US President Donald Trump signed the funding bill late Thursday, ending the longest federal government shutdown in the country’s history at 43 days. The measure was passed by the Senate on Monday and by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, shortly before the president’s signature.
“With my signature, the federal government will now resume normal operations, and my Administration, along with our partners in Congress, will continue working to lower the cost of living, restore public safety, and make America affordable again for all Americans,” the president said at the signing ceremony.
The Republican businessman referred to the past six weeks as “the Democratic shutdown” and accused the opposition of having “inflicted massive damage” on the country, citing, among other things, “20,000 canceled or delayed flights” due to a shortage of air traffic controllers. Furthermore, he lamented that the Democrats “have deprived more than a million government workers of their wages and cut food assistance to millions and millions of Americans in need,” allegations he urged the public “not to forget” in the lead-up to the midterm elections, scheduled for November 2026.
Shortly before, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the funding package sent by the Senate two days prior to end a government shutdown that has led, among other things, to the expiration of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which Trump alluded to and on which more than 40 million Americans depend.
The proposal was approved with 222 votes in favor—including those of six Democratic representatives—and 209 against, including two Republicans opposed to the public spending the bill entails. The bill provides funding for military construction, veterans’ projects, the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, and the legislative branch until September 30, 2026. It also includes a measure to fund the rest of the government until January 30 of next year and the reinstatement of the more than 4,000 federal employees laid off during the shutdown, according to the online newspaper The Hill.
For their part, the Democrats who voted in favor in the House of Representatives justified their position by citing the importance of restoring federal funding, as reported by The Hill, similar to the eight Democratic senators who voted with the Republicans on Monday for the package’s approval in the Senate.
However, the law nearly suffered a setback after several Republican representatives opposed a Senate resolution that would allow members of their party to sue the federal government for hundreds of thousands of dollars if their phone records were among those seized in the federal investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, has promised to fast-track a separate bill to repeal that provision, with a vote expected next week.
The federal government has been shut down since October 1 due to the Senate’s deadlock over a temporary funding proposal in which Democrats were demanding an extension of the federal health insurance subsidy program.
A group of centrist Democratic senators agreed with Republicans to approve the initiative in exchange for a future vote on extending health aid, a decision heavily criticized by the party that has led some of its members to call for the resignation of the leader of the minority bloc in the Upper House, Chuck Schumer, even though his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, has defended his role and his continuity.
