House of Representatives

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      White House announces federal worker layoffs as shutdown nears third week

      by

      The White House announced layoffs of federal workers on Friday, making good on a threat it had made in response to the US government shutdown, which now appears set to stretch into a third straight week.Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that “RIFs have begun”, referring to the government’s reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go.While Vought provided no details on the departments and agencies at which the layoffs were taking place, a treasury spokesperson said notices had been distributed within the department. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Guardian that layoffs would also happen at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And a union representing federal workers confirmed that members at the Department of Education would also be affected by the reduction in force.Union leaders warned the layoffs would have “devastating effects” on services relied upon by millions of Americans, and pledged to challenge the moves in court.“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 federal and DC government workers.Vought had warned that federal agencies could slash jobs if the government shuts down, but the Trump administration largely held off after funding lapsed last week. Asked at a press conference before Vought’s announcement why no layoffs had occurred, the top Senate Republican, John Thune, signaled they would happen soon.“The White House has now for 10 days laid off doing anything in hopes that enough Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing and fund the government,” he said.View image in fullscreen“My expectation is, yes, they’re going to start making some decisions about how to move money around, which agencies and departments are going to be impacted, which programs are going to be impacted, which employees are going to be impacted. That’s what a shutdown does.”The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, responded to Vought’s post on Friday, saying: “America’s unions will see you in court.”Last week, the AFGE and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) filed for a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration from carrying out any reductions in force (RIFs) during the shutdown. The unions filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order on Friday, following Vought’s post.Lee Saunders, president of the AFSCME, said: “These mass firings are illegal and will have devastating effects on the services millions of Americans rely on every day. Whether it’s food inspectors, public safety workers, or the countless other public service workers who keep America running, federal employees should not be bargaining chips in this administration’s political games.“By illegally firing these workers, the administration isn’t just targeting federal employees, it’s hurting their families and the communities they serve every day. We will pursue every available legal avenue to stop this administration’s unlawful attacks on public service workers’ freedoms and jobs.”Congressional Democrats have refused to vote for a Republican-backed bill to restore funding unless it includes an array of healthcare-centered concessions. After holding seven unsuccessful votes on the parties’ spending bills, the Senate’s Republican leaders have put the chamber in recess until next Tuesday, meaning the standoff is unlikely to be resolved before then.The layoffs came on the same day government employees received only a partial paycheck covering the final days of September but not the beginning of October, since appropriations lapsed at the start of the month.At a Friday-morning press conference, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, blasted Senate Democrats for not supporting the GOP’s bill, which passed his chamber on a near party-line vote.If the government is not reopened by next Wednesday, US military personnel are set to miss a paycheck.“This is the last paycheck that 700,000 federal workers will see until Washington Democrats decide to do their job and reopen the government,” Johnson said.View image in fullscreen“Starting next week, American service members, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, are going to miss a full paycheck. If Democrats don’t end this shutdown by Monday, then that October 15 date will pass us by.”Johnson has kept the House out of session throughout the shutdown in an effort to pressure Senate Democrats into supporting the Republican funding proposal. Earlier this week, a group of House Democrats sent the speaker a letter asking him to allow a vote on legislation that would ensure US troops get paid during a shutdown, but Johnson has refused to bring lawmakers back to Washington.The Senate has become a chokepoint in the funding battle because any legislation needs at least 60 votes to advance in the chamber. In exchange for their support, Democratic senators are demanding that premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans be extended beyond their end-of-the-year expiration date.They are also seeking safeguards against Donald Trump’s rescissions of congressionally approved funding, a restoration of money for public media outlets, and an undoing of cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for poor and disabled Americans.Max Stier, the president and CEO of the non-profit Partnership for Public Service, condemned the gridlock’s impact on government workers.“It is wrong to make federal employees suffer because our leaders in Congress and the White House have failed to keep our government open and operational,” Stier said.“Our air traffic controllers, VA nurses, smoke jumpers and food inspectors are not responsible for this government shutdown, and they shouldn’t bear the financial burden created by the failures of our elected officials. The irony is that members of Congress and senior White House leaders are continuing to be paid.”Earlier this week, on 7 October, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide specifics on the status of any layoff plans, the affected agencies and whether any federal employees have been recalled back to work to carry out layoffs, by Friday, 10 October.A report by the Center for American Progress on 30 September argued that a government shutdown limits the ability of the Trump administration to carry out firings, citing guidance from the office of management and budget that admitted any permanent layoffs need to have been initiated before the shutdown began.“Constraints on permanently firing federal employees during a shutdown largely exist because of the Antideficiency Act and the distinction between ‘shutdown furloughs’ that happen during a lapse in congressional appropriations and ‘administrative furloughs’, which are department and agency procedures on how to permanently let staff go, including – for example – through a RIF,” the report, authored by Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy policy at the Center for American Progress, states. “The Trump administration’s threats to layoff federal employees should be understood as a goal of the administration that will be pursued with or without a government shutdown and should not drive lawmakers’ decisions on whether to support government funding bills.”Shrai Popat contributed additional reporting More

