in a world that does not exist,” Murphy told States Newsroom. “I think 2025 is totally unlike every other year that has existed before. Our democracy is literally dying under our feet. The president is engaged in mass scale illegality and corruption, and nothing that we have done here in the past will be precedent for what will happen in the future. The House of Representatives has never boycotted Washington for a month-and-a-half. The majority party has never refused to negotiate with the minority party. So I think we’re in really uncharted waters, and nothing can happen until the House Republicans return and Senate Republicans decide to negotiate.”

A closed sign is seen on the Washington Monument on Oct. 1, 2025, in Washington, D.C., the first day of the 2025 government shutdown. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Interior Department announced Monday it will pause efforts to lay off 2,050 employees throughout the country, after a federal judge expanded a temporary restraining order late last week.

The new filing provides more information about how the Trump administration plans to reduce the size and scope of a department that oversees much of the country’s public lands. 

Rachel Borra, chief human capital officer at Interior, wrote in a 35-page document the layoffs would affect employees at the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey, among others. 

The National Park Service layoffs would target several areas of the country, including 63 of 224 workers at the Northeast regional office, 69 of 223 at the Southeast regional office and 57 of 198 at the Pacific West regional office. 

The Northeast region holds 83 sites throughout Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

The Southeast region “has 73 parks across 4 million acres in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.”

The Pacific West region encompasses more than “60 national park sites across California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, parts of Arizona and Montana, and the territories of Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.”

The layoffs cannot take place under the temporary restraining order that U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Susan Illston clarified and expanded Friday during an emergency hearing. 

The layoffs would be further blocked if Illston, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, issues a preliminary injunction during a hearing scheduled for later this month. 

Advocates and current and former Interior staff members have told States Newsroom that bare-bones staffing during the government shutdown across the department and the U.S. Forest Service already is leaving America’s treasured natural assets vulnerable to lasting damage.

Hundreds proposed for layoffs at Commerce, HHS

The other briefs filed Monday were from the departments of Commerce and Health and Human Services, which said in earlier court documents officials planned to lay off hundreds of federal workers. 

Commerce’s latest numbers say it would like to lay off 102 workers, while the Health and Human Services Department told the judge officials plan to get rid of 954 people. Both confirmed those efforts are on hold under the temporary restraining order. 

The numbers were different from those included in earlier filings to the court in the lawsuit, which was brought by labor unions representing federal workers. 

Those declarations in the earlier filings detailed the below layoff plans:

• Commerce: Approximately 600 employees
• Education: Remained at 466 employees
• Health and Human Services: 982 employees
• Housing and Urban Development: 442 employees
• Homeland Security: 54 employees
• Treasury: 1,377 employees

Federal attorneys wrote in Monday’s court documents that all other departments “have determined, to the best of their knowledge and based on their investigation to date, that they have no additional information to provide in response to the Court’s October 17, 2025, modified TRO, that was not already provided in their October 17, 2025, declarations.”

Energy Department layoffs protested by Dems

The Energy Department wrote in a filing that it didn’t need to declare any planned layoffs to the court since the Reduction in Force notices it had issued didn’t have an effective date. An earlier court filing said the department sent those notices to 179 employees.

Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., and House Energy-Water Appropriations subcommittee ranking member Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, wrote in a letter that the Energy Department’s planned layoffs were “a clear act of political retribution that will hurt communities across the country.”

“These actions, which reportedly affect 179 employees, appear to be part of a broader effort to implement the administration’s budget request without congressional approval—circumventing the appropriations process and undermining congressional intent,” Murray and Kaptur wrote. “The Department’s actions will raise energy prices for American families by disrupting the implementation of key programs that increase supply and reduce costs for hard-working Americans.”

The layoffs are one of the many ways the Trump administration is approaching the government shutdown differently than it did during the last prolonged funding lapse, which took place from December 2018 through January 2019. 

White House officials have canceled funding approved by Congress for projects in regions of the country that tend to vote for Democrats. And signaled they may not provide back pay for federal workers placed on furlough, which is authorized by a 2019 law that President Donald Trump signed during his first term.

