Author: Morgan

Donald Trump once again shared misinformation about Portland, Oregon, on social media on Wednesday, when he announced that the national guard troops he called up in response to a small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) office in the otherwise tranquil city are “now in place” and have begun restoring “LAW AND ORDER”.

However, Portland’s NBC News affiliate KGW reported 90 minutes after Trump’s social media post that no members of the guard were yet in place around the Ice field office where dozens of protesters have demonstrated against immigration sweeps since June.

The Oregon national guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a spokesperson, Lt Col Stephen Bomar, told Oregon Public Broadcasting this week that it would take until at least Thursday for the 200 troops to be vetted and trained before they can be deployed.

The deployment is expected to be made up of troops who have been either trained as military police or certified by the state’s police standards agency.

Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said in a statement on Wednesday: “Donald Trump’s unlawful federalization of members of the Oregon National Guard could cost taxpayers up to $10m, according to the Oregon Military Department (OMD).”

The calculation includes salaries, supplies, food, lodging and other costs associated with the deployment of 200 guard members to Portland for 60 days.

“Our country and our state should be focused on solving real problems,” Kotek said. “Wasting an estimated $10m dollars on made up problems is an insult to Americans who are struggling with the cost of living, access to affordable health care, safety in their neighborhoods and more. Not only is this an abuse of power, it is a dereliction of the president’s duty to solve real problems.”

Over the weekend, Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the deployment, arguing that Trump’s characterization of the peaceful city as “war ravaged” is “pure fiction”. Rayfield also argued the president exceeded his authority by taking federal control of the guard away from the state’s governor. A hearing on the state’s request for a temporary restraining order has been scheduled for Friday.

In remarks to senior military officers in Virginia on Tuesday, Trump reiterated his false claim that Portland “looks like a war zone”, and recounted a phone call with the state’s governor over the weekend. In the call, Trump said, he told Kotek what he had seen on television conflicted with her firsthand account that the city was peaceful and police could handle a small protest confined to a single city block.

“‘Well, unless they’re playing false tapes, this look[s] like World War 2,’” the president said he told the governor. “‘Your place is burning down.’”

It is unclear what, exactly, Trump has been watching on television to give him the false impression that Portland, currently a peaceful, vibrant city, resembles a war zone, but the president’s favorite channel, Fox News, did broadcast a report three weeks ago in which incorrectly dated video of protests in Portland in 2020 was used to illustrate the current anti-Ice protest.

This week, Fox has relied heavily in its coverage of Portland on dispatches from reporters for far-right, partisan outlets, including Turning Point USA’s Frontlines, that routinely exaggerate the scale of unrest at leftwing protests.

On social media, Portlanders have continued to mock Trump’s false claims about the city, by posting images of themselves enjoying life in the city contrasted with audio of the president saying, earlier this month, that it is “like living in hell”.

Far from reassessing his impression of what conditions in Portland are actually like, based on feedback from elected officials and city residents, on Wednesday, Trump suggested on his social media platform Truth Social that Oregon’s governor “must be living in a ‘Dream World’”.

JD Vance, the US vice-president, used false claims to blame Democrats for the government shutdown as the White House warned that worker layoffs were imminent.

Federal departments have been closing since midnight after a deadlocked Congress failed to pass a funding measure. The crisis has higher stakes than previous shutdowns, with Trump racing to slash government departments and threatening to turn furloughs into mass firings.

Making a rare appearance in the White House briefing room, Vance told reporters: “We are going to have to lay some people off if the shutdown continues. We don’t like that. We don’t necessarily want to do it, but we’re going to do what we have to do to keep the American people’s essential services continuing to run.”

Vance denied workers would be targeted because of their political allegiance but acknowledged there was still uncertainty over who might be laid off or furloughed. “We haven’t made any final decisions about what we’re going to do with certain workers,” he said. “What we’re saying is that we might have to take extraordinary steps, especially the longer this goes on.”

About 750,000 federal employees are expected to be placed on furlough, an enforced leave, with pay withheld until they return to work. Essential workers such as military and border agents may be forced to work without pay, and some will likely miss pay cheques next week.

