The US federal government went into shutdown for the first time since 2019, after President Donald Trump and his Republicans refused to cave to congressional Democrats’ demands over health care costs.
Each party blocked the other’s proposals, spending the final hours of negotiations “pointing fingers at one another,” The New York Times reported.
Trump said he would use the shutdown to cut programs that Democrats favor, as well as “vast numbers” of government workers: Almost 90% of staff at some departments, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, have been furloughed.
Neither side looks likely to blink, Semafor’s US politics team wrote, and may learn a painful lesson: “Getting into shutdowns is easy. Getting out of them is a lot harder.”