    • 188 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Why is the US House speaker refusing to seat an elected Democrat? | Moira Donegan

      by

      The people of Arizona’s seventh congressional district – a vast territory extending across the state’s south, along the Mexican border – have been denied representation in Congress for weeks. That’s because Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva, their representative-elect, who won a special election to fill the seat vacated by her father, the late Raúl Grijalva, in a landslide late last month. Grijalva, a Democrat, has been largely ignored by the speaker. Unlike sworn representatives, she has to go around the Capitol with an escort. There’s an office with her name on the door, but she hasn’t been allowed inside, and has worked instead out of a conference room on another floor.It is an unprecedented abuse of procedural power on the part of the speaker, one that has had the effect of silencing a political opponent and denying representation to the citizens of her district. In refusing to seat Grijalva, Johnson has defied the will of Arizona’s voters, and effectively nullified, at least for the time being, a legitimate congressional election. He has persisted in this even in defiance of his own promises, after saying on Friday he would seat her this week once the House returned to session – and then telling lawmakers they wouldn’t reconvene this week after all. Last week, Grijalva showed up to a three-and-a-half-minute pro forma session, hoping to be sworn in then. (Johnson has sworn in other representatives at pro forma sessions in the past.) But the Republican presiding over the session, Morgan Griffith, ignored the effort. On a weekend talkshow, Grijalva said she had heard “absolutely nothing” from the speaker about the timing of her swearing in.Grijalva thinks she knows why. There is no political calculation that could justify Mike Johnson’s refusal to seat a duly elected member of the House: Grijalva won her race, and both his oath to the constitution and his responsibilities to the body that he leads require Johnson to seat her. But in lieu of deference to these higher aims, Grijalva suspects that Johnson is pursuing a much more cynical one: in refusing to swear her in and allow her to take up the office to which she has been elected, Johnson, Grijalva thinks, is aiming to stop her becoming the final member of Congress whose signature is needed to force a vote on the release of confidential files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Currently, the petition has 217 signatures; it needs only 218. Grijalva has pledged to support it. “Why the rules are different for me – the only thing that I can think of is the Epstein files,” Grijalva told the New York Times.The Epstein scandal, and the ensuing fallout from new and resurfaced revelations about Donald Trump’s deep and longstanding friendship with the deceased child sex trafficker and financier, has long plagued the Trump administration. One of the few genuine threats to Trump’s grip over his coalition came a few months ago, when his justice department refused to release files relating to the case, causing outrage among a group of rightwing podcasters, media personalities and conspiracy theorists who had long traded on speculation about the case and accusations that powerful Democrats were involved in a cover-up.The discharge petition, if passed, would not be likely to result in the actual release of the documents. The move has little support in the Republican-backed Senate; there is no chance that Donald Trump, who has opposed the release of the Epstein files, calling them a “waste” of “time and energy”, would sign a bill into law making them public. But what the move would accomplish is forcing a full chamber vote on the matter, requiring every member of the Republican caucus to go on the record either endorsing the release of the files – and thereby displeasing Trump – or opposing it – thereby displeasing their voters. The Times has reported that Johnson’s delay is giving the White House more time to pressure Republicans who have already signed on to the discharge petition to remove their signatures before the Grijalva is sworn in.And so it seems that Johnson is ignoring the constitution and subverting the will of the voters in order to buy time, in an effort to spare his party embarrassment over their president’s one-time close confidence with a pedophile.But the refusal to seat Grijalva has broader implications. In using his procedural control over the functioning of Congress to deny a seat to an elected Democrat, Johnson is setting a dangerous precedent and raising questions about future transfers of power. If a Democratic majority is elected in 2026, will the outgoing Republican speaker duly swear in its members? Or will he use his procedural powers to delay one, several or many of them from taking their oaths of office – either under the pretext of election fraud or personal ineligibility, or out of sheer, bald unwillingness to hand over power to members of a party that the president and his allies have repeatedly described as illegitimate?These are no longer fanciful questions; they are ones that must be asked. The Republicans who refused to subvert the law for Trump’s benefit on January 6 are now largely gone; the ones who have replaced them appear much more willing to place party before country. Every day that Grijalva is not sworn in, the shadow they cast over 2026 darkens.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      US shutdown deadlock deepens as senators reject competing bills

