Government shutdown 2025 live: Trump threatens layoffs if Democrats block spending

A short-term spending bill pushed by Democrats has failed in the Senate in a 47 to 53 vote along party lines.

Widely shared video shows masked federal agents throwing several reporters to the floor inside an immigration courthouse in downtown Manhattan, days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was suspended for tackling a crying woman and pinning her to the ground in the same building.

Video from inside 26 Federal Plaza, which serves as headquarters for several federal law enforcement agencies, shows masked agents trying to forcibly remove a journalist from an elevator while calling out “get out the f****** elevator.”

Another agent then shoves a photographer across the hall. A third photographer is then knocked to the floor; footage from photojournalist Stephanie Keith shows him grabbing his head in pain before emergency medical personnel arrive and put him in a neck brace and on to a stretcher.

Last week, a crying woman pleading for her husband’s release from ICE custody was hospitalized after an agent shoved her across the hall, pushed her to the ground and pinned her down on her back.

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Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has laid out what Republicans can do to get his support to stop a government shutdown at midnight.

Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, has justified Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s strategy during the looming government shutdown, saying, “He is fighting harder.”

“ He is using what little leverage that we have,” Moulton said of Schumer on CNN Tuesday. “Some might say, ‘Why aren’t we asking for even more?’ What we’re asking for is actually something that Republicans should want because it’s good for Red states too.

“It’s just lowering healthcare premiums, keeping them affordable for Americans, no matter what your political strife is.”

In March, Schumer supported a six-month spending bill to keep the government open, saying, “While the Republican bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much much worse.”

But now Democrats are digging their heels in, demanding an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies in exchange for their vote to keep the government open.

“The Republicans have had 45 days over and over and over to come to us and talk about protecting your health care. They didn’t. They would rather shut the government down than protect your health care,” Schumer wrote on X Tuesday.

President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday, “A lot of good can come down from [government] shutdowns.”

“We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want. And they’d be Democrat things,” Trump said.

Senator Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, has railed against President Donald Trump and the Republicans over healthcare as a government shutdown looms.

Government subsidies for those under the Affordable Care Act are set to expire at the end of the year. If these subsidies are not extended, more than 20 million Americans will have to pay higher insurance premiums next year, The New York Times reports.

Democrats are trying to leverage an extension for these subsidies in exchange for their support of a spending bill to prevent a government shutdown at midnight tonight.

Republicans have criticized the cost of the subsidies and potential fraud in enrollments for the healthcare program. The NYT says the subsidies cost an estimated $350 billion over 10 years.

Federal workers’ unions filed a lawsuit Tuesday to stop President Donald Trump from carrying out mass firings if the government shuts down.

The unions pointed out in the lawsuit that in the past, federal employees either continued to work during a shutdown but were not paid until an appropriations bill was passed, or they were furloughed and received back pay after the shutdown ended.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump said, “We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for [Democrats] and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which is a plantiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement: “Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government past the end of the fiscal year is not only illegal – it’s immoral and unconscionable.”

Kelley continued: “Federal employees dedicate their careers to public service – more than a third are military veterans – and the contempt being shown them by this administration is appalling.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has said Republicans will not be “held hostage” by Democrats as a government shutdown looms.

Republicans need the support of eight Democrats to pass a short-term spending bill before midnight tonight, Thune said.

Chuck Schumer blasted Donald Trump’s vulgar Truth Social post mocking him with an apparent AI-generated video after Monday negotiations about the imminent government shut down yielded no results.

“If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums,” Schumer wrote on X.