At the same briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that government agencies are already preparing for cuts.

“Unfortunately, because the Democrats shut down the government, the president has directed his cabinet, and the office of management and budget is working with agencies across the board, to identify where cuts can be made – and we believe that layoffs are imminent,” she said.

The press secretary acknowledged she could not be precise about timing or identify the percentage of workers likely to be affected.

As the messaging war over the shutdown intensifies, Democrats, motivated by grassroots anger over expiring healthcare subsidies, have been withholding Senate votes to fund the government as leverage to try and force negotiations.

Vance sought to upbraid Democrats over their demands, targeting Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC.

“The Chuck Schumer-AOC wing of the Democratic party shut down the government because they said to us, we will open the government only if you give billions of dollars of funding to healthcare for illegal aliens. That’s a ridiculous proposition.”

It is also a false claim. US law bars undocumented immigrants from receiving the health care benefits Democrats are demanding, and the party has not called for a new act of Congress to change that.

At a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, said Trump and Republicans shut the government down to deny healthcare to working-class Americans.

“The president has been engaging in irresponsible and unserious behaviour, demonstrating that, all along, Republicans wanted to shut the government down,” he said. “That’s no surprise, because for decades, Republicans have consistently shut the government down as part of their efforts to try to extract and jam their extreme rightwing agenda down the throats of the American people.”

On another front, the White House began targeting Democratic-leaning states for a pause or cancellation of infrastructure funds.

Russ Vought, the OMB director, said on X that roughly $18bn for New York City infrastructure projects had been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing to “unconstitutional DEI principles”. Later he said nearly $8bn in clean energy funding “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled”.

Schumer and Jeffries responded in a joint statement: “Donald Trump is once again treating working people as collateral damage in his endless campaign of chaos and revenge.”

Shutdowns are a periodic feature of gridlocked Washington, although this is the first since a record 35-day pause in 2018-19, during Trump’s first term. Talks so far have been unusually bitter, with Trump mocking Schumer and Jeffries on social media.

The president’s most recent video showed Jeffries being interviewed on MSNBC with an AI-generated moustache and sombrero, and four depictions of the president playing mariachi music.

Vance made light of the tactic. “I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also making a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and even poking some fun at the absurdity of the themselves.

“I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”

Jeffries has denounced the memes as racist. Vance retorted: “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”

Efforts to swiftly end the shutdown collapsed on Wednesday as Senate Democrats – who are demanding extended healthcare subsidies for low income families – refused to help the majority Republicans approve a bill passed by the House that would have reopened the government for several weeks.

Congress is out on Thursday for the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday but the Senate returns to work on Friday and may be in session through the weekend. The House is not due back until next week.

A Marist poll released on Tuesday found that 38% of voters would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown, 27% would blame the Democrats and 31% both parties.

Planned Parenthood clinics in Wisconsin will stop providing abortions on Wednesday, as the organization’s centers across the country struggle to navigate the fallout of a law that blocks the the reproductive healthcare giant from receiving reimbursements from Medicaid.

Thanks to a provision in Donald Trump’s new tax and spending bill, abortion providers that receive more than $800,000 in reimbursements from Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people, are blocked from participating in the program for one year. That provision is so narrowly tailored that it applies almost exclusively to Planned Parenthood, long a conservative target.

It is already illegal to use federal Medicaid dollars to pay for most abortions. Instead, Planned Parenthood clinics rely on Medicaid to pay for services like cancer screenings, STI tests and contraception.

By ending its abortion provision, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin appears to be attempting to continue receiving Medicaid reimbursements for those other services. The measure is intended to be temporary, the regional affiliate said in a statement.

“This was always the intent of the Trump administration’s law to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood: sow chaos and confusion, shut down Planned Parenthood health centers, strip access to essential health care from patients, and make it harder for everyone, everywhere to get an abortion – even in states where it’s legal,” a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the organization’s national office, said in a statement. “This is the chaos they wanted to see.”

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is believed to be the first affiliate to cease providing abortions in a state where the procedure remains legal. Autonomy News first reported the news of the suspension.

