Senate votes down Democratic continuing resolution
The Senate just voted 47-53, with all Republicans opposed, to reject the Democrats’ counterproposal to fund the government. It required 60 votes to pass.
The upper chamber is now voting on the House-passed Republican short-term spending bill, which also needs 60 votes to pass and is also expected to fail.
Updated at 12.01 EDT
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Summary
Just over 12 hours into the first US federal government shutdown in almost seven years, there is no shortage of partisan political recriminations and chaos and no solution in sight. Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court has made an important decision, so stick with us for all the news as it happens.
Here’s where things stand:
No resolution. The US Senate just voted 47-53, with all Republicans opposed, to reject a Democrats’ proposal to fund the government. It required 60 votes to pass. The congressional upper chamber is now voting on the House-passed Republican short-term spending bill, which also needs 60 votes to pass and is also expected to fail.
The White House website has had a shutdown makeover to ram home the Trump administration’s claim that “Democrats have shut down the government”. It even features a ticking clock illustrating duration of the shutdown so far.
The House of Representatives will not return to Washington until next week, speaker Mike Johnson has announced, as the deadlock over the shutdown is set to persist.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, defended the fact that the Democrats did not engineer a shutdown earlier in the Trump administration, when the GOP was more willing to talk. “They did not negotiate at all this time,” he said.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said Schumer has “handed the keys of the kingdom” to the executive branch to “downsize the scope and scale” of the government. He predicted a “pretty massive backfire” for Democrats.
A government shutdown raises questions about how the Environmental Protection Agency can carry out its mission of protecting the America’s health and environment with little more than skeletal staff and funding.
Former US vice president Kamala Harris posted online a few minutes after the shutdown began: “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.”
A US federal government shutdown was triggered after a deadline to reach a funding agreement before the start of the new fiscal year, on 1 October, came and went without a deal.
Updated at 12.22 EDT
Senate votes down Democratic continuing resolution
The Senate just voted 47-53, with all Republicans opposed, to reject the Democrats’ counterproposal to fund the government. It required 60 votes to pass.
The upper chamber is now voting on the House-passed Republican short-term spending bill, which also needs 60 votes to pass and is also expected to fail.
Updated at 12.01 EDT
A reader has helpfully flagged another issue with the White House website’s ticking shutdown clock page.
At the time of writing, while the banner at the top of the screen has the shutdown as having gone on for 11 hours 32 minutes – reflecting Eastern Daylight Time – the ticking digital clock appears to be in a different time zone, saying 10 hours 32 minutes.
Updated at 11.43 EDT
Ticking clock on White House website blames Democrats for government shutdown
In an astonishing development, the White House website has had a shutdown makeover to ram home the Trump administration’s claim that “Democrats have shut down the government”.
It even features a ticking clock illustrating how long the shutdown has been going on for. The clock was first launched yesterday to count down the minutes to the impending shutdown last night.
The website further claims “Americans Don’t Agree with Democrats’ Actions” and has a compiled list of statements from organizations that supposedly demonstrate this point.
But bar a handful from conservative-aligned organizations, most of the quotes selected actually don’t blame Democrats at all; they simply illustrate the impact that a government shutdown would have on various organizations and programs – and call for one to be avoided.
Updated at 11.19 EDT
The House will return to DC next week, Johnson says
The House will return to Washington next week, speaker Mike Johnson has announced, as the government shutdown has no end in sight.
“Yes, the House will be returning next week, and they would be here this week, except that we did our work,” Johnson told reporters during a press conference this morning.
House GOP leadership decided to cancel planned votes and keep the House in recess this week to put maximum pressure on Senate Democrats to accept Republicans’ plan to fund the government.
Johnson said that he does not plan to call the House back on Friday. “There is nothing truly that we can do much on the floor while the lights are almost literally out here. We have to open the government,” he said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY), and other members of House and Senate Republican leadership, arrive at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol as the government shutdown continues, in Washington, DC on October 1, 2025. Photograph: Nathan Posner/ShutterstockShare
Updated at 12.30 EDT
In short, no sign of movement from either side.
Thune said he was not interested in linking negotiations on health care policy to government funding. “Everybody’s now asking the question, ‘How does this end?’ It ends when Senate Democrats pick this bill up passed by the House of Representatives and vote for it.”
Thune reiterates his view that the Democrats are “holding the federal government hostage to their partisan demands” and says Republicans will not engage on bipartisan discussions while that’s ongoing.
Updated at 10.44 EDT
Senate majority leader John Thune is speaking now. He says immediately that “Democrats have bowed to the far left and shut down the government”.
Schumer said that if Republicans worked with them to fix the healthcare crisis, “the shutdown could go away very quickly”.
“That’s what Democrats want, to end this now, fix healthcare now,” he said.
Calling Trump “the most immature president we’ve ever had”, Schumer said that “instead of acting like an adult” and doing something about the healthcare crisis, Trump “is threatening to hurt countless hardworking Americans”.
Updated at 10.37 EDT
Schumer said: “When Democrats say we want to work with Republicans to lower premiums to strengthen healthcare, all we are doing is reflecting what the American people already want. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“They want us to sit down and negotiate something that real that takes this huge, huge burden off their shoulders,” he added.
Updated at 10.45 EDT