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      White House plays racist deepfake video of Democratic leaders on loop

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      As the Trump administration insists it is serious about negotiating an end to the government shutdown, a pair of racist deepfake videos mocking Democratic leaders played on a loop in the White House briefing room for hours on Wednesday.The videos, posted by Trump on his social media platform on Monday, use fabricated audio to make it seem as if the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called Democrats “woke pieces of shit”, and showed the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, with a fake mustache and sombrero.JD Vance, the US vice-president, made light of the tactic during a rare appearance in the briefing room. “I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also making a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and even poking some fun at the absurdity of themselves.“I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”Jeffries has denounced the memes as racist. Vance retorted: “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”The clips, both set to Mexican mariachi music, are intended to drive home the administration’s false claim that the Democrats are demanding health insurance subsidies for unauthorized immigrants as a condition for funding the federal government.In fact, Democrats want to ensure that funding is provided to Americans who rely on Affordable Care Act subsidies to purchase health insurance. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for those subsidies.Democrats have also asked to reverse a provision of the Republican tax and spending bill that stripped health benefits of lawfully present immigrants, including refugees with Temporary Protected Status and non-citizens who were brought to the US as children, who were previously eligible for federal benefits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) designation.The fabricated words put in Schumer’s mouth are presented as an admission by the Democratic senator of a far-right conspiracy theory promoted by white supremacists, that Democrats want to give government benefits to undocumented immigrants from Latin America as part of a plot to replace white voters with immigrants who will then vote for Democrats.The so-called “great replacement” theory has been cited by a number of shooters who have carried out racist mass shootings, including the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, and another who murdered 11 congregants in the the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The conspiracy theory also prompted torch-carrying, white supremacist marchers at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 to chant “Jews will not replace us.”After Jeffries called the first video racist, Trump posted a second clip, of the Democrat calling the fabricated video “disgusting”, in which the sombrero and mustache are again added to the congressman, and a mariachi band featuring four versions of Trump plays in the background.David Smith, Guardian Washington bureau chief, contributed reporting More

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      Trump signs order promising measures, including military, to defend Qatar

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order vowing to use all measures including US military action to defend the energy-rich nation of Qatar – though it remains unclear just what weight the pledge will carry.The text of the order, available Wednesday on the White House’s website but dated Monday, appears to be another measure by Trump to assure the Qataris following Israel’s surprise attack on the country targeting Hamas leaders as they weighed accepting a ceasefire with Israel over the war in the Gaza Strip.The order cites the two countries’ “close cooperation” and “shared interest”, vowing to “guarantee the security and territorial integrity of the state of Qatar against external attack”.“The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty or critical infrastructure of the state of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States,” the order says.“In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures – including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military – to defend the interests of the United States and of the state of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”The order apparently came during a visit to Washington on Monday by Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump organized a call by Netanyahu to Qatar during the visit in which Netanyahu “expressed his deep regret” over the strike that killed six people, including a member of the Qatari security forces, the White House said.Qatar’s foreign ministry described the US pledge as “an important step in strengthening the two countries’ close defense partnership”. The Qatari-funded Al Jazeera satellite news network declared: “New Trump executive order guarantees Qatar security after Israeli attack.”Trump also spoke on the phone later Wednesday to Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.The White House did not release details about the call, though Qatar later said the two men spoke about Doha’s efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.The true scope of the pledge by the US remains in question. Typically, legally binding agreements, or treaties, need to receive the approval of the US Senate. However, presidents have entered international agreements without the Senate’s approval, as Barack Obama did with Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.Ultimately, any decision to take military action rests with the president. That uncertainty has clouded previous US defense agreements in Trump’s second term, such as Nato’s Article 5 guarantees.Qatar, a peninsular nation in the Persian Gulf, became fantastically wealthy through its natural gas reserves. It has been a key partner of the US military, allowing its Central Command to have its forward operating base at its vast Al Udeid airbase.Joe Biden named Qatar as a major non-Nato ally in 2022, in part due to its help during the US’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. And Qatar has maintained close ties to Trump, from a real estate project with his eponymous Trump Organization to offering him a Boeing 747 to use as Air Force One.In the aftermath of the Israeli attack, Saudi Arabia entered a mutual defense agreement with Pakistan, bringing the kingdom under Islamabad’s nuclear umbrella. It’s unclear whether other Gulf Arab countries, worried about both Israel as well as Iran as it faces reimposed United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program, may seek similar arrangements with the region’s longtime security guarantor.“The Gulf’s centrality in the Middle East and its significance to the United States warrants specific US guarantees beyond President Donald J Trump’s assurances of nonrepetition and dinner meetings,” wrote Bader al-Saif, a history professor at Kuwait University who analyzes Gulf Arab affairs. More

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      Vance uses false claims to pin shutdown blame on Democrats as White House warns of layoffs

