The government shutdown has officially begun

President Trump
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The federal government officially entered a partial shutdown Saturday at midnight after the Senate adjourned Friday without passing a stopgap funding measure.

President Trump has said he will not sign a new spending bill unless it includes $5 billion for his promised expansion of the wall — now, per Trump's Twitter, "a Steel Slat Barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful" — on the southern border. The House passed a bill honoring Trump's request, but it is not expected to pass the Senate.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.