2025 United States federal government shutdown (oct 1, 2025 – nov 12, 2025)

Description:

From October 1st, 2025 to November 12th, 2025, the federal government of the United States was in a shutdown as Congress failed to pass appropriations legislation for the 2026 fiscal year. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives advanced a continuing resolution, but Senate Democrats repeatedly blocked it. The legislation failed 14 times before a revised appropriations bill was passed on November 10th. The House of Representatives passed the Senate's revised bill on November 12th, which President Donald Trump promptly signed that day. The shutdown was the 11th government shutdown that resulted in federal employees being furloughed and the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, lasting 43 days.

Democrats in the Senate opposed the Republican appropriations bill because it did not include an extension of expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies that were scheduled to expire in November 2025. The bipartisan agreement that ended the shutdown put the matter up to a vote in December.

Trump posted that the shutdown was an "unprecedented opportunity" and that he would meet "with Russ Vought, he of Project 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut". During the shutdown, the administration halted billions in approved funding largely going to states that had voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, including $20 billion for public transport in New York City and Chicago.

Before and during the shutdown, government websites and emails blamed Democrats and the "radical left" for it, actions some claim were illegal. Hours before the shutdown was set to begin, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's website warned, in a pop-up and a red banner, that the radical left would hurt the United States, and Department of Health and Human Services encouraged its employees to set out-of-office email messages blaming the Democratic Party for the shutdown. In a statement, the department said: "Employees were instructed to use out-of-office messages that reflect the truth: Democrats have shut the government down." In early November 2025, it was ruled that the Department of Education violated the First Amendment rights of the furloughed workers by "commandeering" their out of office messages to "broadcast partisan messages". The ruling applies only to Department of Education workers.

Representative Robert Garcia said the messages placed on government agency websites blaming Democrats for the shutdown violated the Hatch Act. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held a town hall on CNN to discuss the shutdown. After eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to end the shutdown, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer faced calls to resign from members of his party who felt that he had allowed the Democrats to vote with the Republicans. While none of those calling for his resignation are from his caucus, some in his caucus are reportedly frustrated by the perceived lack of a plan during the shutdown to secure any serious concessions from Republicans.

The shutdown resulted in the furlough of roughly 900,000 federal employees and kept another two million working without pay. Some government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid continued to operate through the shutdown, as did certain agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Transportation Security Administration. Other agencies' operations were partially or fully suspended, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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