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      JD Vance, the US vice-president, used false claims to blame Democrats for the government shutdown as the White House warned that worker layoffs were imminent.Federal departments have been closing since midnight after a deadlocked Congress failed to pass a funding measure. The crisis has higher stakes than previous shutdowns, with Trump racing to slash government departments and threatening to turn furloughs into mass firings.Making a rare appearance in the White House briefing room, Vance told reporters: “We are going to have to lay some people off if the shutdown continues. We don’t like that. We don’t necessarily want to do it, but we’re going to do what we have to do to keep the American people’s essential services continuing to run.”Vance denied workers would be targeted because of their political allegiance but acknowledged there was still uncertainty over who might be laid off or furloughed. “We haven’t made any final decisions about what we’re going to do with certain workers,” he said. “What we’re saying is that we might have to take extraordinary steps, especially the longer this goes on.”About 750,000 federal employees are expected to be placed on furlough, an enforced leave, with pay withheld until they return to work. Essential workers such as military and border agents may be forced to work without pay, and some will likely miss pay cheques next week.At the same briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that government agencies are already preparing for cuts.“Unfortunately, because the Democrats shut down the government, the president has directed his cabinet, and the office of management and budget is working with agencies across the board, to identify where cuts can be made – and we believe that layoffs are imminent,” she said.The press secretary acknowledged she could not be precise about timing or identify the percentage of workers likely to be affected.As the messaging war over the shutdown intensifies, Democrats, motivated by grassroots anger over expiring healthcare subsidies, have been withholding Senate votes to fund the government as leverage to try and force negotiations.Vance sought to upbraid Democrats over their demands, targeting Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC.“The Chuck Schumer-AOC wing of the Democratic party shut down the government because they said to us, we will open the government only if you give billions of dollars of funding to healthcare for illegal aliens. That’s a ridiculous proposition.”It is also a false claim. US law bars undocumented immigrants from receiving the health care benefits Democrats are demanding, and the party has not called for a new act of Congress to change that.At a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, said Trump and Republicans shut the government down to deny healthcare to working-class Americans.“The president has been engaging in irresponsible and unserious behaviour, demonstrating that, all along, Republicans wanted to shut the government down,” he said. “That’s no surprise, because for decades, Republicans have consistently shut the government down as part of their efforts to try to extract and jam their extreme rightwing agenda down the throats of the American people.”On another front, the White House began targeting Democratic-leaning states for a pause or cancellation of infrastructure funds.Russ Vought, the OMB director, said on X that roughly $18bn for New York City infrastructure projects had been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing to “unconstitutional DEI principles”. Later he said nearly $8bn in clean energy funding “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled”.Schumer and Jeffries responded in a joint statement: “Donald Trump is once again treating working people as collateral damage in his endless campaign of chaos and revenge.”Shutdowns are a periodic feature of gridlocked Washington, although this is the first since a record 35-day pause in 2018-19, during Trump’s first term. Talks so far have been unusually bitter, with Trump mocking Schumer and Jeffries on social media.The president’s most recent video showed Jeffries being interviewed on MSNBC with an AI-generated moustache and sombrero, and four depictions of the president playing mariachi music.Vance made light of the tactic. “I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also making a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and even poking some fun at the absurdity of the themselves.“I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”Jeffries has denounced the memes as racist. Vance retorted: “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”Efforts to swiftly end the shutdown collapsed on Wednesday as Senate Democrats – who are demanding extended healthcare subsidies for low income families – refused to help the majority Republicans approve a bill passed by the House that would have reopened the government for several weeks.Congress is out on Thursday for the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday but the Senate returns to work on Friday and may be in session through the weekend. The House is not due back until next week.A Marist poll released on Tuesday found that 38% of voters would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown, 27% would blame the Democrats and 31% both parties. More

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      Democrats liken Trump to Putin after call to use US cities for military training

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      A leading Democrat has compared Donald Trump to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin after the US president told military leaders on Tuesday that the armed forces should use US cities as “training grounds”.JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, which is bracing for Trump to deploy national guard troops to his state, questioned the president’s mental health and accused him of behaving like an autocrat.“It appears that Donald Trump not only has dementia set in but he’s copying tactics of Vladimir Putin,” Pritzker said. “Sending troops into cities, thinking that that’s some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there’s some sort of internal war going on in the United States is just, frankly, inane and I’m concerned for his health.”Since returning to office in January, Trump has used crime and illegal immigration as a pretext to expand federal agents and national guard troops into cities led by Democrats, often with large African American populations.The president deployed in Los Angeles in June and Washington DC in August despite the objections of local officials and official figures showing that crime is falling. And over the weekend Trump announced plans to send national guard troops to what he described as “war-ravaged” Portland, though the city and state are seeking a restraining order, claiming that the president has overstepped his legal authority.On Tuesday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said a federal taskforce operation in Memphis, Tennessee was under way. Meanwhile, Louisiana’s governor asked for a national guard deployment to New Orleans and other cities.Trump dialled up the pressure further on Tuesday at a rare gathering of more than 800 military leaders in Quantico, Virginia. He said: “Last month I signed an executive order to provide training for quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is gonna be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”The phrase “enemy within” was used by Senator Joseph McCarthy in a 1950 speech about threats to democracy. McCarthy is best known for his aggressive campaign against alleged communist infiltration in the US government and society.Addressing an auditorium full of top brass from around the world, Trump said he told Pete Hegseth that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”Trump acknowledged that he had been criticised for deploying the military on US streets but claimed America was in the grips of a battle against immigrants in the country illegally.“America is under invasion from within,” Trump said. “We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out.”The president encouraged soldiers harassed or assaulted by protesters to “get out of that car and do whatever the hell you want to do”.Democrats condemned the remarks as a dangerous escalation worthy of an authoritarian.Gavin Newsom, the California governor, whose name has been floated as a possible 2028 presidential contender, said the speech should terrify people.“Declaring war on our nation’s cities and using our troops as political pawns is what dictators do. This man cares about nothing but his own ego and power,” Newsom posted on X.Pritzker called for the 25th amendment to the constitution, which deals with the removal of a president incapacitated by a physical or mental illness, to be applied. “There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th amendment ought to be invoked,” he said.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe: “So, this is totally against the American grain, and it’s one example of many that they’re moving to an autocracy away from a democracy. In dictatorships, the federal military goes into the cities to do bad things.”Civil society groups also condemned the plans. Naureen Shah, director of government affairs of the equality division at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said: “We don’t need to spell out how dangerous the president’s message is, but here goes: military troops must not police us, let alone be used as a tool to suppress the president’s critics.”The Not Above the Law coalition said in a statement: “Trump’s suggestion that US cities should serve as military ‘training grounds’ represents a fundamental betrayal of American values. Our military exists to defend our nation and protect our freedoms, not to practice combat operations against our neighbors in our communities.”The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 is supposed to prevent presidents from using the military as a domestic police force. But Trump has exploited a loophole by deploying the national guard, a reserve force often used for natural disasters, and creating a new “quick reaction force” for crushing domestic unrest.At Tuesday’s event in Quantico, the defense secretary vowed the military would abolish “overbearing rules of engagement” and “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralise, hunt and kill the enemies of our country”.There were few visible reactions from the generals and admirals, who sat largely silent and expressionless. Trump, accustomed to roars or laughs at campaign rallies, found his punchlines fell flat. More