      by

      The deadlock over ending the US government shutdown deepened on Wednesday, with senators once again rejecting competing bills to restart funding as Democrats and Republicans remain dug in on their demands for reopening federal agencies.The funding lapse has forced offices, national parks and other federal government operations to close or curtail operations, while employees have been furloughed. Signs of strain have mounted in recent days in the parts of the federal government that remained operational, with staffing shortages reported at airports across the US as well as air traffic control centers. Further disruptions may come next week, when US military personnel and other federal workers who remain on the job will not receive paychecks, unless the government reopens.When the Senate met on Wednesday afternoon, it became clear that sentiment had not shifted in the eight days since the shutdown began. For the sixth time, Democratic and Republican proposals to restart funding both failed to receive enough support to advance, and no senators changed their votes from recent days.Democrats are demanding that any bill to fund the government be paired with an array of healthcare-centered provisions, including an extension of premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans. Those expire at the end of the year, and costs are set to rise for the plans’ roughly 20 million enrollees if they are not renewed.Donald Trump has sought to pressure the Democrats to accept the GOP’s proposal, which would only extend funding through 21 November. On Tuesday, the White House office of management and budget released a memo arguing that federal workers were not entitled to back pay, despite a 2019 law saying they should be.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, poured cold water on that prospect at a press conference the following day, saying: “I think it is statutory law that federal employees be paid. And that’s my position. I think they should be.”Both parties otherwise remained unmoved in their demands. The House of Representatives passed the GOP’s bill on a near party-line vote last month, and Johnson has kept the chamber out of session ever since in a bid to force Senate Democrats to approve it.At his press conference, the speaker alleged that top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer was opposing the Republican bill out of fear from a primary challenge by the “communists” in his party.“They are worried about the Marxist flank in their Democrat party,” Johnson said.“He’s terrified that he’s going to get a challenge from his far left. I’ve noted that Chuck Schumer is a very far-left politician, but he is not far enough left for the communists, and they’re coming for him, and so he has to put up his dukes and show a fight.”In a speech on the Senate floor, Schumer once again faulted Republicans for refusing to negotiate on the Democrats’ healthcare demands. The Senate’s majority leader John Thune has said he will discuss the ACA tax credit issue, but only when government funding is restored.“We can do both: fix healthcare and reopen the government. This is not an either-or thing, which Republicans are making it. The American people don’t like it,” Schumer said.While both parties’s rank-and-file lawmakers have appeared united around their leaders’ strategies, the GOP suffered a high-profile defection on Monday when far-right lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene backed negotiations over the tax credits. However in the days since, no other Republicans have publicly joined her.Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican congresswoman representing a swing district, has received bipartisan support for legislation that would extend the credits for a year, and is viewed a potential compromise in the funding standoff.At a press conference on Tuesday, top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries called the idea a “nonstarter”.“It was introduced by the same people who just permanently extended massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors,” Jeffries said, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Republicans passed this year without Democratic votes. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump orders approval of 211-mile mining road through Alaska wilderness