At least two independent abortion providers are still open in Wisconsin. However, a consortium of abortion rights supporters in neighboring Illinois said in a statement that they “stand ready” to receive people traveling from Wisconsin for abortions.

Without Medicaid, Planned Parenthood estimates that up to 200 of its clinics may be forced to close. More than 60% of the clinics at risk for closure are in rural or “medically under-served areas”, while roughly 90% of the clinics are located in blue states that protect abortion rights.

Maine and Washington state have allocated money to Planned Parenthood affiliates to cover the shortfall caused by the defunding provision.Maine is also sending money to Maine Family Planning, another abortion provider that was also defunded by Trump’s tax and spending bill.

However, Maine Family Planning announced Wednesday that, without Medicaid, it had no choice but to stop offering primary care at its clinics by 31 October. The organization said in a statement that its clinics will continue offering services like STI screenings and contraception to all patients, regardless of insurance status, “for as long as we are able”. About 70% of Maine Family Planning patients receive all of their healthcare from the organization.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Kentucky and Oregon have said that they will try to see Medicaid patients for free for as long as possible.

But that’s not a sustainable plan, according to Sara Kennedy, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette in Oregon. Prior to the passage of Trump’s bill, about 70% of the affiliate’s patients used Medicaid. Now, the affiliate anticipates losing upwards of $12m in Medicaid revenue over the next year.

“Every day we are seeing hundreds to thousands of Medicaid patients and we are not getting reimbursed for any of those services. So that is unsustainable for any business,” Kennedy said. “If the state doesn’t step in urgently to be able to support and protect reproductive healthcare access, there will be no other choice except for us to start charging patients.”

Many clinics were already facing dire financial straits even before Trump’s tax and spending bill. This year, at least 20 Planned Parenthood clinics across seven states have shuttered or have announced plans to close soon.

A German man went on a deadly gun, explosives and arson rampage against his family and then killed himself on Wednesday, sparking security fears in Munich that closed the world-famous Oktoberfest for seven hours.

Authorities decided to close the event temporarily after finding a note the man had dropped in a nearby letterbox that included a vague threat to the Bavarian city’s beer festival.

The mayor of Munich, Dieter Reiter, then gave the all-clear in the afternoon and the event reopened in the evening.

Police said the 57-year-old man had opened fire on his parents with a self-made weapon in an attack that started before dawn. He then set their house on fire, having earlier booby-trapped the building.

Police said they believed he had probably killed his 90-year-old father, whose body was seen but could not be recovered from the still-burning house in the city’s leafy northern Lerchenau district.

The man also shot his 81-year-old mother, who was later taken to hospital with wounds not considered life-threatening, they said.

His 21-year-old daughter was also injured but was rescued by firefighters from the first floor, having threatened to jump to escape the flames, police said.

The man, who has not been named, ran off after a police helicopter spotted him in the garden. After a short pursuit, he stopped in a lakeside park and killed himself, police said.

Bomb squads were called in because the man had rigged the building with explosives – reportedly grenades attached to trip wires – and was also carrying an explosives-laden backpack.

During his rampage, he had also set three vehicles ablaze outside the house, including his own van, police said.

The crime sparked a major police mobilisation shortly before 5:00 am local time and then the evacuation of nearby residents and a local school.

About 500 police, firefighters and other first responders were deployed during the day’s emergency response operations.

Bavaria state’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said there was no sign of a political or religious motive. “It appears, incomprehensible as it may be, that this was solely a family matter,” he added.

City authorities responded to the alarm by announcing the temporary closure of the Oktoberfest, considered the world’s largest such gathering.

The festivities, held from 20 September to 5 October this year, welcomed 6.7 million visitors in 2024.

It was hit by a 1980 attack when a far-right group detonated a pipe bomb, killing 13 people and wounding more than 200.

Small suppliers to Jaguar Land Rover have been asked to put up their family homes as personal guarantees in order to access emergency loans, with no direct UK government support on offer for parts makers a month after the carmaker was hit by a crippling cyber-attack.

JLR, Britain’s biggest automotive employer, is considering making advance payments to top-tier suppliers as it tries to restart production after the hack, but smaller parts makers warn they are on the brink of collapse without urgent cash injections.

