The government shutdown has officially begun

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

last updated 22 December 2018

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.

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Some 420,000 employees of these agencies deemed "essential," like Forest Service firefighters and TSA agents, will continue to work without pay, while another 380,000 "non-essential" employees will be sent home without pay. Those who work through the shutdown are guaranteed to receive back pay when it is over, and the Senate passed a bill by unanimous consent Friday to guarantee back pay for furloughed workers as well.

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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.

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