      by

      Donald Trump on Monday ordered the approval of a proposed 211-mile road through an Alaska wilderness to allow mining of copper, cobalt, gold and other minerals.The long-debated Ambler Road project was approved in the US president’s first term, but was later blocked by the Biden administration after an analysis determined the project would threaten caribou and other wildlife and harm Alaska Indigenous tribes that rely on hunting and fishing.In a related development, the White House announced it is taking 10% equity stake in Trilogy Metals, a Canadian company that is seeking to develop the Ambler site along with an Australian partner.The gravel road and mining project, north of Fairbanks, Alaska, “is something that should’ve been long operating and making billions of dollars for our country and supplying a lot of energy and minerals”, Trump said at an Oval Office ceremony. Former president Joe Biden “undid it and wasted a lot of time and a lot of money, a lot of effort. And now we’re starting again. And this time we have plenty of time to get it done,” Trump added.Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, said approval of Ambler Road will unlock access to copper, cobalt and other critical minerals “that we need to win the AI arms race against China”.Supporters, including Alaska’s congressional delegation, have said the road is needed to reach a large copper deposit worth more than $7bn. Copper is used in production of cars, electronics and even renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines.Opponents, including a consortium of 40 federally recognized tribes, worry that development allowed by the road would put subsistence harvests at risk because the lands include important habitat for salmon and caribou.Karmen Monigold, an Inupiaq member of Protect the Kobuk, a Northwest Arctic advocacy group opposed to the access road, said she cried when she first learned of Trump’s actions. “And then I reminded myself of who we are, and who our people are and how far we’ve come,” she said on Monday in a telephone interview. “They tried to assimilate us, to wipe us out and yet we’re still here. We still matter.”Monigold said she hopes Alaska Native groups will file lawsuits, as they’ve done before, to halt the project.The two-lane gravel road includes about 26 miles that would cut through Gates of the Arctic national park and preserve. The road would also cross 11 rivers and thousands of streams before reaching the site of a future mine.The Republican-controlled House approved a bill last month that would pave the way for Trump to expand mining and drilling on public lands in Alaska and other states. The vote, largely along party lines, would repeal land management plans adopted in the closing days of Biden’s administration that restricted development in large areas of Alaska, Montana and North Dakota.Biden’s goal was in part to reduce climate-warming emissions from the burning of fossil fuels extracted from federal land. Under Trump, Republicans are casting aside those concerns as they open more taxpayer-owned land to development, hoping to create more jobs and revenue and boost fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The administration also has pushed to develop critical minerals, including copper, cobalt, gold and zinc.While Trump has often said, “drill, baby, drill”, he also supports “mine, baby, mine”, Burgum said. “We’ve got to get back in the mining business.”The US government said last week it is taking a minority stake in Lithium Americas, another Canadian company that is developing one of the world’s largest lithium mines in Nevada. The Department of Energy will take a 5% equity stake in the company and a 5% stake in the Thacker Pass lithium mining project, a joint venture with General Motors.Ambler Metals, a joint venture between Trilogy Metals and Australia-based South32, thanked Trump for jump-starting the Ambler project.“This road will help secure the critical minerals our country needs for economic competitiveness and national defense, while also delivering meaningful benefits here at home,” said managing director Kaleb Froehlich. More

