The federal government shut down just after midnight on October 1 for the 11th time in the nation’s history when Congress failed to pass a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. So far, Democrats and Republicans have come no closer to an agreement. The closure, sparked by a tense dispute over health care funding, has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers without pay and brought many government services to a standstill.
Under the shutdown, programs funded by mandatory spending, the part of the budget Congress does not have discretion over, will continue. This includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The 700,000 federal employees deemed “expected”—including active-duty military personnel, air traffic controllers and TSA workers, ICE agents, USPS workers, and anyone essential to national security or public safety—are told to continue working without pay for the time being. The 900,000 deemed “exempt,” non-essential government employees, are furloughed, or temporarily discharged from their positions. Additionally, thousands of federal employees have been laid off.
In addition to these disruptions, government shutdowns have been shown to be detrimental to the national economy. A report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found that “the last three government shutdowns cost taxpayers nearly $4 billion—at least $3.7 billion in back pay to furloughed federal workers, and at least $338 million in other costs associated with the shutdowns.” Shutdowns have also been shown to lower the GDP and national credit rating.
The shutdown began when Congress missed the October 1 budget deadline, unable to agree on how to fund the government for the 2026 fiscal year. At the center of this dispute is a partisan argument over whether lawmakers should extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, which makes health insurance more accessible to those who do not receive insurance through their jobs or public programs like Medicaid.
House Republicans passed a short term funding bill that excluded these health care subsidies, but Senate Democrats opposed it, arguing that the bill is a threat to affordable insurance for millions of Americans. Democrats are also pushing to repeal cuts to healthcare programs included in a GOP spending and tax bill passed earlier this summer.
The situation has been made worse by growing political polarization, with both parties blaming each other for the shutdown. Democrats are framing the conflict as a fight to protect access to healthcare. Meanwhile, Republicans are blaming Democrats for refusing to pass a “clean” funding bill that merely keeps the government open. Adding to the polarization, the main page of the White House website currently states, “Democrats have shut down the government.”
According to a statement by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization, the Trump administration has already been implementing a de facto government shutdown over the past year “by arbitrarily removing hundreds of thousands of civil servants through haphazard workforce cuts, unilaterally freezing congressionally approved funding, failing to enforce laws and effectively sabotaging the work at [federal] agencies.”
Trump has been using the official government shutdown to continue justifying these actions, describing it as an opportunity to cut “Democrat programs that we want to close up or we never wanted to happen” and especially targeting blue states. Some of these cuts include programs for welfare, education, transportation, and climate policies.
This shutdown is the 11th full government shutdown in American history, and the third shutdown under Trump. The most recent shutdown was the longest so far, lasting 35 days. It began in 2018 due to debates over Trump’s demands for more funding to build a wall at the Mexico border, finally ending when a lack of air traffic controllers raised public safety concerns.
At this point, it is unclear how long the shutdown will last. Some lawmakers believe it could end if enough moderate Democrats join Republicans to pass a funding bill, while others think the longer the shutdown continues, the more pressure will shift to Republicans. There is also growing talk of a short term agreement that would temporarily reopen the government while allowing more time to debate healthcare funding.
For now, the shutdown shows no immediate signs of ending. Each passing day adds to the uncertainty for federal workers and the millions of Americans who rely on government services.