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      Schumer says no to Republican funding bill as US shutdown risk intensifies

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      Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said on Wednesday that Democrats would not provide the necessary votes to pass a stopgap funding bill, dramatically raising the risk of a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.Announcing the decision in a speech on the Senate floor, Schumer urged Republicans to consider a shorter funding extension that would give congressional negotiators more time to consider a bipartisan path forward.“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort. But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution (CR) without any input, any input, from congressional Democrats,” Schumer said of the Republican-drafted bill, which passed the House on Tuesday.“Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass,” he continued, referring to a short-term bill that would temporarily extend federal funding. “We should vote on that.”To avert a shutdown, Congress must act to extend federal funding by midnight on Friday. Changes – or a new bill entirely – would also need to pass the House before the deadline. The House speaker adjourned the chamber after the bill passed on Tuesday, deliberately sending members home and in effect daring the Senate to reject their bill.Senate Democrats could still reverse course as the reality of a government shutdown – at a moment when Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk are working to permanently shut down parts of the government – comes into clearer focus. Several Senate Democrats have expressed an openness to voting for the measure, citing their distaste for government shutdowns. “I disagree with many points in the CR, but I will never vote to shut our government down,” John Fetterman, the Democratic senator of Pennsylvania tweeted on Tuesday.But Democrats are also under mounting pressure from their base to take a stronger stand against Trump and Republicans.Senate Republicans hold a narrow 53-seat majority, well shy of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the legislation. Senator Rand Paul, a staunch fiscal hawk, has indicated his opposition to the House bill, meaning eight Democrats would likely need to support the bill for it to overcome procedural hurdles to reach a final vote in the chamber.Democrats have raised concerns about the discretion the measure gives to the Trump administration on spending decisions as it pursues massive cuts to the federal workforce.From the annual House Democratic caucus retreat in Leesburg, Virginia, on Wednesday, caucus leaders implored their Senate counterparts to follow their lead and unite against the government funding bill.“I don’t know why anyone would support that bill,” California congressman Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic caucus chair, told reporters during a press conference earlier on Wednesday.The 99-page House-passed measure provides a $6bn boost to military budgets while carving out $13bn from non-defense spending – which Democrats say amounts to an assault on critical programs for vulnerable Americans.Republicans’ “defunding bill is going to wreak havoc on working families”, Katherine Clark, the House Democratic whip, told reporters on Wednesday, assailing cuts that she said could result in domestic violence survivors being evicted and less funding for Alzheimer’s prevention research.“Whether it’s born out of cruelty, cowardice or corruption are all three, the GOP is hell bent on making families at home unsafe,” she added.The House voted 217-213 to approve a bill that would keep federal agencies funded through 30 September. All Democrats with the exception of Jared Golden, a conservative from Maine, voted for it.Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a committed deficit hawk who often bucks his party on fiscal matters, voted no, defying Trump’s demand that all House Republicans support the bill. After the vote, Trump derided Massie as a “GRANDSTANDER” and threatened to oust the seven-term lawmaker from office.In a joint statement, the House Democratic leaders backed Schumer’s call for a short-term funding extension and urged Republicans to return to Washington to consider it. More

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      Trump condemned for using ‘Palestinian’ as slur to attack Schumer