    • 175 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      House speaker says Democrats aren’t serious about shutdown negotiation as Democratic leader blames Republicans

      by

      The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, accused Democrats of being “not serious” in negotiations to end the federal government shutdown, while the Democratic leader accused Republicans of driving the shutdown, now on its fifth day and expected to last at least through next week.Talks between the opposing political parties stalled over the weekend, with no votes anticipated to end the standoff. A CBS poll found just 28% of Democratic voters and 23% of Republicans consider their party’s positions worth shutting down the government.In his comments to NBC’s Meet the Press, Johnson said his body had done its work in passing a measure to keep the government financed but now it was up to the Senate “to turn the lights back on so that everyone can do their work”. He accused Democrats of failing to engage “in a serious negotiation”.“They’re doing this to get political cover because Chuck Schumer is afraid that he won’t win his next re-election bid in the Senate because he’s going to be challenged by a Marxist in New York, because that’s the new popular thing out there,” he said, referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx representative who may be looking to challenge Schumer for his Senate seat next year.But Johnson’s counterpart, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, told the same show JD Vance lied last week when he claimed Democrats were themselves being dishonest claiming they are not trying to give healthcare benefits to undocumented immigrants.“Republicans are lying because they’re losing in the court of public opinion,” Jeffries said, and added his party was “standing up for the healthcare of hard-working American taxpayers, of working-class Americans, of middle-class Americans”.Jeffries also hit back at comments by Donald Trump in a social media post on Thursday in which he called Democrats the party of “the party of hate, evil, and Satan” alongside pictures of party figures, including Ocasio-Cortez, Schumer, speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi, and former president and first lady Joe and Jill Biden.Asked if he could still negotiate with Trump, Jeffries said the president’s behavior “is outrageous, it’s unhinged, it’s unreasonable, and it speaks for itself. The American people deserve better than lies, than attacks, than deepfake videos and the president spending all of his time on the golf course.”Leaders of the political leadership have not had formal talks for almost a week as both seek to gain a political edge ahead of renewed discussions.Jeffries said that since that meeting last Monday, “Republicans, including Donald Trump, have gone radio silent” and the Democratic party leadership “will continue to make clear, leader Schumer and myself, that we will sit down any time, any place, with anyone to address this issue with the seriousness that it deserves”.The battle for high political ground continued on Sunday with Johnson claiming that the potential for temporary government job suspensions, known as furloughs, hardening into permanent job layoffs “is a regrettable situation that the president does not want”.White House national economic council director Kevin Hassett increased pressure on Democrats, saying the Trump administration will start mass layoffs of federal workers if Trump decides negotiations with Democrats are “absolutely going nowhere”.Hassett told CNN’s State of the Union that Trump and Vought “are lining things up and getting ready to act if they have to, but hoping that they don’t”. But he predicted it is possible that Democrats could back down.“I think that everybody is still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week, that we can get the Democrats to see that it’s just common sense to avoid layoffs like that,” Hassett said.But some fear Democrats have walked into a trap. Johnson said on Sunday that Trump had asked the Democratic leadership to keep the government open.“In a situation like this, where the Senate Democrats have decided to turn the keys to the kingdom over to the White House, they have to make tough decisions,” he said, pointing to Russ Vought, the director of the office of management and budget.Vought, Johnson said, “has to now look at all of the federal government, recognizing that the funding streams have been turned off and determine what are essential programs, policies, and personnel. That’s not a job that he relishes. But he’s being required to do it by Chuck Schumer.”The spirit of mutual recrimination continued with Schumer telling CBS Johnson “doesn’t want to discuss the real issue, the healthcare crisis facing the American people. So he puts up all these fake lies to try and divert attention.”But in an interview set to broadcast on Monday, Johnson told MSNBC he considers the issue of expiring healthcare subsidies – that Democrats place central to their negotiating position – as one that can be addressed later.“We have effectively three months to negotiate in the White House and in the hall of Congress, that’s like an eternity,” Johnson said. “We need folks in good faith to come around the table and have that discussion. And we can’t do it when the government is shut down,” he added.Adam Schiff, a California senator also speaking to Meet the Press, was asked if his party delegates in the Senate would stay united after three Democratic senators broke away to vote with Republicans. Schiff said he was confident that “all Democrats understand that millions and millions of their constituents are about to be priced out of their healthcare”.“We need a president who can act like an adult, who can come to the table and negotiate an end to their self-imposed healthcare crisis,” Schiff said. “Right now we don’t see that. We see Trump out on the golf course, we see the speaker telling his House colleagues not to even come to session, that there’s no work for the federal government to do, apparently.” More