Johnson ties shutdown to No Kings rallies

Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said during a morning press conference he hopes Senate Democrats vote to advance a stopgap spending bill soon, allowing the government to reopen. 

The conclusion of the No Kings protests, he said, could help reduce pressure on Democrats to keep the government shut down. 

“Now that Chuck Schumer has had his spectacle, he’s had his big protest against America, this is our plea: We’re asking, and I think everybody in this room and everybody watching, listening to our voices this morning should be hoping that he is finally now ready to go to work and end this shutdown and stop inflicting pain on the American people,” Johnson said. 

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters outside the White House he believes moderate Democrats, specifically Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, are ready to end the shutdown.

Shaheen told the New Hampshire Bulletin on Friday that no official negotiations to end the shutdown are happening. She also criticized the administration’s multibillion dollar bailout for Argentina that Trump finalized last week as federal agencies remain dark during the funding lapse and as health insurance premiums are set to increase.

But Hassett repeated the argument that Republicans won’t negotiate until Senate Democrats vote to reopen the government. He told CNBC Monday morning he believes that will happen “sometime this week.”

“If they want to have policy disputes, they could do it through regular order, but just shutting down the government and making 750,000 government workers not get their paychecks, it’s just not acceptable,” the White House economic adviser said.

The Senate failed for an 11th time later in the day to advance the House-passed stopgap spending bill that would keep the government up and running through Nov. 21. 

The 50-43 vote followed a familiar pattern, with Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Maine independent Sen. Angus King voting with Republicans to advance the bill. Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who has been voting to advance the bill, didn’t vote. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted no.

Ashley Murray and Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report. 

The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 1, 2025, with a sign advising the Capitol Visitors Center is closed due to the government shutdown.  (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday clarified and broadened a temporary restraining order she issued earlier this week that blocks the Trump administration from laying off federal employees during the ongoing government shutdown. 

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Susan Illston said during an emergency hearing the restraining order affects any agency that has employees who are members of the unions that brought the lawsuit or are in collective bargaining units.

The Trump administration choosing not to recognize those union activities based on an earlier executive order doesn’t mean an agency can issue layoff notices, she said. 

Illston, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, specifically said the departments of Interior and Health and Human Services must comply with the TRO and cannot issue Reductions in Force, or RIFs. 

“It is not complicated,” Illston said. “During this time these agencies should not be doing RIFs of the protected folks that we’re talking about.” 

She also added the National Federation of Federal Employees, Service Employees International Union and National Association of Government Employees, Inc. to the lawsuit and the temporary restraining order. 

Meanwhile, as the shutdown that began Oct. 1 extends with no end in sight, administration officials said they will freeze $11 billion in Army Corps of Engineers projects and furlough Energy Department employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Unions argue administration ignoring part of judge’s order

The California case was originally brought by the American Federation of Government Employees, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Danielle Leonard, an attorney representing those unions, said during the hearing the Trump administration had been “overly narrowly interpreting the scope of the TRO and ignoring some of the language in the TRO.”

Leonard pointed to a brief filed by the Department of Health and Human Services that said the agency hadn’t issued any layoff notices to workers covered by the TRO, even though an earlier filing to the court said HHS had sent notices to 982 employees.

That department, Leonard said, appeared to take the position that an earlier executive order ended all union representation at HHS. 

“The government is well aware that is a disputed issue,” Leonard said. 

Elizabeth Hedges, counsel for the Trump administration, said after considerable back and forth that she didn’t agree with Leonard and the judge’s interpretation of the temporary restraining order’s impact. 

“I would submit that’s not what the TRO says,” Hedges said, though she later told the judge she would make sure the administration complied with the updated explanation of the restraining order.  

Hedges also told the judge the Interior Department didn’t previously disclose it was contemplating layoffs because officials began considering those RIFs before the shutdown and were only going to implement them during the shutdown because it’s gone on so long. 

The judge ordered the Trump administration to tell the court by 9 a.m. Pacific on Monday about any actual or imminent layoff notices under the full scope of the restraining order. 

