President Donald Trump has on Wednesday signed a bipartisan bill that brings an end to the United States’ longest-ever government shutdown, a 43-day impasse that stalled federal operations, disrupted air travel, and left hundreds of thousands of civil servants without their wages.
43-day standoff had crippled federal services, grounded flights, and left over a million workers without pay.
The shutdown was lifted after the Republican-controlled House approved, largely along party lines, a funding package previously passed by the Senate.
The measure reopens multiple federal agencies and restores pay for workers who were furloughed or kept on duty without compensation.
At the bill signing in the Oval Office, Trump castigated Democrats, accusing them of engineering the crisis for political gain.
Flanked by Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker, Mike Johnson, the president urged Americans to remember the turmoil during next year’s midterm elections.
“We will never yield to extortion,” Trump declared, as Johnson echoed his criticism of Democrats, accusing them of knowingly inflicting hardship.
“They understood the pain it would cause and they went ahead anyway,” the Speaker said earlier on the House floor.
The temporary funding measure keeps parts of the government including military construction, veterans’ affairs, and the Department of Agriculture operational through next fall, with the remainder funded until the end of January.
Roughly 670,000 furloughed federal employees are expected to return to their posts, while another 670,000 who worked without pay will receive back wages.
Among these are tens of thousands of airport security personnel and air traffic controllers whose absence and strained workloads caused severe flight delays nationwide.
Officials say air travel should gradually resume normal operations in the coming days.
The package also reinstates workers dismissed by Trump during the shutdown, in what critics had described as an overreach of executive authority.
Trump repeated an unsubstantiated claim that Democrats had saddled the country with $1.5 trillion in costs.
The Congressional Budget Office, however, estimates that the shutdown shaved approximately $14 billion off economic growth.
The resolution of the standoff followed weeks of Democratic insistence that the government would not reopen without an extension of pandemic-era tax credits that make health insurance more affordable for millions.
Though public opinion polling showed voters siding with the Democrats during the shutdown, the party is now embroiled in internal conflict over how its negotiating stance collapsed.
A group of eight moderate senators broke ranks to strike a deal with Republicans, securing only a Senate vote with no guaranteed House action on healthcare subsidies.
Progressive lawmakers and activists have accused Democratic leaders, particularly Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, of capitulating without meaningful concessions.
,A handful of House Democrats have gone as far as calling for his removal.
Speaking on MSNBC, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries argued that the shutdown nonetheless elevated the party’s messaging on healthcare, which Democrats hope to foreground heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
But outside Capitol Hill, prominent Democrats eyeing the 2028 presidential race dismissed the outcome.
California Governor Gavin Newsom labelled the deal “pathetic,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called it “an empty promise,” and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg described it bluntly as “a bad deal.”
The political fallout is expected to stretch well beyond Washington as the country recovers from the costliest and most disruptive shutdown in its history.
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