    • 225 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Mike Johnson hasn’t sworn in this new Democrat. Is it because she wants to release the Epstein files?

      by

      Congress’s newest member, Adelita Grijalva, came to Washington DC this week, expecting to be officially sworn in by the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.Two days later, she returned to her southern Arizona district disappointed, if not a little confused. No swearing-in ceremony had been organized, meaning Grijalva, a Democrat who easily won a special election last month to replace her late father, Raúl M Grijalva, was not able to start her new job.Trapped in the purgatorial status of representative-elect, she had to be escorted around the Capitol building by her soon-to-be-colleagues, like any other member of the public. Her name is on the door of her new office, but she does not have the keys.“I want to get to work and I can’t,” Grijalva said.She thinks she knows the reason why Johnson is in no rush to administer the oath: in addition to co-sponsoring bills on the environment, public education and other issues she campaigned on addressing, Grijalva plans to provide the final signature on a petition that would force a vote on legislation to release files related to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – which the speaker and Donald Trump oppose.“I can’t think of any other reason. It’s not like my being sworn in changes the majority,” she said.The matter of the Epstein files has for months been a thorn in the side of the president and his allies in Congress. Though Trump has decried it as a “Democrat hoax”, a small group of dissident Republicans have joined with all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives to pursue the legislative maneuver, known as a discharge petition. It just needs the signatures of 218 lawmakers to succeed, and has currently received 217 – Grijalva’s would be the last one.The petition is a rare instance of defiance among congressional Republicans, who have given Trump much of what he wants ever since he returned to the White House. But even if it succeeds and the legislation passes the House, it is unlikely to go far. The Senate’s Republican leaders have shown little interest in the issue, and it is difficult to imagine Trump signing the bill.Another complication, both for the petition and Grijalva’s hopes to taking her seat: the House was out of session all this week. Johnson last month called off planned work days to pressure Senate Democrats into voting for legislation the chamber has approved to fund the government and end the ongoing shutdown.However, the House did hold a three-and-a-half-minute procedural session on Tuesday – one Grijalva attended along with dozens of Democrats, in hopes of getting Johnson to swear her in. No luck, even though Johnson administered the oath to two Republicans who won special elections in Florida during a similar session earlier this year.“That doesn’t make sense, why I wouldn’t be sworn in, in the same pace that they were?” Grijalva said. “And who is losing out are the constituents that need a Congress to work for them.”A spokesperson for Johnson pointed to his comments signaling that Grijalva will be sworn in when the House returns to session, but that will not happen until funding is restored to the government.“The House will come back into session and do its work as soon as Chuck Schumer allows us to reopen the government,” Johnson said today, referring to the top Senate Democrat whom the Republicans blame for the funding lapse.Grijalva along with her family had planned to be in Washington again by Tuesday of next week, in hopes the House would be back to work. On Friday afternoon, Johnson announced that it would take the whole week off.“Now I have to change, blow up all of the travel plans that I made for everybody,” she said. “So, that’s frustrating.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      What is a government shutdown and why is this year’s threat more serious?