JLR, which makes the Jaguar and Land Rover brands, has not produced a single car since the last day of August. This week it said it would restart limited manufacturing “in the coming days”.

The production freeze has left many parts makers in a desperate position, without income for more than month.

The Confederation of British Metalforming (CBM), a lobby group representing many JLR suppliers, warned that without urgent government intervention the whole of the UK automotive supply chain could face irreversible damage, threatening thousands of jobs and an industry targeted for growth by the Labour government.

Michael Beese, the managing director of Genex UK, which presses metal parts for several suppliers to JLR, said commercial banks had said that in order to get an expensive loan, suppliers would need to give personal guarantees that could expose them to losing their houses and other assets.

“I looked at getting a loan but was quoted interest of 16% and they wanted personal guarantees,” Beese said. “Why should I put my business and family home on the line when I’ve done nothing wrong?”

Beese said he had been forced to lay off some of Genex’s 17 workers because of a cash shortage. Other suppliers have said loans are not an option for some small companies because they fear breaching rules on directors’ legal responsibilities.

JLR is considering upfront payments to its direct suppliers in order to inject cash as quickly as possible, according to two people with knowledge of talks. However, it does not have a direct relationship with much of its supply chain, so it would be reliant on bigger suppliers quickly passing on cash to smaller companies.

The business secretary, Peter Kyle, announced on Saturday that the government would provide a guarantee to underwrite a £1.5bn private loan for JLR, although that deal is not thought to have been formally completed. JLR has agreed another £2bn in new debt from banks without state support.

However, the government has not pledged any cash to JLR or its supply chain since the hack, and several people in the automotive industry told the Guardian they believed the £1.5bn loan guarantee had been rushed out ahead of the Labour party’s conference in Liverpool without addressing the key issues caused by the hack.

The government loan guarantee was meant to help parts manufacturers indirectly but some smaller suppliers believe it will take too long to trickle down from “tier one” makers of larger assemblies of components to the generally smaller “tier two” companies who supply parts to them in turn.

Even if tier one companies receive invoices for new work, under UK law they have up to 60 days to make those payments to the second tier.

The CBM told the Guardian there was “little prospect of second-tier and lower-tier suppliers receiving any funding in the short term” and it called for direct government support for companies further down the chain.

Steve Morley, the CBM’s president, said: “This is the only way we can get money quickly to where it is needed most, to prevent the supply chain from collapsing.

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“JLR is rightly focused on getting payments through to their first-tier suppliers, and it’s best we allow them to complete that process. Our focus now must be on ensuring that second-tier and smaller suppliers are supported so the whole framework is in place when production restarts.”

Across the supply chain, thousands of workers have been laid off, according to industry sources.

Beese said: “We’ve kept working, building some stock, to keep our employees in work but we’ve run out of space and material. I have now laid off staff due to the uncertain short-term future. Our customers can’t give us clear plans moving forward, so now I’m faced with some really tough decisions.”

One option suggested by the CBM is using the British Business Bank’s growth guarantee scheme, for which the government underwrites lending to smaller businesses. Other suppliers have previously asked ministers for a temporary freeze on tax bills and some form of support for workers’ wages.

A Labour source said: “The government acted quickly to ensure JLR and its suppliers could receive support as soon as possible given the tens of thousands of jobs depending on the business.”

Small suppliers also called for improved communication from JLR on its progress in restarting production so that they could have a better picture of how long they will have to survive without orders.

JLR, owned by India’s Tata, has been unable to give firm restart dates because it has had to rebuild all of its production systems, so it has been unable to make orders for parts. JLR has set up a helpdesk for suppliers.

The government’s business department was approached for comment. The British Business Bank declined to comment.

The sisters of the British-Egyptian human rights campaigner Alaa Abd el-Fattah have intervened for the first time since his release from prison in Egypt to call on Keir Starmer to push Narendra Modi to free a British Sikh activist when he meets the Indian prime minister next week.

Jagtar Singh Johal, from Dumbarton, has been held in an Indian jail for nearly eight years without facing full trial in what his supporters say is an arbitrary and egregious denial of justice by a British ally.