Army Corps to pause billions in big-city projects 

White House budget director Russ Vought announced hours before the emergency court hearing the administration plans to freeze and may unilaterally cancel billions more in funding approved by Congress. 

“The Democrat shutdown has drained the Army Corps of Engineers’ ability to manage billions of dollars in projects,” Vought wrote in a social media post. “The Corps will be immediately pausing over $11 billion in lower-priority projects & considering them for cancellation, including projects in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore. More information to come from the Army Corps of Engineers.”

The Trump administration has been cited several times by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office for not spending money approved by Congress as lawmakers intended. 

Generally, after Congress approves a spending bill and it becomes law, the president is supposed to faithfully implement its provisions. 

Any president that wants to cancel funding lawmakers already approved is supposed to send Congress a rescissions request, which starts a 45-day clock for members to approve, modify, or ignore the request. 

The Trump administration followed that legal pathway earlier this year when it asked Congress to cancel billions in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and foreign aid. 

The House and Senate, both controlled by Republicans, approved the request after senators preserved full funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

The White House budget office sent up another rescissions request in late August, asking lawmakers to cancel billions of additional spending on foreign aid programs. 

Neither chamber has taken action to approve that request, but Vought believes that since it was sent up within the last 45 days of the fiscal year, he is allowed to cancel that funding without congressional action. 

The GAO and Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, have both called the maneuver, known as a pocket rescission, unlawful. 

Nuclear security workers to be furloughed

The Trump administration also announced Friday that it would have more than 1,000 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration stop working for the remainder of the shutdown, joining hundreds of thousands of others on furlough. According to its website, the NNSA’s job “is to ensure the United States maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile through the application of unparalleled science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing.”

An Energy Department spokesperson wrote in an email to States Newsroom that “approximately 1,400 NNSA federal employees will be furloughed as of Monday, October 20th and nearly 400 NNSA federal employees will continue to work to support the protection of property and the safety of human life. NNSA’s Office of Secure Transportation remains funded through October 27, 2025.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the spokesperson said, “will be in Las Vegas, Nevada and at the National Nuclear Security Site Monday to further discuss the impacts of the shutdown on America’s nuclear deterrent.”

During past shutdowns federal employees that must keep working as well as those placed on furlough have received back pay. But Trump and administration officials have signaled they may try to reinterpret a 2019 law that authorized back pay for all federal workers once Congress passes a funding bill and the government reopens. 

The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary are set to run out of funding in the next few days, a new development in the ongoing government shutdown that will likely reverberate throughout much of the country. 

The Supreme Court, which is in the middle of its fall term and slated to hear oral arguments for the next several months, will run out of funding Saturday, according to a statement from public information officer Patricia McCabe.

“At that point, if new appropriated funds do not become available, the Court will make changes in its operations to comply with the Anti Deficiency Act,” McCabe wrote. “The Supreme Court will continue to conduct essential work such as hearing oral arguments, issuing orders and opinions, processing case filings, and providing police and building support needed for those operations.”

The building, she added, will be closed to the public but remain open for official business.

A spokesperson for the Supreme Court told States Newsroom in late September that it planned to “rely on permanent funds not subject to annual approval, as it has in the past, to maintain operations through the duration of short-term lapses of annual appropriations.”

U.S. federal courts will run out of funding “to sustain full, paid operations” Monday due to the ongoing government shutdown, though they “will maintain limited operations necessary to perform the Judiciary’s constitutional functions,” according to an announcement released Friday.

“Federal judges will continue to serve, in accordance with the Constitution, but court staff may only perform certain excepted activities permitted under the Anti-Deficiency Act,” the U.S. Courts statement said.

The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Congress was unable to find a bipartisan path forward on a stopgap spending bill. The U.S. Courts said at the time they would be able to use “court fee balances and other funds not dependent on a new appropriation” to keep up and running through Friday.

The new announcement from the courts said that several activities are excepted and can legally continue during the funding lapse. Those include anything necessary “for the safety of human life and protection of property, and activities otherwise authorized by federal law. 

