Category: International

The US government began shutting down on Wednesday after lawmakers and President Donald Trump failed to break a budget impasse during acrimonious talks that hinged on Democratic demands for health care funding.

Republicans and Democrats immediately blamed each other for the deadlock that will impact hundreds of thousands of government workers and the millions of Americans who use the services they provide.

The shutdown, which will stop work at multiple federal departments and agencies, comes as deep partisan divisions in Washington have raised fears over what will be the length and consequences of the halt.

Trump threatened to punish Democrats and their voters by targeting progressive priorities and forcing mass public sector job cuts during the first stoppage since the one during his previous term.

“So we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected. And they’re Democrats, they’re going to be Democrats,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

He 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.”

Government operations began grinding to a halt at 12:01 am (0401 GMT) on Wednesday, after a frenetic but ultimately failed bid in the Senate to rubber-stamp a short-term funding resolution already approved by the House of Representatives.

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer posted a video on social media that showed a clock ticking down to midnight over an image of the US Capitol building.

“The Republican shutdown has just begun because Republicans wouldn’t protect America’s health care,” he said. “We are going to keep fighting for the American people.”

The shutdown will not affect vital functions like the Postal Service, the military and welfare programs like Social Security and food stamps.

But up to 750,000 workers could be sent home each day and would not be paid until the shutdown was over, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

This is the first shutdown since the longest one in US history — lasting 35 days — almost seven years ago during Trump’s previous term.

Hopes of a compromise had been hanging by a thread since Monday, when a last-gasp meeting at the White House yielded no progress.

The gridlocked Congress regularly runs into deadlines to agree on spending plans, and the negotiations are invariably fraught. But Congress usually avoids them ending in shutdowns.

Democrats, in the minority in both chambers of Congress, have been seeking to flex their rare leverage over the federal government eight months into Trump’s second presidency, that has seen entire government agencies dismantled.

– How long? –

Trump’s threat of new job cuts added to anxieties in the federal workforce, sparked by large-scale firings orchestrated by tycoon Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X after the shutdown began to ask, “How long will Chuck Schumer let this pain go on — for his own selfish reasons?”

“Results: Moms and kids now lose WIC nutrition. Veterans lose health care and suicide prevention programs. FEMA has shortfalls during hurricane season. Soldiers and TSA agents go UNPAID,” Johnson wrote.

Former Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris wrote on X that the Republicans were in charge of the White House and both houses of Congress.

“This is their shutdown,” ex-vice president Harris wrote.

The 100-member Senate requires government funding bills to receive 60 votes — seven more than the Republicans control.

Republicans had proposed to extend current funding until late November, pending negotiations on a longer-term spending plan.

But Democrats wanted to see hundreds of billions of dollars in health care spending restored, particularly in the Obamacare health insurance program for low-income households, which the Trump administration is likely to eliminate.

Almost all Senate Democrats voted against a House-passed, seven-week stopgap funding measure hours ahead of the midnight deadline.

It remains unclear how long the shutdown will last.

The federal government has shuttered 21 times since 1976, when Congress enacted the modern-day budget process.

The longest began on December 22, 2018, when Democrats and Trump found themselves at an impasse over $5.7 billion that the president was demanding for a border wall during his first term.

Ukraine said Sunday that Russia pounded the country with “hundreds” of drones and missiles overnight, wounding at least 10 people, as neighbouring Poland scrambled jets to secure its airspace.

The attacks came after Russia warned NATO against taking sterner action in response to alleged incursions into airspace covered by the military alliance.

They also followed the revelation by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Kyiv had received a US-made Patriot air defence system from Israel for use against Russian assaults.

“Russia launched another massive air attack on Ukrainian cities while people were sleeping,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said on X.

“Again, hundreds of drones and missiles, destroying residential buildings and causing civilian casualties,” he said.

He posted footage of flames bursting from the windows of a multi-storey apartment block, which Sybiga said was as a result of the attack.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that the Ukrainian capital was under a “massive” assault and urged people to stay in shelters.

He said at least six people had been wounded “as a result of the enemy’s attack”, five of whom were treated in hospital and one at the scene.

The governor of the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region said Russian strikes there had wounded at least four people.

Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, accused Moscow of waging a “war against civilians”.

“There will be a response to these actions. But the West’s economic blows against Russia must also be stronger,” Yermak said.

Poland’s armed forces said on X that they had scrambled fighter jets in its airspace and put ground-based air defence systems on high alert in response to the Russian strikes in Ukraine.

The moves were preventive and aimed at securing Polish airspace and protecting citizens, especially in areas close to Ukraine, the forces said.

– ‘They will regret it’ –

In recent weeks, several European countries have accused Russia of violating their airspace with drones and fighter jets, in what NATO has viewed as a test of its resolve.

Russia has denied that it is responsible for the incursions or that it plans to attack any NATO nation.

Speaking during an address at the UN General Assembly in New York on Saturday, Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “any aggression against my country will be met with a decisive response”.

Speaking later to reporters, Lavrov said that if any country downs objects still within Russian airspace, “they will very much regret it”.

After returning from his own trip to New York, where he also addressed the UN, Zelensky told reporters that “the Israeli (Patriot) system is operating in Ukraine”, adding that Kyiv would receive two more this autumn.

While initially neutral in the conflict, Israel’s ties with Moscow have cooled as Russia has drifted closer to Iran and condemned Israel’s war in Gaza.

Kyiv and Moscow also said on Saturday that the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — had been off the grid for four days, stoking fears of a potential nuclear incident.