Mona and Sanaa Seif – sisters of Abd el-Fattah, who was released from a Cairo jail a fortnight ago after years of campaigning – have joined forces with other victims of arbitrary detention to urge Starmer to warn the Indian prime minister that the continued mistreatment of Johal will have “long-lasting consequences” for the British-Indian bilateral relationship.

Johal, from Dumbarton, was in India to get married when he was seized by plainclothes officers in 2017. He has not been convicted of any crime and in March was cleared in one of nine cases against him. He faces terrorism charges in connection with attacks by the Sikh separatist Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), a banned terrorist organisation, of which he is alleged to be a member.

Johal’s detention is seen as one of the worst examples of injustice among Britons still held abroad, and the suspicion has been that the pursuit of free trade and security deals with India, secured in May, slowed down British government efforts on his behalf.

In letters to Downing Street, the group write: “In almost eight years and hundreds of court hearings, prosecutors have supplied no credible evidence against Jagtar. In the first case against him to reach a verdict, in March 2025, Jagtar was acquitted of all charges by the Moga district court in Punjab. The court found the prosecution had ‘miserably failed’ to prove its case and rejected all the allegations against him”.

They add: “The eight essentially duplicate cases against Jagtar violate the ‘double jeopardy’ principle that protects people from being put on trial more than once for the same crime, enshrined in both international and Indian law.”

The letter to Starmer has been signed by other victims of arbitrary detention including the British Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe; her husband, Richard Ratcliffe; Matthew Hedges, a British academic formerly held in the United Arab Emirates; and his partner, Daniela Tejada. Abd el-Fattah’s cousin Omar Robert Hamilton, one of the lead coordinators of the Free Alaa campaign, is also a signatory.

In the letter, coordinated by the campaign group Redress, they say they are “deeply concerned” by Johal’s continued detention and ask the prime minister to raise the case with a renewed urgency when he travels to India for the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai. They say Johal has been facing a possible death sentence after charges were brought against him principally on the basis of a confession extracted under torture.

“India’s National Investigation Agency courts often take decades to reach a verdict. As we know from painful experience, the mental torture of being arbitrarily detained with no end in sight can cause extreme suffering,” they write.

Following his acquittal in the first case against him, Johal’s prison conditions have worsened, it is understood. He is held in almost total solitary confinement and subjected to regular searches of his cell.

The letter says: “We urge you to use your first visit to India as prime minister to make clear to Prime Minister Modi that allied countries do not treat each other’s citizens this way, and that what happens to Jagtar will have long-lasting consequences, both for India’s reputation on the international stage, and the future of its relations with the UK.”

Starmer raised the Johal case with Modi during his visit to London in the summer, but, the letter says, “raising the case is not enough. Ministers in the previous government claimed to have raised Jagtar’s case more than 100 times with their Indian counterparts, but he remains in prison and it’s hard to see that any progress was made as a result of these interventions.”

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Mona and Sanaa Seif say only repeated intervention at the highest level makes a difference in such cases. Starmer and the UK national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, repeatedly raised Abd el-Fattah’s case with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

Indian authorities do not claim that Johal was directly involved in alleged assaults on Hindu leaders in the Punjab region in 2016 and 2017, but instead accuse him of transferring funds to support them.

That allegation was rejected in court as Indian prosecutors failed to present any reliable evidence to back it up despite having had more than seven years to build a case.

National Investigation Agency prosecutors were severely criticised in the verdict for having “failed to collect cogent and convincing evidence during investigation regarding participation of the accused in unlawful activities”, and having “miserably failed to prove” the commission of the various alleged offences.

Critics of the Indian legal system point out that there is “no CCTV footage, no bank transfer records, no email or phone call evidence” that directly links Johal to the crimes.

French authorities are investigating an oil tanker that is subject to sanctions and suspected of being part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which may have been a launchpad for mystery drone flights that forced the closure of airports in Denmark last week.

The tanker, known as the Boracay, has used numerous identities and was one of four Russia-linked vessels in the seas near Denmark at the time of the drone sightings on 22 and 24 September, which so far have not been fully explained.