“Excepted work will be performed without pay during the funding lapse. Staff members not performing excepted work will be placed on furlough.”

The statement said that each individual court throughout the federal system will make its own decision about how active cases will proceed during the shutdown. 

“Anyone with Judiciary business should direct questions to the appropriate clerk of court’s office, probation and pretrial supervision office, or federal defender organization, or consult their websites,” the announcement read. 

People summoned for federal jury duty will still need to report as instructed, since that program “is funded by money not affected by the appropriations lapse and will continue to operate.”

The online case management and electronic filing system, known as PACER, will keep operating despite the shutdown’s impact on the courts. 

A sign with a notice of closure is seen pinned on the fence to the National Zoo on Oct. 12, 2025, in Washington, D.C. . The closure affects all the Smithsonian's 21 museums, its research centers and the National Zoo. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate left for its customary long weekend Thursday afternoon, following a brief three days in session despite the ongoing government shutdown. 

The House remained on an extended break from Capitol Hill, where neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed motivated to talk to each other despite mounting repercussions from the funding lapse.

Federal courts, for example, reported just as the shutdown began Oct. 1, they could use “fee balances and other funds not dependent on a new appropriation” to keep up and running through Friday, Oct. 17. 

“If the shutdown continues after Judiciary funds are exhausted, the courts will then operate under the terms of the Anti-Deficiency Act, which allows work to continue during a lapse in appropriations if it is necessary to support the exercise of Article III judicial powers,” the announcement stated. “Under this scenario, each court and federal defender’s office would determine the staffing resources necessary to support such work.”

A spokesperson for the courts wrote in an email to States Newsroom there were no updates to offer on funding or operations as of Thursday but signaled there could potentially be an announcement Friday. 

Trump spending cuts, layoffs 

The shutdown has had widespread ramifications across all three branches of government, including the Trump administration’s decision to cut spending approved by Congress and lay off thousands of federal employees, though that was temporarily halted by a federal judge this week. 

Federal workers who are categorized as essential will not receive their paychecks until after the shutdown ends. Furloughed employees may never receive the back pay authorized in a 2019 law if the Trump administration reinterprets it, as officials have said they might. 

None of the consequences produced any real sense of urgency this week on Capitol Hill, where West Virginia Republican Sen. Jim Justice organized a birthday party for his dog, or at the White House, where President Donald Trump held a ball for donors to his ballroom and focused on foreign policy. 

Just as they have for the last several weeks, members of Congress and administration officials continued holding separate press conferences and TV news appearances, lambasting their political opponents, none of which will help move the two sides closer together to reopen government. 

Failed vote No. 10

Senators failed for the 10th time to advance the stopgap government spending bill on a 51-45 vote, short of the 60 needed to move forward under the chamber’s legislative filibuster. Republicans control the chamber with 53 seats.

The Senate was also unable to move past a procedural hurdle on the full-year Defense Department funding bill after a 50-44 vote. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the bill this summer on a broadly bipartisan 26-3 vote. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters ahead of the vote that Democrats want some of the other annual appropriations bills added on to create a larger bill, though he didn’t say which of the dozen he prefers. 

“It’s always been unacceptable to Democrats to do the Defense bill without other bills that have so many things that are important to the American people in terms of health care, in terms of housing, in terms of safety,” Schumer said. 

He added later that leaders from both political parties “have always negotiated these appropriations agreements in a bipartisan way. Once again, they’re just going at it alone.” 

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, appeared to offer a package of bills negotiated between the parties before the vote on the defense bill. 

“We want this to be an open process with an opportunity to add additional bipartisan bills that address vital domestic priorities, including biomedical and scientific research and infrastructure,” Collins said. “And we want members to have a voice in the funding decisions that affect all of our states and constituents back home.”

Stopgap bills in 2025

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said during a floor speech earlier in the day the short-term government funding bill is needed to give lawmakers more time to negotiate final versions of the full-year spending bills. 

“We’re simply asking them to extend current funding bills for a few weeks while we work on full-year appropriations,” Thune said. 