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      Donald Trump has been condemned by a leading US Muslim civil rights group for seeking to use the word “Palestinian” as an insult when he attacked the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, as “not Jewish any more”.“President Trump’s use of the term ‘Palestinian’ as a racial slur is offensive and beneath the dignity of his office,” said Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or Cair.“He should apologize to the Palestinian and American people. It is the continuing dehumanization of the Palestinian people that has resulted in horrific hate crimes against Palestinian-Americans, the US-enabled genocide in Gaza, and decades of denial of Palestinian human rights by successive presidential administrations.”Trump sought to insult Schumer while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, while sitting with the Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin.“Schumer is a Palestinian,” Trump said, amid rambling and incoherent remarks about Democrats in Congress, the war in Ukraine, conflict between Israel and Hamas and a looming government shutdown, which Democrats can avoid if enough of their senators vote with Republicans who hold the chamber, putting Schumer in a difficult political position.“As far as I’m concerned, he’s become a Palestinian,” Trump said. “He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish any more. He’s a Palestinian.”Trump has abused Schumer in such terms before, calling him a Palestinian and “a proud member of Hamas”. The president has also regularly questioned why Jewish Americans would vote for Democrats, even amid growing concern about antisemitism among his own aides, advisers and followers.On Wednesday, Schumer did not immediately comment.Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), said: “Donald Trump doesn’t get to decide who is Jewish. Senator Schumer is the country’s highest ranking Jewish American official, and ‘Palestinian’ should not be used as an insult.”She added: “These comments are abhorrent but revealing, and it’s time to call it like it is – Donald Trump is a depraved antisemite, Islamophobe and bigot, which is why the vast majority of Jewish voters have not and will never support him.”Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said: “Again, the goal for this administration isn’t to counter antisemitism or protect Israel. It’s to weaponize antisemitism to go after their political enemies, advance an extreme agenda, and undercut democracy – and it only makes Jews less safe.”In the Oval Office, Martin was asked if as the leader of one of three European countries that recognizes the state of Palestine – the other two being Norway and Spain – he would “inform the president of your views on Gaza”.“I don’t have to inform the president,” Martin said. “He is very well clued into the whole situation. We share the president’s unrelenting focus on peace.”When the same reporter asked about Trump’s recent suggestion Palestinians should be forced to leave Gaza so the US can redevelop the land, Trump interjected, saying: “Nobody’s expelling any Palestinians,” and mocked the reporter for being from Voice of America, a broadcast network run by the federal government. More

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      Trump officials to reconsider whether greenhouse gases cause harm amid climate rollbacks

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      Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways.Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the US government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health.The so-called endangerment finding, which followed a supreme court ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases, provides the underpinning for all rules aimed at cutting the pollution that scientists have unequivocally found is worsening the climate crisis.Despite the enormous and growing body of evidence of devastation caused by rising emissions, including trillions of dollars in economic costs, Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax” and dismissed those concerned by its worsening impacts as “climate lunatics”.Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency would reconsider the endangerment finding due to concerns that it had spawned “an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas”.Zeldin wrote that Wednesday was the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history” and that “we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age”.Environmentalists reacted with horror to the announcement and vowed to defend the overwhelming findings of science and the US’s ability to address the climate crisis through the courts, which regularly struck down Trump’s rollbacks in his first term. “The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice toward the planet,” said Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.“Come hell or high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives. This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”In all, the EPA issued 31 announcements within just a few hours that take aim at almost every major environmental rule designed to protect Americans’ clean air and water, as well as a livable climate.The barrage included a move to overturn a Biden-era plan to slash pollution spewing from coal-fired power plants, which itself was a reduced version of an Obama administration initiative that was struck down by the supreme court.The EPA will also revisit pollution standards for cars and trucks, which Zeldin said had imposed a “crushing regulatory regime” upon auto companies that are now shifting towards electric vehicles, consider weakening rules limiting sooty air pollution that’s linked to an array of health problems, potentially axe requirements that power plants not befoul waterways or dump their toxic waste and will consider further narrowing how it implements the Clean Water Act in general.The stunning broadside of actions against pollution rules could, if upheld by the courts, reshape Americans’ environment in ways not seen since major legislation was passed in the 1970s to end an era of smoggy skies and burning rivers that became the norm following American industrialization.Pollutants from power plants, highways and industry cause a range of heart, lung and other health problems, with greenhouse gases among this pollution driving up the global temperature and fueling catastrophic heatwaves, floods, storms and other impacts.“Zeldin’s EPA is dragging America back to the days before the Clean Air Act, when people were dying from pollution,” said Dominique Browning, director of the Moms Clean Air Force. “This is unacceptable. And shameful. We will oppose with all our hearts to protect our children from this cruel, monstrous action.”The EPA’s moves come shortly after its decision to shutter all its offices that deal with addressing the disproportionate burden of pollution faced by poor people and minorities in the US, amid a mass firing of agency staff. Zeldin has also instructed that $20bn in grants to help address the climate crisis be halted, citing potential fraud. Democrats have questioned whether these moves are legal.Former EPA staff have reacted with shock to the upending of the agency.“Today marks the most disastrous day in EPA history,” said Gina McCarthy, who was EPA administrator under Obama. “Rolling these rules back is not just a disgrace, it’s a threat to all of us. The agency has fully abdicated its mission to protect Americans’ health and wellbeing.”The Trump administration has promised additional environmental rollbacks in the coming weeks. The Energy Dominance Council that the president established last month is looking to eliminate a vast array of regulations in an effort to boost the fossil fuel industry, the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told the oil and gas conference CeraWeek in Houston on Wednesday. “We will come up with the ways that we can cut red tape,” he said. “We can easily get rid of 20-30% of our regulations.”Additional reporting by Dharna Noor More

