The United States federal government shut down at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday after the Senate failed to advance a short-term spending measure, triggering the first lapse in federal funding since 2019 and the 15th shutdown since 1981. The closure followed weeks of stalled negotiations between President Donald Trump and congressional leaders and arrived hours after senators rejected a Republican stopgap bill that would have extended funding through November 21. Immediate effects include widespread furloughs, the suspension of some economic data releases and delays or pauses across research, permitting and customer-facing functions at federal agencies, while national security and other legally “excepted” operations continue without pay.
The Senate vote failed 55–45, short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and proceed, leaving no procedural path to keep agencies open as the new fiscal year began. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but required Democratic votes in the Senate; Democrats withheld support in a push to attach health-care provisions to any stopgap. A Washington Post tally separately documented the 55–45 outcome and the failed effort to advance House-passed legislation that would have kept agencies funded into late November.
Federal agencies began implementing contingency plans overnight. Reuters reported that as many as 750,000 federal workers face furloughs, with a daily cost estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars, and warned that the shutdown would halt publication of closely watched government statistics and slow air travel as hiring and training pipelines stall. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ September jobs report, typically due at the end of the week, is among data releases threatened by the lapse.
Financial markets reacted quickly to the breakdown in Washington. In early Wednesday trading, gold rose to a record while U.S. equity futures slipped and the dollar weakened as investors priced in the prospect of delayed government data and broader uncertainty around policy and growth. Currency coverage from Tokyo and market roundups in Asia and Australia attributed the moves in part to the shutdown’s potential to cloud the interest-rate outlook by postponing economic releases.
At the White House, Trump framed the confrontation as leverage for a broader restructuring of the federal workforce and spending power. “We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them, and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like,” he told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday. Guidance distributed to agencies in the run-up to the lapse directed departments to prepare for redundancies. An Office of Personnel Management instruction, issued in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget, told agencies that “in connection with a possible October 1, 2025, lapse in appropriations, OMB has directed agencies to consider issuing RIF [reduction in force] notices to all employees” in programs whose discretionary funding lapses and that are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
Democrats said they would not support any short-term funding bill that failed to extend Affordable Care Act premium subsidies and reverse cuts executed through the administration’s recent budget law. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer accused the White House of using the shutdown threat to strong-arm policy concessions. “All they want to do is try to bully us. And they’re not going to succeed,” he said on the Senate floor, a day after talks at the White House with Trump and congressional leaders ended without agreement.
Republicans argued their proposal was a “nonpartisan” continuing resolution that kept the government running at current levels while longer-term disputes were negotiated. “What’s changed is, President Trump is in the White House. That’s what this is about. This is politics. And there isn’t any substantive reason why there ought to be a government shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters, urging a handful of Democrats to cross the aisle on subsequent votes.
The Washington Post said the shutdown marked the fourth such lapse during Trump’s two terms and described agency-by-agency impacts set in motion before midnight. Essential operations in national defense, border protection and law enforcement continue, though many of the personnel involved will not be paid until after the government reopens. The Smithsonian Institution and the National Zoo are closed; the Labor Department’s statistical agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, pause most activity; and federal research at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is curtailed as new studies and many inspections are suspended. The National Park Service will keep open-air areas accessible but close most facilities with doors and gates, while using limited fee revenue to maintain minimal services where possible.
Airports remain open, with Transportation Security Administration screeners and Federal Aviation Administration controllers reporting to work without pay. CBS News, in a running update, said non-exempt civil servants would be furloughed while “essential” personnel would continue work, reflecting longstanding shutdown practice. ABC News published a primer noting that federal workers are guaranteed back pay under a 2019 statute once a shutdown ends, though the timing depends on how long the funding gap lasts. (CBS News)
The standoff centers on the scope and timing of health-care funding and on the administration’s approach to congressional spending power. Democrats sought to extend ACA subsidies and roll back social program cuts while restricting the White House’s ability to impound congressionally appropriated funds through “pocket rescissions,” a tactic that has fueled procedural conflict for months. The Post reported that the Government Accountability Office has ruled this year that the administration illegally held back funds on multiple occasions, intensifying Democrats’ resistance to passing a stopgap without tighter guardrails.