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      Why healthcare spending was at the center of the US government shutdown battle

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      The federal government shut down on Wednesday in part, due to a battle between Democrats and Republicans over healthcare spending.Democrats had said that they would not vote for legislation to keep the government open unless Donald Trump and Republicans, who hold the majority in Congress, agreed to reverse cuts to Medicaid and extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans. That did not respire in either of the votes in the Senate on Tuesday.In June, the US president approved legislation he calls his “big, beautiful bill”, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $793bn and increase the number of uninsured people by 7.8 million.The savings in federal Medicaid spending will largely come from the implementation of the new requirements, which include completing 80 hours of work or community service activities per month, or meeting exemption criteria.The law also means that the premium tax credits implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic for insurance purchased through the Health Insurance Marketplace will expire at the end of 2025. That would make coverage more expensive and lead to 3.1 million more people without health insurance, according to the CBO.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of everyday Americans,” Jeffries said following a negotiation with Trump and Republican leaders on Monday.Meanwhile, Trump doubled down during an Oval Office press conference on Tuesday that if the parties can’t reach an agreement, “we can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them,” Trump said while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon. “Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”He did not mention Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act but said: “We can do things medically and other ways, including benefits.”Still, there could be an opening for negotiation in coming weeks. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, said on the Senate floor on Tuesday that the Democrats should vote to keep the government open until 21 November and that he would be happy to fix the “ACA credit issue” before the credits expire at the end of the year. More

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      What do Trump and Hegseth’s inflammatory speeches to military generals signal? | Moira Donegan

