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What to know today
- SHUTDOWN UNDERWAY: The federal government officially shut down at midnight after Congress and the White House failed to reach an agreement on how to extend federal funding. President Donald Trump told reporters yesterday that a shutdown seemed likely.
- BLAME GAME: Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, have blamed Democrats for trying to tack health care policy conditions onto their funding bill. Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, have said they won't support a bill without the health care provisions.
- AGENCY PLANS: White House budget director Russell Vought sent a memo hours ago telling the heads of agencies and departments to “execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.” Most departments had already put out guidance about which programs would stay open and which ones wouldn't in the event of a shutdown.
What are the next steps after the shutdown?
As the government shutdown officially begins, millions of federal workers and services will be affected. NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin explains the next steps after the shutdown and the potential effects for Americans.
Top Democrats blame Trump for shutdown but say they're willing to negotiate reopening
The top Democrats in the House and the Senate early this morning blamed Trump and Republicans for the shutdown but said Democrats are ready to make a deal to reopen the federal government.
In a joint statement, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, said Democrats “remain ready to find a bipartisan path forward to reopen the government in a way that lowers costs and addresses the Republican healthcare crisis.”
They blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown that’s now underway.
“Over the last few days, President Trump’s behavior has become more erratic and unhinged,” they said. “Instead of negotiating a bipartisan agreement in good faith, he is obsessively posting crazed deepfake videos.”
“The country is in desperate need of an intervention to get out of another Trump shutdown,” Schumer and Jeffries added.
The government shutdown has begun
With the strike of midnight, Congress has officially passed the deadline to reach a deal to fund the government. A shutdown is now in effect, and the various federal agencies will soon begin their contingency plans.
Johnson says there there's 'nothing to negotiate' in shutdown standoff
Johnson told reporters tonight that there is “no way out” of a shutdown and that there’s “literally nothing to negotiate” from the Republican-backed funding bill.
“What’s the way out? There is no way out. There’s nothing that I can take off of that,” he said.
“They have to pass it. He will have to pass” the continuing resolution, Johnson said, referring to Schumer.
Asked whether any negotiations at all are happening tonight before the shutdown starts at midnight, Johnson said there was nothing up for negotiation.
“There literally is nothing to negotiate. They’re bringing in extraneous issues that don’t have anything to do at all with keeping the government open. And we’ve said, 'You do your first job: Keep the government open,' and then we’ll talk about the rest of it,” he said.
National parks to remain partially open during government shutdown
National parks will remain partially open during the government shutdown set to begin tomorrow, according to an Interior Department contingency plan posted this evening.
Open-air sites will remain open to the public, but buildings that require staffing, such as visitor centers or sites like the Washington Monument, will be closed. Health and safety will continue to be addressed for sites that remain operational, meaning restrooms will be open and trash will be collected, the Interior Department said.
The contingency plans specify that park roads, lookouts, trails and open-air memorials will stay open but emergency services will be limited. The department added that if public access begins to pose a safety, health or resource protection issue, an area must close.
The contingency plan says that about 64% of the National Park Service workforce is set to be furloughed and that those kept on would perform “excepted” activities, such as law enforcement or emergency response, border and coastal protection and surveillance, and fire suppression and monitoring.
Members of Congress still get paid during a government shutdown
Millions of federal workers won’t get paid during a government shutdown. But the people who could prevent or end a shutdown — members of Congress — will still get paychecks.
That’s because their pay is protected under Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, which states: “The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”
The Constitution “says members will be paid,” Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, told reporters today.
Some lawmakers don’t like that practice — or the optics of it.
Senate Democrats who broke with party on funding bill defend their votes
Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman and Angus King defended their decisions tonight to join nearly all Republicans in voting for the House-passed GOP funding bill, arguing that a government shutdown would be more harmful.
Fetterman, D-Pa., told NBC News moments before tonight's vote that the Republican measure resembled a six-month funding bill he backed in March to keep the government open.
"We have to find a better solution. As a senator, I think that’s one of our core responsibilities: keep the government open and then keep it open. And then debate and figure out some kinds of compromise, though," he said.
Cortez Masto, D-Nev., said she couldn't back "a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration."
“We need a bipartisan solution to address this impending health care crisis, but we should not be swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another," she said in a statement.
King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, said in a statement on X that a shutdown would further empower Trump.
“The irony — the paradox is — by shutting the government, we’re actually giving Donald Trump more power. And that was why I voted yes," he said. "I did not want to hand Donald Trump and Russell Vought and Stephen Miller additional power to decimate the federal government, to decimate the programs that are so important to so many people."
The 55-45 vote on the House-passed measure fell short of the 60 needed to pass in the Senate.
Thune says Democrats will 'start cracking' under shutdown pressure
Thune said in an interview on Fox News that he thinks Democrats are going to “start cracking” after tonight if the government shuts down as expected. He blamed Democratic leaders for capitulating to pressure from the “political left,” as well as a lack of “an identity.”
“I think [Democrats] are stuck, and they don’t have an identity right now, and this is just an example that they really don’t know what they’re doing,” Thune said. “We’re going to have another vote tomorrow, and they’ll probably try and block it again, but I think people are going to start cracking because they’re going to realize this is a losing hand.”
Senate adjourns for the night, likely assuring a shutdown at midnight
The Senate has adjourned for the night without approving a funding bill to keep the government open after midnight tonight.
Senators will return at 10 a.m. ET tomorrow.
At 11 a.m. tomorrow, the Senate will hold three votes — two procedural votes related to advancing the same two stopgap bills (the House-passed bill and the Democratic alternative) and one vote on a nominee. Further votes are expected later in the day.
What the final hours before the shutdown look like from within the West Wing
As the sun set ahead of a looming government shutdown, the sound of Democrats blared across the White House briefing room.
The White House Press Office played on a loop an edited montage of Democrats’ past comments about previous shutdowns. Clips of Schumer and Sens. Sen. Amy Klobacher of Minnesota, Adam Schiff of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, as well as others, repeatedly blasted the idea of shutting down the government.
The West Wing seemed to relish the coming battle — because it thinks Democrats will shoulder the blame and eventually cave in.
A White House official argued that it’ll be hard for Democrats to defend why they’re not agreeing to a “clean CR” to keep the government funded in the short term. Another official said Trumps’s holding two health care-related events today — related to drug prices and pediatric cancer — would stand in sharp contrast to Democrats’ doing nothing for Americans.
The second official dismissed any criticism of the artificial intelligence-generated video Trump posted yesterday on social media featuring Jeffries.
“It was funny,” the official said, adding that despite the backlash, it had the intended effect by making the Democrats look foolish as outlets replayed it.