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      DoJ demands New York migrant shelter hotel give up names of people living there

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      Federal prosecutors have sent a criminal subpoena to a Manhattan hotel housing undocumented immigrants through a New York City program providing shelter to asylum seekers, according to a copy of the filing obtained by the Guardian.The subpoena issued on Wednesday asks the hotel to provide “a list of full names of aliens currently residing” at the site as well as “any corresponding identifying information”, including dates of birth, nationality and identification numbers. The subpoena also asks the hotel to give evidence about “an alleged violation” of federal immigration law.A source shared the document on the condition that the Guardian not share the name of their employer because the hotel is now part of a federal criminal investigation.The subpoena marks the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. New York City is currently seeing a flurry of protests and demonstrations in defense of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who is being targeted by the administration for deportation over his participation in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations.The federal subpoena, sent to the hotel Wednesday by prosecutors for the southern district of New York, also appears to seek information about New York City government officials. It asks the hotel to provide the names of “entities and/or individuals that are responsible for the funding” of the “illegal immigrant/migrant shelter programs”.Officials for the mayor, Eric Adams, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.Two of the prosecutors named in the subpoena – Kevin Grossinger, assistant United States attorney, and Scott Laragy with the criminal division of the Department of Justice – declined to comment on the subpoena.Nicholas Biase, chief of public affairs for the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, did not immediately respond to a request for comment as of publication.In a phone call, Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, criticized the subpoena, calling it an example of the Trump administration “weaponizing” the Department of Justice against New York City residents: “Instead of wasting government time and resources, we should be thinking of how we improve the daily lives of all the people who call this country home.”Since 2022, New York City’s municipal government has contracted with numerous hotels, including several prominent ones in midtown Manhattan, to help shelter an influx of immigrants seeking asylum. The shelters quickly became the sites of local political backlash and rightwing furor nationally.In February, Adams announced he would close an immigrant intake center at one of those sites, the Roosevelt Hotel. The decision came just weeks after Trump justice officials began moving to drop corruption charges against the mayor, a move that sparked numerous Department of Justice resignations.Adams has denied the allegations against him.Trump has been in office for less than two months, but has been active in enforcing his administration’s promised crackdown on immigration in the US. According to detention management data from the Department of Homeland Security, February 2025 saw more arrests than in any month in the last seven years. US immigration detention is also filled to capacity, at 47,600 detainees, a senior US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said on a call with reporters on Wednesday, Reuters reported. More

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      Education department slashed in half after Trump administration mass firings