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      Shortly after Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s defense secretary, summoned all the military’s generals to Quantico, Virginia, from their positions around the world in an unusual demand for an in-person assembly, Ben Hodges, a retired general, took to social media to evoke a bit of history. “July 1935,” Hodges said. “German generals were called to a surprise assembly in Berlin and informed that their previous oath to the Weiman constitution was void and that they would be required to swear a personal oath to the Führer. Most generals took the new oath to keep their positions.” Hegseth’s account replied to Hodges post: “Cool story, General”.Yet when the meeting finally happened on Tuesday morning, the army generals and navy admirals were treated to a 45-minute speech by Hegseth, followed by a rambling, hour-long address by Trump, which confirmed at least some of what Hodges seemed to fear. The defense secretary emphasized the army’s appearance, decrying “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon”, and signaled his intent to reshape the military’s culture so as to purge “wokeness” and evoke a more masculine image. “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” he said. “No more division, distraction and gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before, and will say again: We are done. With that. Shit.” The military, Hegseth suggested, would become an advertisement for the Trump regime’s preferred cultural style, and this transformation will evidently involve many changes to what the armed forces look like when they are photographed.To this end, Hegseth announced that he would also be eliminating or drastically curtailing the equal opportunity, whistleblower, inspector general and complaint procedures that allow military personnel to report harassment and misconduct. The changes seemed designed to particularly roll back efforts undertaken over the course of the 2010s to reduce sexual assault in the military and end its impunity.“No more frivolous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more smearing reputations,” said Hegseth, who settled a lawsuit brought by a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2020. (The settlement terms are confidential. Hegseth has said the allegations were false). “No more walking on eggshells.” One former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told CNN: “I think what this is, is people are sick and tired of not being able to make inappropriate or sexually explicit jokes at the staff meetings.” Hegseth, it seems, is committed to restoring this treasured freedom.Hegseth similarly declared that he would be changing procedures that have allowed the military to be more diverse – such as eliminating special permissions for soldiers to grow beards, frequently used by Black soldiers, and raising physical fitness standards for specialized, often high-pay and high-status combat roles to what Hegseth seemed to believe is a threshold only men will meet. Hegseth, who has opposed women serving in combat roles, said that candidates for such jobs will be held to the “highest male standard”, which he also said was “gender neutral”. “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it,” Hegseth said. “That is not the intent,” he added, questionably. “But it could be the result.”As for the officers themselves, a group which included several Black men and women of various races, Hegseth seemed to offer what he evidently thought was a flattering assessment of their masculine violence and virility. “You kill people and break things for a living,” Hegseth said to the assembled generals. “You are not politically correct and do not necessarily belong always in polite society.” The speech was repetitive and heavy on moments of self-conscious macho posturing. “To our enemies,” Hegseth said at one point “FAFO” – or, fuck around and find out. The defense secretary paused, seeming to wait for applause, but nobody clapped.Trump, meanwhile, also signaled that he seeks to transform the military into a partisan tool of his regime, repeatedly telling the assembled leaders that they would be tasked with missions targeting Americans. “America is under invasion from within,” the president said. “We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out. It’s war from within.” Trump, who just days ago deployed 200 national guard troops to Portland, Oregon, with orders to use “full force, if necessary” offered that he had instructed Hegseth to use American cities as “training grounds”. At other times, Trump meandered, as he often does, into off-script comments that were difficult to parse. “But they’re not going to stand in our way, ever again,” Trump said. “You’re not going to see four years like we had with Biden and that group of incompetent people that ran that should have never been there. Because we have the United States military, the best, the boldest, the bravest, that the world has ever seen, that the world has ever known.”Trump, like Hegseth, sometimes paused, seeming to expect the generals to clap or laugh. But the laughs were not forthcoming; the military audience was largely silent.There is something pathetic about Hegseth and Trump, who have schemed and failed their way into positions of power and prestige that are comically outsized to their character. It is telling that Hegseth is so preoccupied with making the military into a photogenic spectacle of masculine strength – an anxious fixation on surface and spectacle that only highlights the US’s declining influence abroad.It is telling, too, that Trump can barely string sentences together, appearing distracted, sleepy, and barely coherent as he tells the armed forces to train their guns on his own people. There is no pretext that can sustain the delusion that these are serious people, or that their instructions to the military come from any motive other than their own desire for narcissistic gratification.They do not want to be strong to pursue the nation’s interests; they do not want to be strong to pursue any principles; they certainly do not want to be strong so that they can ensure the safety of the innocent. They want to be strong so that they can look big and important on TV. And for that, they flew the generals in from around the world, at tremendous taxpayer expense, to force them to sit as a captive audience for a pair of speeches that sounded like poor imitations of an action movie monologue.But as Hodges suggested, the ostentatious idiocy of these men does not mean that the generals and admirals assembled will not follow their orders. These military leaders have received the signal that their troops are to become whiter and more male; they have received the instruction that their next missions will involve suppressing domestic dissent. They have a choice between following their orders and keeping their jobs, or following an abstract set of principles, and leaving them. Most of them will choose the former.The US military, for all its wreckage and violence it imposes abroad and for all the cruelty and exploitation of the poor that it inflicts at home, has one consistent virtue: it has always been under quite firm civilian control. Most of the time, that’s a good thing.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump’s H-1B visa fee is a death sentence for US healthcare | Eram Alam

