End of the longest U.S. government shutdown

The Republican-controlled House passed a bill previously approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate, bringing an end to the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.

According to Reuters, on Wednesday local time, the House approved the government funding bill, effectively ending President Donald Trump’s second extended government shutdown.

A total of 222 House members voted in favor of the bill, while 209 voted against it. The Senate had approved a similar version of the legislation two days earlier.

The bill’s official signing by President Trump was the final step in the legal process, marking the conclusion of his administration’s more than six-week-long shutdown.

During the signing ceremony in his White House office, Trump criticized the Democrats.

The recent shutdown — the longest in U.S. federal government history — began over a budget dispute between the Trump administration and Congress, primarily concerning the funding of several domestic programs.

As a result of the shutdown, food assistance programs were disrupted, paychecks for hundreds of thousands of federal employees were halted, and air traffic control systems were paralyzed.

Although federal employees returned to work on Thursday morning, November 13, 2025, it remains unclear how quickly full government operations and services will be restored.

Despite the bipartisan agreement to end the shutdown, the political rift between Democrats and Republicans remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the reopening of the government also means that the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein — the convicted sex offender and former associate of Trump, whose death in prison in 2019 fueled countless conspiracy theories — will resume.