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      The Trump administration has decimated the US Department of Education, firing more than 1,300 employees in a single day in what looks to be the first step toward abolishing the agency entirely.The mass dismissal – delivered by email after most staff had left for the day on Tuesday – has slashed the department’s workforce by half. Along with voluntary departures and probationary firings, the agency that started 2025 with 4,133 staff now operates with an estimated 2,100 employees two months into Donald Trump’s presidency.“Today’s reduction in force reflects our commitment to efficiency,” Linda McMahon, the US education secretary, said in a statement on Tuesday, insisting that student loans, Pell grants and special education funding would continue uninterrupted. Department officials characterized the eliminated positions as unnecessary administrative roles.Civil rights enforcement has been particularly devastated, with regional offices in New York, San Francisco and Boston either closed entirely or stripped to minimal staffing. These units were already buried under backlogged discrimination investigations following campus protests last year.The cuts came just one day after the department warned 60 universities they face “potential enforcement actions” for alleged violations of federal civil rights laws protecting students from antisemitic discrimination – part of a broader push that recently saw the administration cancel $400m in funding to Columbia University over what it called “continued inaction” on harassment of Jewish students. A prominent Columbia student activist with a green card, Mahmoud Khalil, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) without charge over the weekend and now faces deportation for his role in last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations.“We will not stand by while this regime pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people,” Sheria Smith, the president of the government employees’ union representing department workers, said in a statement.Some school leaders across the country are also alarmed by the implications of the department’s downsizing. Alberto Carvalho, the Los Angeles unified school district superintendent, warned of “catastrophic harm” if the cuts affect federal funding streams.“We receive in excess of $750m earmarked for poor students, English-language learners, students with disabilities and connectivity investments,” Carvalho said in a video statement. The LA unified school district is estimated to be the second-largest in the country.Greg Casar, the Congressional Progressive caucus chair from Texas, meanwhile accused the administration of blatant class warfare.He told reporters: “Trump and Musk are stealing from our children to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.” He called for Senate Democrats to reject the government funding bill that they’ll be voting on this week.Responding to reporter questions on Wednesday, Trump attacked Department of Education employees. “Many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work,” the president said in the Oval Office. “We want to cut, but we want to cut the people that aren’t working or not doing a good job. We’re keeping the best people.”The purge aligns with Trump’s campaign pledge to abolish the department entirely – a promise that resonated with the parents’ rights movement that emerged during pandemic school closures. Constitutional experts note that while Trump cannot unilaterally dissolve the agency without congressional approval, his administration appears to be rendering it functionally obsolete.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJust last week, McMahon confirmed on Fox News that Trump plans to sign an executive order targeting the department’s closure, despite polls showing roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose such a move.The administration is already preparing to scatter the department’s functions across the federal government. The New York Times reports that officials visited the treasury department on Monday to discuss transferring student loan operations, while McMahon has floated moving civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice and disability services to the Department of Health and Human Services – mirroring recommendations from the conservative Project 2025 blueprint.The cuts bear the unmistakable influence of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who leads Trump’s so-called government efficiency initiative. McMahon acknowledged “regular meetings” with Musk’s team, praising them for identifying “waste” in the department.Department headquarters remained closed on Wednesday following the mass terminations, with officials citing security concerns. More

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      Trump official defending Doge filmed fashion influencer videos from office

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      The chief spokesperson for the agency overseeing mass firings as Donald Trump and Elon Musk slash the federal workforce used her office to record fashion influencer videos even as thousands of workers were losing their jobs.McLaurine Pinover, communications director at the US office of personnel management (OPM), posted several Instagram videos during business hours in which she posed in different outfits, CNN reported.One video was posted on 13 February, the day OPM reportedly directed several agencies to lay off thousands of employees with probationary status, including about 20 people on Pinover’s own team.Pinover has issued numerous statements backing moves to fire federal workers, including describing a controversial directive for all workers to list five things they achieve each week as “a commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce”.CNN said Pinover did not respond to questions but said she deleted her Instagram account minutes after being approached for comment. Pinover’s LinkedIn page appeared to have been taken down, too.Videos published by CNN showed Pinover in her office, showing herself wearing various clothing outfits with hashtags including “#dcstyle” and “#dcinfluencer” and the song Busy Woman by Sabrina Carpenter.One post was made on Tuesday, the day the Department of Education announced it was cutting half its workforce, CNN said.Pinover may have benefited from affiliate links to buy clothes in her videos, CNN said, though it noted that she only had approximately 800 followers to her account.Former OPM staffers told CNN the videos were filmed in the office of the communications director, across the hall from an annex used by workers for the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk’s vehicle for imposing cuts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne unnamed former staffer said: “I saw it, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me, that’s my office.’ She’s the spokesperson for the agency that is advocating for the firing based on performance and efficiency of the rest of the government workforce, and she’s using government property as a backdrop for her videos.”Jack Miller, Pinover’s predecessor as OPM communications director under Joe Biden, said: “Your number one job as a leader is to protect and support your people. So instead of fighting tooth and nail to keep your team, we’re posting fashion videos. It’s absurd.”Donald K Sherman, chief counsel for the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNN: “It is highly problematic that while dedicated civil servants who want to work for the government are being fired for all manner of dubious reasons, or are being forced out by this administration, that someone at the agency leading that attack on the civil service is using their government job for private gain.” More

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      Is the US heading for a government shutdown? 5 essential reads to occupy the mind while we wait to find out

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      Brinkmanship, a political scramble to keep the lights on in Washington and finger-pointing over who is to the blame – we’ve been here before, right?

      The threat of government shutdowns seems to be a regular feature of modern American politics.

      And while this is not good for the nerves – or sleep patterns – of politicians, economists and a weary public, it does mean that The Conversation U.S. has a wealth of articles in the archive explaining what a shutdown is, why they happen and what the consequences are.