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      The Trump administration announced last week that every new H-1B visa will now cost $100,000. Framed as a crackdown on Silicon Valley, the policy will devastate American hospitals. Its real casualties will be poor and rural Americans in need of medical care, but with no one left to provide it.One in four US physicians is foreign-trained. Many enter through the H-1B program, disproportionately staffing rural and underserved hospitals where American graduates rarely go. In some facilities, every single doctor is an immigrant. These are the physicians who deliver babies in Mississippi Delta towns, staff emergency rooms in the Dakotas, and run primary care clinics in the Bronx. By raising visa costs from a few thousand dollars to $100,000, the administration is functionally cutting off their pipeline.The consequences will be immediate and severe. In this year’s residency match, international graduates filled more than 6,600 positions, with the vast majority in internal medicine and family medicine – the unglamorous workhorses of primary care. American graduates consistently avoid these specialties, preferring higher-paying and more prestigious fields. Without immigrant physicians, safety-net hospitals will be unable to fill residency slots, rural areas will lose their only steady doctors, and wait times for basic care will stretch our even further than they already are. The result will not be new jobs for Americans; it will be shuttered clinics and lives lost.The administration claims that cutting off immigrant doctors will catalyze domestic production of physicians. But training a doctor takes at least a decade, and requires investments in medical education that both major US political parties have consistently refused to make. Since the 1960s, Congress has chosen not to expand medical school and residency capacity in line with population growth, instead treating immigrant doctors as a convenient – and far cheaper – stopgap.When Medicare was created in 1965, lawmakers agreed to fund graduate medical education precisely because hospitals argued they could not sustain the high cost of residency training on their own. But funding was capped in the 1990s, and despite repeated warnings about looming shortages, Congress has failed to lift those limits. Today, the Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortfall of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. That crisis is not the product of immigration policy. It is the predictable result of decades of underinvestment in training the workforce Americans need.As I show in my forthcoming book, the Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare, the US has always yoked the fate of immigrant physicians to the health of American patients. After the second world war, when new public insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid expanded access to care, lawmakers turned to foreign doctors to fill the gaps. The 1965 Hart-Celler Act, passed the same year as Medicare, was explicitly designed to recruit highly trained professionals from abroad. Within a decade, tens of thousands of physicians – overwhelmingly from India and other postcolonial nations – were staffing hospitals across the United States.This arrangement was hailed as mutually beneficial: the US got the doctors it needed, and immigrant physicians got training and opportunity. But the costs were exported. Countries like India, with far fewer doctors per capita and vastly greater health burdens, lost tens of thousands of their best-trained clinicians. American lawmakers knew it. In 1967, Senator Walter Mondale called it a “national disgrace” that the US was siphoning lifesaving workers from countries “where thousands die daily of disease” in order to staff American hospitals. Yet the practice persisted, institutionalized as a structural feature of US healthcare.What Donald Trump’s new policy does is break even with this pragmatic, longstanding “America-first” tradition with which the country has long prioritized its own convenience over an honest accounting of its effects on the poorer nations from which it continually extracts value. Instead of using immigration policy to stabilize the system, it weaponizes it for exclusion. The $100,000 fee is not simply a labor market reform. It is a political message: immigrant doctors are expendable, and so are the patients they serve.The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and 53 leading medical societies have already urged the administration to exempt physicians from the new fee. But carving out exceptions misses the point. Relying on temporary waivers and emergency visas has always been a precarious way to run a healthcare system. Immigrant physicians are not a contingency plan. They are the backbone of American medicine – and they deserve stability, not discretionary exemptions subject to the whims of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary.The deeper crisis at play is not immigration at all. It is America’s refusal to build a sustainable pipeline with which to ensure care for its citizens. For 60 years, policymakers have papered over severe underinvestment in medical education and poor rural and urban communities by exploiting immigrant labor. Now, instead of repairing that rotten foundation, the administration is simply dynamiting the patchwork that has kept the system functional. Wealthy hospitals in big cities may find ways to absorb the costs. Rural and safety-net hospitals cannot. Patients in those communities – disproportionately poor, rural, and minority – will be the ones left sacrificed in service of Trump’s indulgence for dramatic, nonsensical proclamations without accounting for their very real consequences for American communities.The lesson of this moment should not be that immigrant doctors need another exception. It is that Americans cannot afford to keep treating healthcare labor as a disposable commodity, imported when convenient and scapegoated when politically expedient. What we need is structural reform: expanding medical school and residency capacity, investing in primary care, and ensuring that immigrant doctors who already sustain the system have a predictable, efficient and permanent route to practice.Immigrant physicians have long been America’s safety net. To slam the door on them now, without fixing the underlying shortages, is more than shortsighted. It is a policy of exclusion disguised as reform – and it will cost lives. America first, in this case, will make Americans die.

      Eram Alam is a historian of medicine and migration in the department of the history of science at Harvard University. She is the author of the Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare, forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press in October 2025 More

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      US government shutdown live: first closure since 2018 begins after funding bill fails

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      A US government shutdown has been triggered after a deadline to reach a funding agreement before the start of the new fiscal year, on 1 October, came and went without a deal.Democrats and Republicans angrily blamed each other and refused to budge from their positions as the country hurtled towards the midnight ET deadline, unable to find agreement or even negotiate as hundreds of thousands of federal workers stood to be furloughed or laid off.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans were trying to “bully” Democrats by refusing to negotiate on an extension of healthcare benefits and other priorities. Senate majority leader John Thune said Republicans were “not going to be held hostage” by the Democrats’ demands.Hours before the shutdown, Donald Trump told reporters he had “no choice” but to lay off federal workers if no deal was reached. Asked about why he was considering mass layoffs, Trump said: “No country can afford to pay for illegal immigration, healthcare for everybody that comes into the country. And that’s what they [Democrats] are insisting. They want open borders. They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everybody. They never stop. They don’t learn. We won an election in the landslide. They just don’t learn. So we have no choice. I have to do that for the country.”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.

      Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.

      The Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have blamed Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, saying they “do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people”.

      The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”

      Russ Vought, director of the White House office of management and budget, released a letter blaming “Democrats’ insane policy demands” for a shutdown. “It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict,” Vought wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the heads of federal offices and agencies.