Congress is supposed to work out a bipartisan agreement between the House and Senate on those bills by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, but hasn’t finished on time since the 1990s. 

So every September, once back from their August recess, the House and Senate write a stopgap spending bill that typically keeps the lights on until mid-December. 

Those short-term measures, sometimes called continuing resolutions or CRs, were traditionally negotiated among Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers until earlier this year. 

House Republicans, bolstered by a sweep in last year’s elections, decided in March to write a six-month stopgap spending bill on their own, after two bipartisan short-term bills were approved earlier in the fiscal year. 

Senate Democrats voiced frustration with the process but ultimately helped Republicans get past a procedural vote that required the support of at least 60 lawmakers, allowing the March stopgap to advance toward a simple majority passage vote. 

House Republicans repeated their previously successful maneuver last month, writing a stopgap spending bill on their own that would fund the government through Nov. 21. 

Senate Democrats, however, changed tactics and have voted repeatedly to block the House-passed stopgap bill from advancing. 

Health care standoff

Democrats maintain that Republican leaders must negotiate to extend the enhanced tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year for people who buy their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. 

Republican leaders have said publicly over and over that they will, but cannot guarantee Democrats a final agreement will be able to pass both chambers. They also say talks will only begin after the stopgap bill becomes law and the government reopens. 

“Despite the fact we’re only in this position because of Democrats’ poor policy choices, Republicans are ready for that discussion,” Thune said. “But only once we’ve reopened the government.”

Thune also raised concerns over what message it would send for GOP leaders to negotiate during the shutdown, which he said would endorse the use of funding lapses to achieve policy or political goals. 

Shutdowns in history

Republicans forced the last two government shutdowns; the first in 2013 over efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the second in 2019 over Trump’s insistence lawmakers approve more funding for the border wall. Both were unsuccessful. 

Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a floor speech Thursday that Republicans drafting the stopgap spending bill on their own is a stark contrast to how things have worked for years and that they can’t expect Democrats to vote for something in which they had no say.  

“For the last month, the Republican leader’s favorite number has been 13. He keeps citing 13 CRs that we passed when I was majority leader. Of course we did,” Schumer said.  

“What he fails to mention — I’m not sure if he forgets, or he’s deliberately trying to ignore it — is that those 13 CRs were the product of bipartisan negotiation, of serious conversation. We had to make changes in those bills when our Republican colleagues suggested it,” he added. “They were in the minority, but they had the right to be heard, a right that has been completely shut out for Democrats under this new Republican majority.”

Schumer warned Republicans about open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act Marketplace beginning on Nov. 1, saying tens of millions of Americans will soon realize what congressional inaction means for their family budgets. 

He said Republicans’ unwillingness to negotiate before the shutdown began or since shows they “either don’t understand it or they’re brutally callous.” 

‘I want to be happy Mike’

House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a Thursday morning press conference that Republicans “have no idea” how the government shutdown will end, and blamed Democrats in the Senate for not voting to advance the stopgap bill. 

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew R. Garbarino of New York said the government shutdown is undermining the day-to-day operations of the Department of Homeland Security.

“This shutdown is making our country less safe,” he said. 

Garbarino said roughly 90% of federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security are required to continue working because they have essential roles such as vetting customs at ports of entry and monitoring air space at airports. 

He said those working without pay include 63,000 U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees; more than 61,000 Transportation Security Administration agents; and 8,000 Secret Service agents. 

Garbarino added that he was grateful Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was using funds from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” to pay the roughly 49,000 Coast Guard personnel. 

In a statement to States Newsroom, DHS said it would be able to continue hiring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and “deploy law enforcement across the country to make America safe again” due to funding from the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Amid the government shutdown, the Trump administration has continued its aggressive immigration crackdown.

Johnson expressed his frustration that some Homeland Security employees were working without pay.

“We should not have Border Patrol agents not (being) paid right now because Chuck Schumer wants to play political games to cover his tail,” the Louisiana Republican said. “I don’t like being mad Mike, I want to be happy Mike … but I am so upset about this.”