It was sailing from the Russian oil terminal in Primorsk near St Petersburg, carrying 750,000 barrels of crude oil, to Vadinar in India, but was intercepted by a French naval vessel on Sunday and diverted towards Saint-Nazaire in western France while inquiries continue.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said it “was a good thing” that the oil tanker was under investigation by the public prosecutor – while the Kremlin said it had no information about the tanker or the incident when asked.

Stephane Kellenberger, the public prosector in Brest, in western France said an investigation was taking place after the crew’s “failure to justify the nationality of the vessel” and “refusal to cooperate”.

Boracay, a Benin-flagged tanker, had just changed its name from Pushpa. Under that name, it was monitored sailing west around Denmark last week, and was cited by naval experts as one of a handful of Russia-linked vessels that may have been involved in the drone incidents.

Copenhagen airport was closed for four hours in the evening of 22 September and Aalborg airport two days later, after drones were sighted in Danish airspace. None, however, were shot down and while Denmark has pointed the finger at Russia its investigators have not been able to say who is responsible.

One line of inquiry is that the drones – almost certainly larger delta or fixed wing craft – were launched from a ship or ships near Denmark, giving the country’s military little time to respond. Though the drones’ identity is not known definitively, such drones can be launched from a catapult that could easily be carried on a large ship.

Investigations by Danish media have also identified two other commercial vessels, the Astrol-1 and the Oslo Carrier-3, as sailing in the region at the time, and a Russian warship, the Aleksandr Shabalin, which was filmed by a Danish tabloid from a helicopter south of Langeland, at the very west of the Baltic.

A further incursion took place over northern Germany last week. Drones believed to be engaged in reconnaissance flew over military sites and infrastructure in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, according to an official assessment cited in a report in Der Spiegel.

On Wednesday, Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said Europe faced a “hybrid war,” referring to drone incursions over Denmark and Poland during September. “From a European perspective, there is only one country that is willing to threaten us, and it is Russia,” she added.

Copenhagen will host an EU summit on Wednesday, where leaders will discuss developing a “drone wall” to counter threats, followed by a meeting of the 47-country European Political Community on Thursday. Several European nations, including the UK, have deployed anti-drone defences to help Denmark this week.

Boracay, identified by its international maritime order number, is subject to economic sanctions by the UK, the EU and others. The UK said in October 2024 the tanker, then called Varuna, was part of Russia’s shadow fleet, and “is involved in carrying oil or oil products that originated in Russia to a third country”.

The shadow fleet is a term used for vessels whose ownership is hard to trace or who are deceptively identified but are used by Russia and other countries to trade oil and other goods clandestinely, often to avoid economic sanctions.

In April this year, the tanker, then known as Kiwala, was detained by Estonian authorities after they were unable to confirm its registry in Djibouti. Initially, the Estonians were told the ship’s registration had been cancelled, but two weeks later the Kiwala was released after Djibouti said it would accept responsibility until May.

Of the other two commercial ships seen near Denmark at the time of the drone incidents, Astrol-1, which was tracked on the Kattegat strait near Copenhagen the same day as the drone incident near the capital, is now docked at St Petersburg.

Oslo Bulk, a Norwegian shipping company and the owner of the Oslo Carrier-3 vessel, said it had been “a bit surprised by all the media attention” on its ship, which it said was carrying a steel cargo east from Germany to Lithuania.

The owners admitted it used Russian crews on “all our ships” because of their knowledge of cold waters, but said the vessel had been searched by “Nato military personnel” before being allowed to go on to Finland.

The US government shut down on Wednesday, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican plan to extend funding for federal departments unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.

Republicans, which control the Senate and the House of Representatives, repudiated their demands, setting off a legislative scramble that lasted into the hours before funding lapsed at midnight, when the Senate failed to advance both parties’ bills to keep funding going.

The shutdown is the first since a 35-day closure that began in December 2018 and extended into the new year, during Trump’s first term. It comes as Democrats look to regain their footing with voters, who re-elected Trump last year and relegated them to the minority in both chambers of Congress.