      Democratic leaders say they are not backing down, but signs have emerged of dissent within their ranks. Three members of the Democratic caucus voted for the Republican proposal on Tuesday evening – two more than when the bill was first considered earlier this month. “I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration,” said Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
      We will bring you the latest news and reactions on the shutdown as we get them.Already diminished by cuts by the Trump administration, the US education department will see more of its work come to a halt due to the government shutdown.The department says many of its core operations will continue in the shutdown kicking off Wednesday. Federal financial aid will keep flowing, and student loan payments will still be due.But investigations into civil rights complaints will stop, and the department will not issue new federal grants, AP reports. About 87% of its workforce will be furloughed, according to a department contingency plan.AP reports:
      Since he took office, president Donald Trump has called for the dismantling of the education department, saying it has been overrun by liberal thinking. Agency leaders have been making plans to parcel out its operations to other departments, and in July the supreme court upheld mass layoffs that halved the department’s staff.
      In a shutdown, the administration has suggested federal agencies could see more positions eliminated entirely. In past shutdowns, furloughed employees were brought back once Congress restored federal funding. This time, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers.
      Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee in May, Education Secretary Linda McMahon suggested this year’s layoffs had made her department lean – even too lean in some cases. Some staffers were brought back, she said, after officials found that the cuts went too deep.
      “You hope that you’re just cutting fat. Sometimes you cut a little muscle, and you realize it as you’re continuing your programs, and you can bring people back to do that,” McMahon said. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January. It now has about 2,500.
      The US government shut down on Wednesday, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican plan to extend funding for federal departments unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.The GOP, which controls the Senate and the House of Representatives, repudiated their demands, setting off a legislative scramble that lasted into the hours before funding lapsed at midnight, when the Senate failed to advance both parties’ bills to keep funding going.The shutdown is the first since a 35-day closure that began in December 2018 and extended into the new year, during Trump’s first term. It comes as Democrats look to regain their footing with voters, who re-elected Trump last year and relegated them to the minority in both chambers of Congress.“Republicans are plunging America into a shutdown, rejecting bipartisan talks, pushing a partisan bill and risking America’s healthcare,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday evening, as it became clear a shutdown was inevitable.Last month, House Republicans passed a bill that would fund the government through 21 November, but it requires the support of some Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. It failed to gain that support in votes held late on Tuesday, while Republicans also blocked a Democratic proposal to continue funding through October while also making an array of policy changes.“Far-left interest groups and far-left Democrat members wanted to show down with the president, and so Senate Democrats have sacrificed the American people to Democrats’ partisan interests,” Senate majority leader John Thune said.Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”National Parks will largely remain partially open even as the federal government shuts down. A plan released late on Tuesday, hours before the shutdown was set to begin, outlined how swaths of land not able to be locked down – including open-air memorials, park roads, and trails – will remain accessible to the public.The document also detailed that more than 9,200 employees will be furloughed, reducing staff by roughly 64%. Only workers deemed necessary to protect “life and property”, will remain on duty.The former superintendent of Joshua Tree national park said in 2019 the park could take hundreds of years to recover from damage caused by visitors during the 2018-19 shutdown.In 2013, an estimated 8 million recreation visits and $414 million were lost during the 16-day shutdown, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, citing National Park Service data. During the most recent shutdown in 2019, many parks remained open though no visitor services were provided. The Park Service lost $400,000 a day from missed entrance fee revenue, according to the association’s estimates. What’s more, park visitors would have typically spent $20 million on an average January day in nearby communities.The Guardian’s video desk has compiled this video as Republicans and Democrats blame each other for the shutdown.Workers who were furloughed during the 2018-19 shutdown shared their stories with the Guardian in 2019. One, Leisyka Parrott, a furloughed employee with the Bureau of Land Management said: “The thing is when you get back pay, all the fees that you incur by missing payments – you don’t get paid back for those. If you are late for a payment and have a $25 fee, the government doesn’t pay for that.”“There’s all kinds of issues with raising families, just buying gasoline,” said Franco DiCroce, a US army corps of engineers employee speaking in his capacity as president of Local 98 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers told the Guardian. “Most of these people, their salaries are not skyrocketing. They’re suffering even more, because some of them live check-to-check, so if they don’t have money coming in, they’re going to have difficulty meeting their needs, to even buy groceries.”Many turned to food banks in order to eat. “You’ve worked for 10, 20, 30 years for the government,” said Nurel Storey, an officer for the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 22. “And all of a sudden things have just been shut off, for no fault of your own.”The 35-day partial shutdown of the US government that started in 2018 cost about $11bn and shaved 0.2% off the nation’s annual economic growth forecasts, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said in January 2019.According to the CBO, that shutdown hurt economic growth because it affected roughly 800,000 workers and delayed federal spending on goods and services.This shutdown is expected to be worse than previous ones. The impact on federal workers could be even more severe.Before Trump’s most recent threat of mass layoffs on Tuesday, a memo released last week by the White House’s office of management and budget 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”.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, 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.”Gold hit a record high and Wall Street futures fell with the dollar Wednesday after the US government shutdown, though most Asian and European markets edged up.Britain’s stock market hit a new record high, as investors shrugged off concerns about the US government shutdown.You can follow all of the day’s business developments with Graeme Wearden in the business live blogA government shutdown raises questions about how the Environmental Protection Agency can carry out its mission of protecting the America’s health and environment with little more than skeletal staff and funding. The Associated Press has carried this report.In President Donald Trump’s second term, the EPA has leaned hard into an agenda of deregulation and facilitating Trump’s boosting of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal to meet what he has called an energy emergency.Jeremy Symons, a former EPA policy official under President Bill Clinton, said it’s natural to worry that a shutdown will lead “the worst polluters” to treat it as a chance to dump toxic pollution without getting caught.