      by

      The federal government is once again on the brink of a shutdown, unless Congress can reach a funding agreement before the start of the new fiscal year, on 1 October.With the clock ticking and both Democrats and Republicans seemingly dug in, there is little time left to avoid a lapse in government funding. And in a sharp escalation, the White House has threatened permanent mass layoffs of government workers in the event of a shutdown, adding to the roughly 300,000 it forced out earlier this year.What is a government shutdown?If a compromise isn’t reached by midnight on 30 September, parts of the government will begin shutting down. Until Congress acts, a wide range of federal services could be temporarily halted or disrupted as certain agencies cease all non-essential functions.In a polarized Washington, with the chambers narrowly divided, shutdown threats have become a feature of recent congressional budget battles. A standoff in 2018, during Trump’s first term, resulted in a 34-day shutdown, the longest in the modern era. At the time, roughly 800,000 of the federal government’s 2.1 million employees were sidelined without pay.What’s causing the fight this time?The federal government’s new fiscal year begins on Wednesday, and Congress has yet to strike an agreement on a short-term funding bill.Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, are refusing to compromise and in effect daring Democrats to reject a stopgap measure that would extend funding levels, mostly at current levels, through 21 November. That bill narrowly passed the House but fell short in the Senate earlier this month.Donald Trump has said he expects the government to shut down this week. “If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” he said on Friday, blaming the Democrats.Republican and Democratic congressional leaders remained at an impasse after a Monday-afternoon meeting with Trump at the White House. “I think we’re headed into a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing,” JD Vance told reporters after the summit.View image in fullscreenDemocrats, locked out of power in Washington, have little leverage, but their votes are needed to overcome the filibuster in the Senate. Democrats are demanding an extension of subsidies that limit the cost of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and are set to expire, a rollback of Medicaid cuts made in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the restoration of funding to public media that was cut in the rescissions package.Leaving the White House on Monday, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said: “There are still large differences between us.”Congressional Democrats are under pressure to use their leverage to stand up to Trump and his administration. In March, Schumer lent the necessary Democratic votes to approve a Republican-written short-term funding measure without securing any concessions – a move that infuriated the party’s base.Why is this year’s threat more serious?This time, the impact on federal workers could be even more severe. In a memo released last week, the White House’s office of management and budget (OMB) told agencies not just to prepare for temporary furloughs but for permanent layoffs in the event of a shutdown.The memo directed agencies to ready reduction-in-force notices for federal programs whose funding sources would lapse in the event of a shutdown and are “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.The OMB led the administration’s earlier efforts to shrink the federal workforce as part of a broader government efficiency campaign led by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”.In a statement on Thursday, AFL-CIO’s president, Liz Shuler, said government employees had “already suffered immensely” this year under the Trump administration’s vast cuts to the federal workforce. “They are not pawns for the president’s political games,” she said.Asked about the memo on Thursday, Trump blamed Democrats, saying a shutdown was what the party wanted. “They never change,” he said.At a news conference, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said on Thursday that Democrats “will not be intimidated” by the Trump administration’s threats to fire more federal employees if the federal government shuts down. He added that his message to Russell Vought, the head of OMB, was simple: “Get lost.”What happens if the government shuts down?In the event of a full or partial government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal workers may be furloughed or required to work without pay. Approximately 750,000 federal employees will be furloughed each day of a government shutdown, according to an estimate by the congressional budget office released on Tuesday.Operations deemed essential – such as social security, Medicare, military duties, immigration enforcement and air traffic control – would continue, but other services may be disrupted or delayed. Mail delivery and post office operations would continue without interruption.Agencies have been releasing updated contingency plans in the event of a shutdown. The Department of Education said nearly all its federal employees would be furloughed, while most of the Department of Homeland Security workforce would remain on the job.The effect can be wide-ranging and potentially long-lasting. Previous shutdowns have closed national parks and the Smithsonian museums in Washington, slowed air travel, delayed food-safety inspections, and postponed immigration hearings.While the broader economy may not feel the effects immediately, analysts warn that a prolonged shutdown could slow growth, disrupt markets and erode public trust. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump to meet with US congressional leaders in last-ditch effort to avoid shutdown