With agency funding for fiscal 2026 stalled, the lapse also suspends routine permitting, many grant disbursements and customer service at the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration offices, although Social Security benefits continue because they are funded outside the annual appropriations process. Reuters and AP said shutdown plans at two dozen major departments contemplated deep service reductions across environmental enforcement, small business lending and parts of the federal courts system.
The political dynamic tightened in the final 48 hours before the deadline. The House had passed the Republican stopgap on a party-line vote, but Senate Democrats blocked it on Tuesday evening, 55–45, arguing that voters facing rising premiums needed certainty on subsidies that were due to lapse at year’s end. A competing Democratic proposal also failed to reach 60 votes. Reporting from the Senate press log showed the failed cloture motion on H.R. 5371, the Republican measure, set up the final scramble that ended without a deal before midnight.
Abroad and on Wall Street, the initial effects are caution and delay. The dollar eased to a one-week low against major currencies as investors weighed the likelihood that the Labor Department’s Employment Situation report and other datasets would not publish on schedule. Equity futures sagged and gold rallied to a record as traders sought havens and recalibrated interest-rate expectations in the absence of fresh government readings.
The shutdown revives comparisons to the 35-day partial closure in late 2018 and early 2019, the longest on record, which ended only after prolonged disruption to federal services and visible strain on unpaid workers. In its overview of the new lapse, Reuters recalled that history while noting analysts’ warnings that today’s partisan climate, sharpened by disputes over health-care policy and executive leverage over appropriations, could complicate a rapid exit from the current impasse.
Inside the executive branch, legal and personnel questions now overlay routine shutdown protocols. The OPM guidance clarifies that furloughed and excepted employees cannot be paid during a lapse but must receive retroactive pay once it ends, and it details how agencies may treat simultaneous reduction-in-force proceedings, including authorizing “excepted” work to administer terminations or certifications on statutory deadlines. The memo’s directive to consider issuing RIF notices to entire programs whose funding lapses and which are “not consistent with the President’s priorities” drew immediate attention from unions and Democrats, who argued it amounted to using a shutdown to reshape the workforce.
Congressional leaders signaled they would attempt new votes as agencies wind down operations. Thune said Republicans would try again with the same short-term bill, calling it a clean extension, and pressed Democrats to provide the votes needed to reopen the government. Schumer reiterated that any funding patch must include health-care provisions and protections against the White House impounding funds already enacted into law. In its early-morning dispatch, Reuters described a Capitol with “no clear path out of the impasse,” even as leaders pledged to keep negotiating.
For millions of Americans, the most immediate changes will be granular. Travelers may encounter slower airport lines as unpaid personnel pick up shifts; small businesses that rely on federal guarantees and advice will see delays; families visiting national parks will find gates closed at museums and indoor sites but trails accessible; researchers waiting on peer review or grant awards will hit a pause; and investors and employers will fly blinder without government data to guide decisions. Those effects, common to past shutdowns, arrive this time amid explicit White House statements about using the lapse to pursue permanent staffing and program changes—an approach that could further entrench positions on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue and prolong the closure.
While essential federal benefits such as Social Security and Medicare continue and mail service remains unaffected, federal employees and contractors across the country again face missed paychecks and uncertainty over when work—and back pay—will resume. As Wednesday begins in Washington, the statutory machinery of a shutdown is in place, and the political conditions that produced it remain unresolved: a Republican majority unable to advance a short-term bill on its own, Democratic leaders insisting that health-care and appropriations powers be settled together, and a president publicly threatening “irreversible” steps while agencies implement plans for a prolonged stoppage. The length of the closure will depend on how quickly those positions shift and whether the Senate can assemble the 60 votes it needs to reopen the government on terms both parties accept.