US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill to end the longest government shutdown in US history — 43 days.
The US House of Representatives voted largely along party lines to approve a US Senate-passed package that would reopen federal departments and agencies.
Trump criticized Democrats as he put his signature to the bill later in the Oval Office at the White House, urging Americans to remember the chaos when voting in US midterm elections in a year’s time.
Photo: AFP
“Today we are sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion,” said Trump, surrounded by Republican lawmakers including House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Johnson had earlier pointed the finger at the minority Democratic Party in a floor speech before the vote.
“They knew that it would cause pain and they did it anyway,” he said. “The whole exercise was pointless. It was wrong and it was cruel.”
The package funds military construction, veterans’ affairs, the US Department of Agriculture and the US Congress itself through next fall, and the rest of government through the end of January.
About 670,000 furloughed civil servants are to report back to work, and a similar number who were kept at their posts with no compensation — including more than 60,000 air traffic controllers and airport security staff — would get back pay.
The deal also restores federal workers fired by Trump during the shutdown, while air travel that has been disrupted across the country will gradually return to normal.
Trump accused Democrats of costing the country US$1.5 trillion.
While the full financial toll of the shutdown has yet to be determined, the US Congressional Budget Office estimated that it has caused US$14 billion in lost growth.
Republicans had almost no room for error as the party’s majority is down to two votes.
Democratic leadership had urged members to vote no and all but a handful held the line.
Although polling showed that the public was mostly on Democrats’ side throughout the standoff, Republicans are widely seen as having done better from its conclusion.
For more than five weeks, Democrats held firm on refusing to reopen the government unless Trump agreed to extend tax credits for health insurance.
Election victories in multiple states last week gave Democrats further encouragement and a renewed sense of purpose.
However, a group of eight Democratic senators broke ranks to cut a deal with Republicans that offers a vote in the upper chamber on healthcare subsidies — but no floor time in the House and no guarantee of action.
Democrats are now deep in a painful reckoning over how their tough stance crumbled without any notable win.
Democratic leadership is arguing that — while the healthcare demands went largely unheard — they shone a spotlight on an issue they hope will power them to victory in the midterm elections.
“Over the last several weeks, we have elevated successfully the issue of the Republican healthcare crisis, and we’re not backing away from it,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told MSNBC.
However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing a backlash for failing to keep his members unified, with a handful of House Democrats calling for him to resign.
Outside Washington, some top Democrats added their own voices to the chorus of opprobrium.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the agreement “pathetic,” while Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said it amounted to an “empty promise.”
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
Near the entrance to the Panama Canal, a monument to China’s contributions to the interoceanic waterway was torn down on Saturday night by order of local authorities. The move comes as US President Donald Trump has made threats in the past few months to retake control of the canal, claiming Beijing has too much influence in its operations. In a surprising move that has been criticized by leaders in Panama and China, the mayor’s office of the locality of Arraijan ordered the demolition of the monument built in 2004 to symbolize friendship between the countries. The mayor’s office said in
‘TRUMP’S LONG GAME’: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that while fraud was a serious issue, the US president was politicizing it to defund programs for Minnesotans US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday said it was auditing immigration cases involving US citizens of Somalian origin to detect fraud that could lead to denaturalization, or revocation of citizenship, while also announcing a freeze of childcare funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some daycare centers. “Under US law, if an individual procures citizenship on a fraudulent basis, that is grounds for denaturalization,” US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Denaturalization cases are rare and can take years. About 11 cases were pursued per year between 1990 and 2017, the Immigrant Legal Resource
‘RADICALLY DIFFERENT’: The Kremlin said no accord would be reached if the new deal with Kyiv’s input did not remain within the limits fixed by the US and Russia in August Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is to meet US President Donald Trump in Florida this weekend, but Russia on Friday accused him and his EU backers of seeking to “torpedo” a US-brokered plan to stop the fighting. Today’s meeting to discuss new peace proposals comes amidst Trump’s intensified efforts to broker an agreement on Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. The latest plan is a 20-point proposal that would freeze the war on its current front line, but open the door for Ukraine to pull back troops from the east, where demilitarized buffer zones could be created, according to details revealed by
RSS