      So while we watch the process play out in Washington, D.C. – at the time of writing, a spending bill was heading to the U.S. Senate after being passed by the House – we have gathered a few essential reads on the subject of shutdowns.

      1. How a shutdown affects the economy

      Should Congress fail to pass a spending bill by the end of March 14, 2025, the government will fall into a shutdown – and not for the first time. There have been about 21 government shutdowns in the U.S. Three of these took place during the first Trump administration, the longest starting three days before Christmas in 2018 and lasting 34 days.

      But what is the economic cost of these shutdowns?

      Northwestern finance scholar Scott R. Baker examined the short- and long-term effects of a shutdown in 2013.

      Baker wrote that the most immediate impact of a shutdown is on the government’s day-to-day operations.

      “Many national museums and parks are closed, immigration hearings are being postponed, and the Food and Drug Administration isn’t doing routine inspections of domestic food-processing facilities,” Baker wrote.

      Whether a shutdown has a longer-term economic impact, Baker explained, depends on “how long the shutdown lasts and whether employees are paid their forgone wages after its conclusion.”

      Read more:
      How a government shutdown affects the economy

      2. Who bears the brunt?

      As a researcher who studies people’s wealth, Jay L. Zagorsky understands that the loss of a single paycheck can be devastating for many American families.

      During the 2019 partial shutdown, about 800,000 federal workers were either furloughed or working without pay.

      “Going without a paycheck for a few weeks is hard enough,” Zagorsky wrote. “If the shutdown lasts months or years, the situation could get very dire for the average government worker.”

      Zagorsky noted that there is a bit of good news.

      “Congress tends to give all affected workers back pay, regardless of whether they worked during the impasse,” he wrote.

      Read more:
      Federal workers begin to feel pain of shutdown as 800,000 lose their paychecks

      3. Federal workers’ morale must be rock bottom

      Of course, the current shutdown showdown comes as federal workers are already fretting over their job security thanks to President Donald Trump’s agenda of cutting down government.

      A 2023 article by Susannah Bruns Ali, assistant professor of public policy and administration at Florida International University, explains how a shutdown might actually make it a little easier for the new administration to trim the federal workforce – but that might not be so great for the public.

      “Shutdowns lead to more people being more likely to leave government employment – and higher workloads and lower motivation for those who remain,” Ali wrote. “These conditions may feed Republican political goals, but they harm the millions of Americans who depend on competent, timely assistance from the public servants on the government payroll. This ultimately leads to lower work performance and employee retention problems.”

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      Government shutdowns hurt federal worker morale, long after paychecks resume − especially for those considered ‘nonessential’

      4. The harm to the public

      As Ali’s article alludes to, the harm of a shutdown is felt throughout the wider public. In a 2019 article, American University’s Morten Wendelbo expanded on one key area that’s affected: Americans’ health and safety.

      Wendelbo explained that shutdowns make it harder for key U.S. agencies to respond to and prepare for disasters – due to the effects of a pause in funding, but also due to the impact shutdowns have on the retention and recruitment of public servants.

      Writing on the impact of the then-ongoing 2019 shutdown, Wendelbo noted: “The shutdown weakens the government’s ability to foresee, prevent and respond to upcoming natural disasters. For example, hurricane modelers with NOAA, the agency chiefly responsible for storm forecasts, are furloughed.”

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      The shutdown will harm the health and safety of Americans, even after it’s long over

      5. So why do shutdowns happen?

      Given the economic and societal risks of a government shutdown, why have they become a feature of modern politics?

      In a 2023 interview, Northwestern University political scientist Laurel Harbridge-Yong explained: “Since the 1970s, both the House and Senate have become much more polarized. Members of the two parties are more unified internally and further apart from the opposing party. You don’t have the overlap between parties now that existed 50 years ago.”

      In addition, electoral and congressional politics have shifted to increase the pressure on Republican lawmakers to appease a conservative base, “which has both individual and collective reasons to oppose a compromise.” Democrats, too, are less likely to compromise “both because they don’t want to gut programs that they put in place and also because they don’t want to make this look like a win for Republicans, who have been able to play chicken and get what they wanted,” Harbridge-Yong wrote.

      Read more:
      With government funding running out soon, expect more brinkmanship despite public dismay at political gridlock

      This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives and includes sections previously included in The Conversation articles. More