The government shutdown is the second-longest stoppage in US history as many federal workers miss paychecks, and vulnerable Americans brace for government assistance programs to run out of money within days.
In focus as the shutdown nears the one month mark are Trump administration plans to not fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — also known as food stamps — starting next month.
Those benefits are received by roughly one in eight Americans, with the economic and human costs of a cutoff likely to mount quickly.
More than two dozen states also unveiled a lawsuit Tuesday to try and block this suspension of benefits.
Also this week, air traffic controllers became the latest group of federal workers to go without pay. They missed their first full paycheck on Tuesday as flight interruptions continue to spread. Dallas Airport was just the latest hub to be impacted in recent days after delays were seen from Los Angeles to New York over the last week.
Another group with paychecks due at the end of the month are active duty members of the military. Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that his expectation is that the Trump administration will find enough money to make this deadline.
“We do think that we can continue paying the troops, at least for now,” Vance told reporters at the Capitol.
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, negotiations remain nonexistent. The Senate once again failed to advance a bill to end the shutdown without concessions to Democrats. It was the 13th such failure, with lawmakers lined up on the same sides as the dozen previous attempts.
Democrats are meanwhile focused on another deadline when they hope the political pressure on Republicans will increase.
This weekend is the beginning of an open enrollment period for healthcare programs run by Affordable Care Act exchanges. Premium increases there — with Democrats looking to extend enhanced government subsidies for those plans — are at the heart of the impasse.
Here are the latest updates as the impacts of the government shutdown unfold.
LIVE 27 updates
At a press conference on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Powell fielded questions from reporters about how the government shutdown is affecting the central bank’s decision making.
The Fed cut interest rates by 25 basis points at its October meeting, as expected, even as the shutdown has deprived central bank policymakers of some of the gold-standard government data that they typically rely on.
“This is a temporary state of affairs,” Powell said (watch the full press conference below). “We’re going to collect every scrap of data we can find, evaluate it, and think carefully about it. And that’s our jobs. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Powell explained that the Fed will continue to look at other sources of information, such as the Fed’s Beige Book and private data. He noted that the Fed may not have a “very granular understanding of the economy while this data is not available” but that it would pick up on “material developments” in the economy.
Still, Powell acknowledged that the lack of data could make the Fed more cautious in its December meeting. “If you ask me, could it affect the December meeting?” Powell said. “I’m not saying it’s going to, but yeah, you could imagine that.”
“If you’re driving in the fog, you slow down,” he added.
Food stamp funding is set to lapse within days due to the shutdown with struggling Americans bracing to go without government assistance during a period of higher grocery prices.
Emma Ockerman covers the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance and finds that the economic and human costs of a food cutoff could add up quickly.
Vice President JD Vance was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and told reporters that it’s his expectation that the Trump administration will find the money to pay U.S. military members at the end of the week but without specifying how.
A coalition of 25 mostly Democratic-led states have filed a lawsuit to stop the Trump administration from its plan to suspend food aid benefits next month.
As the US government shutdown drags on, President Trump’s administration is trying to cancel federal funding that was already approved, on top of the billions it has canceled or threatened to cancel, since he took office.
But states, cities, and nonprofits have pushed back against the attempted cuts with more than 150 lawsuits, the Associated Press reports. For the most part, these cases have been successful in court so far.
The US Department of Transportation said nearly half of the 8,600 flight delays at US airports on Sunday were due to a spike in air traffic controller absences, brought on by the government shutdown, Reuters reports. And nearly 3,000 flights were delayed on Monday with the shutdown in its 27th day.
Air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers are required to continue working unpaid during the shutdown. Many will miss their first full paycheck this week. Normally, air traffic controller absences only account for about 5% of flight delays, the DOT said.
The meeting between President Trump and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, this week could offer farmers some relief — and Trump a lifeline — as a farm aid bill remains stalled in Congress.
According to Henrietta Treyz, managing partner and director of economic policy at Veda Partners, the US delegation is seeking confirmation that China will resume purchases of American soybeans, which would help struggling farmers caught between US trade policies and foreign countermeasures.
“If China buys soybeans, then the president is under a little bit less pressure to reach a deal with Democrats that could compel them to give some funding for a bailout package domestically,” Treyz told Yahoo Finance.
Last week, the Trump administration announced that the Agriculture Department would reopen approximately 2,100 core county offices to release more than $3 billion in aid to US farmers, despite the ongoing government shutdown. According to the AP, a White House official said the administration is using funds from a USDA agency that addresses agricultural prices. The release of these funds comes after farm aid was frozen for three weeks.
“This is the critical piece,” Treyz said about agriculture and the US-China talks. “China has quite a bit of room to make purchases … [and] that dynamic has a read-through to the government shutdown.”
Ahead of the busy holiday travel season, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday that more flight delays and cancellations are likely as the government shutdown, now more than two weeks old, drags on with no end in sight, Bloomberg reports:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Friday it will not use contingency funds to help pay Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP benefits, even though the government shutdown means the program will lapse in a few days’ time, according to a department memo, Reuters reports.
After the USDA said Friday it would not use a contingency fund to bolster the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), some states are looking at alternate funding scenarios. SNAP benefits will lapse in November if the U.S. government remains shut down, and Reuters reports that food banks across the country will struggle to absorb the expected uptick in people seeking food.
