US government suspends work for the second time in a year: no funding

The U.S. government partially shut down early on Saturday morning, January 31, despite the fact that the Senate had passed a funding deal a few hours earlier. About reports CNBC.

At midnight on January 31, the appropriations approved by Congress for the bills that fund the State Department and a number of U.S. ministries and agencies expired.

The Senate (the upper house of the US Congress) approved a package of five bills by 71 votes to 29, as well as a stopgap measure that gives lawmakers more time to resolve disputes over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

However, the House of Representatives (the lower house of Congress) must also vote to approve the final version of the agreement, and it is scheduled to return to Washington only on Monday.

According to the TV channel, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, hopes to pass the bill on Monday. Once approved by the House of Representatives, the funding package will be sent to the president for his signature To Donald Trump.

How to writes According to The Guardian, the government shutdown resulted from Democratic senators' refusal to vote on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security after federal agents two people were shot dead in Minneapolis.

Democrats are demanding that the bill to fund the ministry be rewritten to include new restrictions on its employees.

On Friday, Democrats and Republicans reached a compromise: The Senate approved bills that provide funding for most federal agencies, including the Pentagon, State Department, Treasury, and Health Ministry, until the end of the fiscal year, i.e., September 30.

The Ministry of Internal Security was excluded from the package. Funding for this agency will be extended for two weeks. During this period, lawmakers plan to negotiate new restrictions on federal agents.

• This is the second such suspension of the government in the last year. It came just 11 weeks after the end of the previous funding impasse, which lasted 43 days (from October 1 to November 14, 2025) and was the longest in the history of the United States. The previous record of 35 days was set in 2018-2019, also during Trump's presidency.
• The government shutdown had a wide-ranging impact on critical government services, including air travel, and left hundreds of thousands of federal employees without pay for several weeks.