“Republicans are plunging America into a shutdown, rejecting bipartisan talks, pushing a partisan bill and risking America’s healthcare,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday evening, as it became clear a shutdown was inevitable.

Schumer then said in an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show on Wednesday morning that his party had shown Trump and the Republicans that they would not be bullied. “They thought they could bludgeon us without even one bit of consultation … let’s sit down and try to come to an agreement that protects the American people.”

He said that the Republican strategy was to lie to the American people with false talking points that Democrats wanted to give healthcare benefits to undocumented immigrants. “It’s a total absolute effing lie,” he said, adding: “They are afraid of the truth, they know that what they have done has decimated healthcare for 20 million Americans.”

Last month, House Republicans passed a bill that would fund the government through 21 November, but it requires the support of some Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. It failed to gain that support in votes held late on Tuesday, while Republicans also blocked a Democratic proposal to continue funding through October while also making an array of policy changes.

“Far-left interest groups and far-left Democrat members wanted to show down with the president, and so Senate Democrats have sacrificed the American people to Democrats’ partisan interests,” Senate majority leader John Thune said.

Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.

The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”

Shortly after the failed votes, Russ Vought, director of the White House office of management and budget, released a letter blaming “Democrats’ insane policy demands” for a shutdown. “It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict,” Vought wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the heads of federal offices and agencies.

Democrats have demanded an extension of premium tax credits for ACA plans, which expire at the end of the year. They also want to undo Republican cuts to Medicaid and public media outlets, while preventing Trump’s use of a “pocket rescission” to further gut foreign aid.

The total cost of those provisions is expected to hit $1tn, while about 10 million people are set to lose healthcare due to the Medicaid cuts, as well as to changes to the ACA. Without an extension of the tax credits for premiums, health insurance prices will rise for about 20 million people.

Moments after the government shut down, former US vice-president Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee who lost to Donald Trump in the 2024 election, posted on X: “President Trump and Congressional Republicans just shut down the government because they refused to stop your health care costs from rising. Let me be clear: Republicans are in charge of the White House, House, and Senate. This is their shutdown.”

The progressive Democratic representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said on MSNBC that Trump was playing a “bluffing game” in which he was holding the federal workforce hostage and threatening to fire everybody.

“We have to stop enabling their abuse of power. When we’re fighting on health care, it forces them to act in accordance with the law in other ways too … They want us to blink first, and we have too much to save,” she said.

While Thune has said he would be willing to negotiate over extending the ACA credits, he insists new government funding be approved first.

Democratic leaders say they are not backing down, but signs have emerged of dissent within their ranks. Three members of the Democratic caucus voted for the Republican proposal on Tuesday evening – two more than when the bill was first considered earlier this month.

Democrats who broke with their party indicated they did so out of concern for what the Trump administration might do when the government shuts down.

“I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration,” said Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto.

Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, called the vote “one of the most difficult” of his Senate career, but said: “The paradox is by shutting the government we’re actually giving Donald Trump more power, and that was why I voted yes.”

Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, the sole Democrat to vote for the Republican funding bill when it was first considered a week and a half ago, supported it once again, saying: “My vote was for our country over my party. Together, we must find a better way forward.”

While the party that instigates a shutdown has historically failed to achieve their goals, polls have given mixed verdicts on how the public views the Democrats’ tactics.

A New York Times/Siena poll found that only 27% of respondents said the Democrats should shut down the government. Among Democrats, the split was 47% in favor of a shutdown and 43% against, while 59% of independents were opposed.

A Marist poll released on Tuesday found that 38% of voters would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown, 27% would blame the Democrats and 31% both parties.

Republican senator Ted Cruz – an architect of a 2013 shutdown intended to defund the ACA – described Democrats’s shutdown threat as a “temper tantrum” that would go nowhere.

“They’re trying to show … that they hate Trump,” Cruz told reporters. “It will end inevitably in capitulation.”

On top of the expected furloughing of 750,000 federal workers, another 150,000 workers this week are expected to leave the payroll after agreeing to buyouts earlier this year as Trump sent in the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) under Elon Musk to slash the workforce. The 1 million worker total amounts to the largest single-year exodus of civil servants in nearly 80 years, according to Reuters.