“Nobody will be holding polluters accountable for what they dump into the air we breathe, in the water we drink while EPA is shut down,” said Symons, now a senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former agency officials advocating for a strong Earth-friendly department.A scientific study of pollution from about 200 coal-fired power plants during the 2018-2019 government shutdown found they “significantly increased their particulate matter emissions due to the EPA’s furlough.” Soot pollution is connected to thousands of deaths per year in the United States.The EPA’s shutdown plan calls for it to stop doing non-criminal pollution inspections needed to enforce clean air and water rules. It won’t issue new grants to other governmental agencies, update its website, issue new permits, approve state requests dealing with pollution regulations or conduct most scientific research, according to the EPA document. Except in situations where the public health would be at risk, work on Superfund cleanup sites will stop.Marc Boom, a former EPA policy official during the Biden administration, said inspections under the Chemical Accident Risk Reduction program would halt. Those are done under the Clean Air Act to make sure facilities are adequately managing the risk of chemical accidents.“Communities near the facilities will have their risk exposure go up immediately since accidents will be more likely to occur,” Boom said.He also said EPA hotlines for reporting water and other pollution problems likely will be closed. “So if your water tastes off later this week, there will be no one at EPA to pick up the phone,” he said.While many airport employees, including air traffic controllers, are required to work during the shutdown as they are categorized as essential, they will not be paid and it’s likely there will be staffing issues. That could mean travel disruptions in the US and for overseas visitors.What is the likely impact on air travel?Flights will continue but delays and cancellations are very likely. Air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration employees who staff airport security checkpoints are essential workers, but will be working without pay. In previous shutdowns flights were significantly disrupted and security lines were lengthy.The shutdown could also impact the air traffic control system. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recruied 2,000 new controllers in 2025 but training will be hit by the shutdown.What about trains?Amtrak trains will run. Amtrak does receive federal grants, but generates revenue, so it doesn’t depend on government funding in the short term. It cannot operate indefinitely though and if a shutdown went on for long enough, it could be affected.Passports and visas?A State Department spokesperson told CNN on Monday that “Consular operations domestically and abroad will remain operational. This includes passports, visas, and assisting US citizens abroad.”National Park staff are among federal workers required to stop working in a government shutdown. But staff feared Trump officials could once again push for leaving America’s parks open when they are unstaffed.Irreversible damage was done at popular parks, including Joshua Tree in California, following a month-long shutdown in Donald Trump’s first term, when his administration demanded parks be kept open while funding was paused and workers were furloughed.Without supervision, visitors left behind trails of destruction. Prehistoric petroglyphs were vandalized at Big Bend national park. Joshua trees, some more than a century old, were chopped down at Joshua Tree national park, as trash and toilets overflowed. Tire tracks crushed sensitive plants and desert habitats from illegal off-roading vehicles in Death Valley. There were widespread reports of wildlife poaching, search-and-rescue crews were quickly overwhelmed with calls, and visitor centers were broken into.“National parks don’t run themselves. It is hard-working National Park Service employees that keep them safe, clean and accessible,” 40 former superintendents said in a letter issued to Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, this week, urging him to close the parks if a shutdown occurs. “If sufficient staff aren’t there, visitors shouldn’t be either.”A plan released late on Tuesday, mere hours before the shutdown was set to begin, outlined how swaths of land not able to be locked down – including open-air memorials, park roads, and trails – will remain accessible to the public. The document also detailed that more than 9,200 employees will be furloughed, reducing staff by roughly 64%. Only workers deemed necessary to protect “life and property”, will remain on duty.A deep impasse between Donald Trump and congressional Democrats prevented Congress and the White House from reaching a funding deal. So what will take to end the shutdown?What Republicans wantTrump’s Republicans control both the House and the Senate, and have already scored some big budget wins this year. The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ passed in July and it boosted spending for defense and immigration enforcement, rolled back spending on green energy and other Democratic priorities, while making major cuts in the Medicaid healthcare program for low-income and disabled people to help pay for tax cuts focused mainly on the wealthy. Republicans also have broadly supported the White House’s efforts to claw back money that had already been approved by Congress for foreign aid and public broadcasting, even though that undermines lawmakers’ constitutional authority over spending matters. They have said they would vote for a continuing resolution that would extend funding at current levels through 21 November to allow more time to negotiate a full-year deal.What Democrats wantAs the minority party, Democrats do not have much power. But Republicans will need at least seven Democratic votes to pass any spending bill out of the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to advance most legislation in the 100-seat chamber.This time, Democrats are using that leverage to push for renewing expanded healthcare subsidies for people who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Their proposal would make permanent enhanced tax breaks that are otherwise due to expire at the end of the year and make them available to more middle-income households. If those tax breaks were to expire, health insurance costs would increase dramatically for many of the 24 million Americans who get their coverage through the ACA, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.Democrats also want language inserted into any funding bill that would prohibit Trump from unilaterally ignoring their ACA provisions or temporarily withholding funds.They also want to roll back other restrictions on ACA coverage that were enacted in the so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’. Those changes would provide health coverage for seven million Americans by 2035, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but also increase government healthcare spending by $662bn over 10 years. Republicans say they are open to considering a fix for the expiring tax breaks, but say the issue should be handled separately. Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to use the stopgap funding bill to open the gates for government healthcare subsidies for immigrants in the US illegally.The former Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris took aim at Republicans over the shutdown, posting on X:
      President Trump and Congressional Republicans just shut down the government because they refused to stop your health care costs from rising. Let me be clear: Republicans are in charge of the White House, House, and Senate. This is their shutdown.
      Congresswoman Shontel Brown said Donald Trump and Republicans alone are responsible for the shutdown. She said in a statement:
      Washington Republicans have totally and completely failed in their responsibility to fund the government. House Republicans weren’t even in Washington this week as the government was close to shutting down. This was no accident; it was a deliberate choice.
      We came to work to save health care – they went on vacation.
      Every day this shutdown drags on, families, workers, and communities in Northeast Ohio will pay the price: service members and federal employees will miss paychecks, Social Security and veterans’ services could be delayed, and small business loans will stall.
      Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett said Republicans “chose chaos” in a post on X:
      Make no mistake: Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. This is THEIR shutdown. They had every tool to govern and chose chaos instead. The American people are the ones paying the price.
      Now that a lapse in funding has occurred, the law requires agencies to furlough their “non-excepted” employees. Excepted employees, which include those who work to protect life and property, stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.The White House Office of Management and Budget begins the process with instructions to agencies that a lapse in appropriations has occurred and they should initiate orderly shutdown activities. That memo went out Tuesday evening.The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed, with the total daily cost of their compensation at roughly $400m.FBI investigators, CIA officers, air traffic controllers and agents operating airport checkpoints keep working. So do members of the Armed Forces.Those programs that rely on mandatory spending generally continue during a shutdown. Social Security payments still go out. Seniors relying on Medicare coverage can still see their doctors and health care providers can be reimbursed.Each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan, outlining which workers would stay on the job and which would be furloughed.Health and Human Services will furlough about 41% of its staff out of nearly 80,000 employees, according to a contingency plan posted on its website. As part of that plan, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would continue to monitor disease outbreaks, while activities that will stop include research into health risks and ways to prevent illness.Research and patient care at the National Institutes of Health would be upended. Patients currently enrolled in studies at the research-only hospital nicknamed the “house of hope” will continue to receive care. Additional sick patients hoping for access to experimental therapies can’t enroll except in special circumstances, and no new studies will begin.As the shutdown neared, the National Park Service had not yet said whether it will close its more than 400 sites across the US to visitors. Park officials said Tuesday afternoon that contingency plans were still being updated and would be posted to the service’s website.Many national parks including Yellowstone and Yosemite stayed open during a 35-day shutdown during Trump’s first term. Limited staffing led to vandalism, gates being pried open and other problems including an off-roader mowing down one of the namesake trees at Joshua Tree national park in California.At the Food and Drug Administration, its “ability to protect and promote public health and safety would be significantly impacted, with many activities delayed or paused”. For example, the agency would not accept new drug applications or medical device submissions that require payment of a user fee.What does a government shutdown mean?When Congress fails to pass funding legislation, federal agencies are required by law to halt operations, triggering a shutdown. Employees classified as “non-excepted” are placed on unpaid furlough, while excepted staff – those whose jobs involve protecting life and property – must continue working without pay until after the shutdown ends.Until Congress acts, many federal services will 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. But more often than not, the parties’ leaders are able to cobble together an 11th hour compromise to forestall a lapse in funding. Not this time.How long will the government be shut down, and what was the longest shutdown?How long it will last remains unclear. 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.Why is the government shutting down this time?The federal government’s new fiscal year began on Wednesday, without an agreement on a short-term funding bill.Democrats, locked out of power in Washington, have little leverage, but their votes are needed to overcome the filibuster in the Senate. They 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.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.Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, are refusing to negotiate with Democrats over their healthcare demands. Instead, GOP leaders in the Senate have vowed to keep forcing Democrats to vote on a stopgap measure that would extend funding levels, mostly at current levels, through 21 November. That bill narrowly passed the House but fell short of the 60-vote threshold in the Senate on Tuesday.Donald Trump hosted Congressional leaders at the White House earlier this week, but the meeting failed to produce a breakthrough.Why is this year’s threat to shut down the government 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”.At an event on Tuesday, Trump said “a lot of good can come down from shutdowns” and suggested he would use the pause to “get rid of a lot of things we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things”.The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, has said that Democrats “will not be intimidated” by the Trump administration’s threats to fire more federal employees if the federal government shuts down. He has said that his message to Russell Vought, the head of OMB, was simple: “Get lost.”Two major federal employee unions sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, accusing it of illegally threatening mass layoffs during a shutdown.What happens when 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.According to an interior department contingency plan posted late on Tuesday evening, national parks will remain partially open. “Park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors,” it said.During the government shutdown in 2019, national parks reported garbage, staffing shortages and even three deaths as a result of the financial crunch.The impact of a shutdown can be far-reaching and potentially long-lasting. Previous shutdowns have disrupted tourism to 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.A US government shutdown has been triggered after a deadline to reach a funding agreement before the start of the new fiscal year, on 1 October, came and went without a deal.Democrats and Republicans angrily blamed each other and refused to budge from their positions as the country hurtled towards the midnight ET deadline, unable to find agreement or even negotiate as hundreds of thousands of federal workers stood to be furloughed or laid off.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans were trying to “bully” Democrats by refusing to negotiate on an extension of healthcare benefits and other priorities. Senate majority leader John Thune said Republicans were “not going to be held hostage” by the Democrats’ demands.Hours before the shutdown, Donald Trump told reporters he had “no choice” but to lay off federal workers if no deal was reached. Asked about why he was considering mass layoffs, Trump said: “No country can afford to pay for illegal immigration, healthcare for everybody that comes into the country. And that’s what they [Democrats] are insisting. They want open borders. They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everybody. They never stop. They don’t learn. We won an election in the landslide. They just don’t learn. So we have no choice. I have to do that for the country.”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.

      Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.

      The Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have blamed Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, saying they “do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people”.

      The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”

      Russ Vought, director of the White House office of management and budget, released a letter blaming “Democrats’ insane policy demands” for a shutdown. “It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict,” Vought wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the heads of federal offices and agencies.

      Democratic leaders say they are not backing down, but signs have emerged of dissent within their ranks. Three members of the Democratic caucus voted for the Republican proposal on Tuesday evening – two more than when the bill was first considered earlier this month. “I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration,” said Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
      We will bring you the latest news and reactions on the shutdown as we get them. More