      by

      Donald Trump has reversed course and is purportedly planning to host a bipartisan gathering of the top four US congressional leaders at the White House on Monday afternoon in a last-ditch effort to avoid a looming government shutdown, the House speaker and the US president’s fellow Republican Mike Johnson said on Sunday.Trump’s climbdown comes days after he scrapped a planned meeting to discuss the crisis with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the respective Democratic minority leaders in the House and Senate.The president accused the pair of making “unserious and ridiculous demands” in return for Democratic votes to support a Republican funding agreement to keep the government open beyond Tuesday night – but left the door open for a meeting “if they get serious about the future of our nation”.Johnson, appearing on CNN, said he spoke with Trump at length on Saturday, and that the two Democrats had agreed to join him and John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, for an Oval Office discussion Monday.He did not say if Trump would be negotiating directly with the Democrats – but portrayed Trump as keen to “try to convince them to follow common sense and do what’s right by the American people”.Schumer, talking to NBC’s Meet the Press, said he was “hopeful we can get something real done” – but was uncertain of the mood they would find Trump in when they sat down for the 2pm ET discourse.“If the president at this meeting is going to rant, and just yell at Democrats, and talk about all his alleged grievances, and say this, that, and the other thing, we won’t get anything done,” Schumer said.“We don’t want a shutdown. We hope that they sit down and have a serious negotiation with us.”According to CBS News on Sunday, meanwhile, Trump is not hopeful the meeting will lead to an agreement.The network’s chief national correspondent, Robert Costa, told Face the Nation he spoke with Trump by phone Sunday morning and that a government shutdown “looks likely at this point based on my conversation … He says both sides are at a stalemate.”Costa said: “Inside the White House, sources are saying president Trump actually welcomes a shutdown in the sense that he believes he can wield executive power to get rid of what he calls waste, fraud and abuse.”If no deal is reached, chunks of the federal government are set to shut down as early as Wednesday morning, with the White House telling agencies to prepare to furlough or fire scores of workers.Republican and Democratic leaders have been pointing fingers of blame at each other for days as Tuesday’s deadline for a funding agreement approaches.The narrow House Republican majority passed a short-term spending bill known as a continuing resolution earlier in September that would keep the government funded for seven weeks – but it faces opposition in the Senate, where it needs the support of at least eight Democrats to pass.Democrats have made the extension of expiring healthcare protections a condition of their support, warning that planned Republican spending cuts would affect millions of people.“If we don’t extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, more than 20 million Americans are going to experience dramatically increased premiums, copays, deductibles, in an environment where the cost of living in America is already too high,” Jeffries told CNN on Sunday.“We’ve made clear that we’re ready, willing and able to sit down with anyone, at any time and at any place, in order to make sure that we can actually fund the government, avoid a painful Republican caused shutdown, and address the healthcare crisis that Republicans have caused that’s [affecting] everyday Americans.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Trump and Republicans have repeatedly accused their political opponents of exploiting the issue to force a shutdown while there was still plenty of time to fix healthcare before the subsidies expire on 31 December.“The Obamacare subsidies is a policy debate that has to be determined by the end of the year, not right now, while we’re simply trying to keep the government open so we can have all these debates,” Johnson said.“There is nothing partisan about this continuing resolution, nothing. We didn’t add a single partisan priority or policy rider at all. We’re operating completely in good faith to get more time.”Thune, on Meet the Press, also attempted to blame Democrats for the potential shutdown and said “the ball is in their court” as to the next development.“There is a bill sitting at the desk in the Senate right now, we could pick it up today and pass it, that has been passed by the House that will be signed into law by the president to keep the government open,” he said.“What the Democrats have done is take the federal government as a hostage, and by extension the American people, to try [to] get a whole laundry list of things that they want.”But US senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who has previously urged his party leadership to be stronger in standing up to the Trump administration, said the problem was Republicans handing “a complete blank check” to the president to spend money on his own political interests, and not those of the nation.“Until now the president has said he’d rather shut down the government than prevent those healthcare costs from spiking,” he told CNN.“Democrats are united right now on this question. I’m glad we’re finally talking. We’ll see what happens.” More