The New York Times
Government Reopens as Trump Signs Bill to End Nation’s Longest Shutdown
President Trump signed the bill ending the shutdown after 43 days, after the House approved it, largely on party lines.
A man seated at a desk holding up a binder as people around him clap.
President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday, after signing a bill to end the government shutdown.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Catie EdmondsonZolan Kanno-Youngs
By Catie Edmondson and Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Reporting from Washington
Published Nov. 12, 2025
Updated Nov. 13, 2025, 1:36 a.m. ET
The federal government began reopening Wednesday night after President Trump signed into law a spending package that narrowly passed the House, ending the longest shutdown in the nation’s history.
“With my signature, the federal government will now resume normal operations,” Mr. Trump said as he signed the legislation alongside Republican House leadership and business executives.
Earlier, the House voted 222 to 209 on Day 43 of the shutdown and days after eight senators in the Democratic caucus broke their own party’s blockade and joined Republicans in allowing the spending measure to move forward, prompting a bitter backlash in their ranks. It was the first time the House had held a vote in nearly two months, after an extended recess during the shutdown.
Some programs like food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, could be restored within hours, while other effects could take longer to unravel.
Mr. Trump used the bill signing to attack Democrats for what he called “extortion,” blaming them for harm inflicted on air travel and the loss of paychecks for federal workers. Polling, however, shows most Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown.
“People were hurt so badly,” said Mr. Trump, whose administration fought in court to not fund food stamps, tried to fire thousands of federal workers and threatened to withhold back pay from others during the shutdown.
“I just want to tell the American people, you should not forget this,” Mr. Trump added. “When we come up to midterms and other things, don’t forget what they’ve done to our country.”
Image
A hot meal was served at a Soup Kitchen in Monroe, La., last month. Some programs like food stamps could be restored within hours.Credit...Rory Doyle for The New York Times
Six Democrats joined Republicans in approving the bill. Only two Republicans voted against it, Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump’s budget office championed it in a statement as devoid of “any of the partisan, ‘poison pill’ provisions demanded by the Democrats.”
That was a reference to what had been Democrats’ chief demand in the shutdown fight, the extension of federal health care subsidies set to expire at the end of the year. Most congressional Republicans strongly oppose such an extension. And while Mr. Trump had initially shown a flash of interest in brokering a bipartisan deal on the issue, as the shutdown dragged on he made it clear that he had no interest in negotiating.
His refusal to do so ultimately led a critical group of Democrats in the Senate to conclude that with hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, millions of Americans at risk of losing food assistance and millions more facing air-travel disruptions, it was time to find an off-ramp from the shutdown.
In the House, the six Democrats who voted to reopen the government were Representatives Adam Gray of California; Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington; Jared Golden of Maine; Henry Cuellar of Texas; Tom Suozzi of New York; and Don Davis of North Carolina. All represent swing districts.
“History reminds us that shutdowns never change the outcome, only the cost paid by the American people,” Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said. “Over the last 43 days, the facts did not shift, the votes required did not shift and the path forward did not change.”
The Democratic defections in the Senate prompted outrage among House Democrats who, like most of their colleagues in the Senate, said their party should have held together firmly against any government funding bill that failed to address health care costs.
“We have federal workers across the country that have been missing paychecks,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said. “We have SNAP recipients, millions of SNAP recipients across the country whose access to food stability was imperiled, and we have to figure out what that was for.”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that the Trump administration had inflicted “cruelty” on the American people during the shutdown, including by trying to halt full federal funding for food stamps.
“We cannot enable this kind of cruelty with our cowardice,” she said.
Having elevated the health care subsidies as a political issue, Democrats are eager to keep the pressure on Republicans to extend them or face the consequences from voters who polls show overwhelmingly want to see them protected.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said he and other party leaders would file a discharge petition — a procedural maneuver to steer around the leadership and force a bill to the floor — to extend the subsidies for three years. Such a measure is unlikely to pick up much Republican support.
Image
Representative Hakeem Jeffries with fellow House Democratic members on the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
“There are only two ways this fight will end,” Mr. Jeffries said on the House floor. “Either Republicans finally decide to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits this year. Or the American people will throw Republicans out of their jobs next year and end the speakership of Donald J. Trump once and for all.”
The compromise measure the House approved on Wednesday includes a spending package that would fund the government through January, as well as three separate spending bills to cover programs related to agriculture, military construction, veterans and legislative agencies for most of 2026.
The package includes a provision that would reverse layoffs of federal workers made during the shutdown and ensure retroactive pay for those who have been furloughed.
And it includes a measure that would provide a wide legal avenue for Republican senators whose phone records were seized as part of the investigation by Jack Smith, the former special counsel, into the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to sue the government for at least half a million dollars each.
That provision was quietly slipped into the spending deal by Senate leaders, and provoked wide, bipartisan ire among House lawmakers who have said they are looking for future avenues to strike it down. If they had sought to take it out of the spending deal, it would have prolonged the shutdown, because any changes the House made would have sent the measure back to the Senate for final approval.
Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a conservative Republican who was one of the Biden Department of Justice’s harshest critics, said it was “beside my comprehension that this got put in the bill, and it is why people have such a low opinion of this town.”
Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday ahead of the vote that House Republicans would introduce legislation to repeal that provision, and would fast-track the measure for a vote as early as next week.
Robert Jimison and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 13, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: House Approval Of Spending Bill Ends Stalemate. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
See more on: U.S. House of Representatives
Share full article
Our Coverage of Congress
Here’s the latest news and analysis from Capitol Hill.
Senator Criticizes Rubio: Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, has criticized Secretary of State Marco Rubio for paying $7.5 million to the government of Equatorial Guinea to agree to take deportees from the United States who are not its citizens. She said the African country has a long history of corruption.
Democratic Trailblazer to Retire: Bonnie Watson Coleman, 80, the first Black woman to represent New Jersey in Congress, said she would not run for a seventh term in the state’s 12th Congressional District, near Trenton.
Strike on Venezuela: Republicans blocked a resolution that would prevent President Trump from attacking Venezuela without explicit congressional authorization, turning back an effort to ensure that Congress has a say in his escalating military campaign against drug cartels.
Nancy Pelosi Announces Retirement: The representative and only female House speaker said she will not run again after her term is up in 2027. Pelosi was the most powerful and prominent woman in Washington to effectively confront Trump. Now the question is: Who will replace her in Congress?
Inquiry Into Judges: Republican lawmakers asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to look into whether federal judges who responded to a New York Times questionnaire with criticism of the Supreme Court had violated their ethics obligations.
Related Content
No comments:
Post a Comment