Flights were delayed Thursday at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, New Jersey’s Newark airport, and Washington’s Reagan National Airport.
The cause, as in previous delays seen earlier this week, was air traffic controller staffing shortages exacerbated by the government shutdown.
The White House said Friday that the release of October inflation data due next month is likely to be canceled due to the US government shutdown, posting “there will likely NOT be an inflation release next month for the first time in history.”
The post went on to again blame Democrats for the stoppage and added that “surveyors cannot deploy to the field — depriving us of critical data … the economic consequences could be devastating.”
The announcement came as September’s inflation data was belatedly released and came in lower than expected but held stubbornly at around 3% in September.
Another closely watched government data release is the monthly jobs report. September’s jobs data was compiled but the shutdown commenced before it could be released.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts added a challenge Friday for Trump to “release the already prepared September jobs numbers before the Fed meets next week to decide on interest rates,” saying the president is “hiding” that data.
A White House official also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether October’s jobs report was in jeopardy because of the shutdown.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday morning that traffic controllers “are angry” about the shutdown and that additional flight delays could be in the offing as flyer safety becomes a growing concern.
“I can’t guarantee you that your flight is going to be on time, I can’t guarantee that your flight isn’t going to be cancelled,” Duffy said Thursday during an appearance on Capitol Hill alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The secretary added that shutdown-related disruptions are “moving throughout the national airspace,” and that as he and his team see safety issues, “we will delay flights.”
The new comments come as shutdown-related travel delays are already piling up. Staffing shortages among air traffic controllers led to delays over this past weekend and the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed new airport troubles on Tuesday.
Thursday’s event also featured Sam Graves, a Missouri congressman and chair of the House Transportation Committee. The lawmaker said that for now “our skies are safe,” but Johnson added that the longer the shutdown continues, “the safety of the American people is thrown into further jeopardy.”
Duffy also expressed renewed worry Thursday that the shutdown could cause long-term problems, saying that current air traffic control trainees are thinking about leaving the field given shutdown uncertainty.
The secretary added that, given the already stressed air travel system, if the shutdown continues, these problems could “ricochet in the months and the years to come.”
The latest daily statement from the US Treasury Department finds that America’s gross national debt has topped $38 trillion. It’s the fastest accumulation of an additional trillion dollars in debt since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The gross national debt hit $37 trillion just in August of this year.
CBS News reports how the ongoing shutdown could make things worse.
Hilton (HLT) CEO Christopher Nassetta said on Wednesday that the government shutdown is likely to impact hotels as federal workers halt travel plans.
“We have factored for that into the forecast in the fourth quarter,” Nassetta said on the company’s earnings call, adding, “It is affecting the numbers.”
The shutdown comes at a time when the hotel industry is already facing headwinds from government policies. In the third quarter, Hilton reported that occupancy levels were subdued due in part to softer international travel to the US and declines in government-related travel spending.
Policies that may be dampening government travel spending include cost-cutting efforts in the US, such as those by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which have also frozen or curtailed travel at several agencies. In August, China also tightened its restrictions on travel by public employees.
The Federal Aviation Administration says air traffic controller staffing issues have caused new headaches this week for some travelers after a round of delays was seen over the weekend.
These federal workers are currently being asked to continue reporting to work during the shutdown, even as their paychecks have ceased. Controllers got a partial paycheck earlier this month and are set to see the pay they’re due to receive next week fully delayed until the shutdown ends.
The first three weeks of this government shutdown have positioned air traffic controllers — a group that often rode out previous stoppages with minimal fanfare — as a key economic crimp point so far.
This comes after years of challenges in control towers.
Just this past weekend, tracking site FlightAware clocked over 5,000 US delays on both Saturday and Sunday. The FAA said staffing shortages were a major culprit.
President Trump on Tuesday told a group of Senate Republicans to hold firm on the ongoing federal government shutdown, which on Wednesday is set to become the second-longest in US history.
“Our message has been very simple: We will not be extorted on this crazy plot of theirs,” he said during a lunch he hosted for GOP senators at the Rose Garden, which some observers said was meant as a show of unity amid the ongoing spending impasse.
Few signs of movement towards an end to the shutdown were in evidence Monday morning on Capitol Hill as both sides remained in partisan crouches and perhaps further apart than ever on the central issue of extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson again rejected talks at a press conference. He also invited two colleagues to appear alongside him who are among the loudest Republican voices for not devoting more money to the issue under any circumstances — shutdown or not.
Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland spoke first and called these enhanced Obamacare subsidies a “Biden bonus.” He was joined by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas — a fellow member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — who echoed the sentiments saying “we are not for giving more money to insurance companies.”
Meanwhile Top White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said no concessions are in the offing from the White House. He predicted on CNBC Monday that the ongoing pressure campaign would mean “moderate Democrats will move forward and get us an open government” suggesting the shutdown is “likely to end sometime this week.”
But little evidence of that was in the offing on the Democratic side.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is leading Democratic effort and he began the workweek posting what he termed “Trump’s shutdown checklist.”
Even with the government shutdown entering its third week and no end to the impasse in sight, many government workers are still required to report to work despite a pause in their paychecks.
Some have taken to TikTok to share their stories using the hashtag #federalemployees, CNN reports, providing some behind-the-scenes details about what it’s been like during the shutdown, and some information about the differences between essential and non-essential government workers.