Government shutdown live updates: Senate adjourns; House cancels votes for next week

Hamas said it has agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, as long as “the field conditions for the exchange are met” and expressed willingness to negotiate through mediators on Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East.

In its statement today, Hamas said that the group “affirms its readiness to immediately enter into negotiations through the mediators to discuss the details of this agreement.”

“The movement also renews its agreement to hand over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a Palestinian body of independents (technocrats), based on Palestinian national consensus and Arab and Islamic support,” Hamas said.

Hamas was responding to a 20-point peace plan Trump outlined on Monday at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Read the full story here.

The Trump administration activated 200 National Guard troops in Portland today as Oregon officials waited for a court ruling on their request to prevent the deployment.

Lawyers for the city and state had asked a federal judge to grant a temporary restraining order blocking the mobilization.

U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, a Trump appointee, said after a two-hour hearing today that she would make a decision at the end of the day or Saturday.

But U.S. Northern Command announced hours later that the troops had been activated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with the mission to “support the protection of federal personnel who are conducting federal functions and federal property.”

Read the full story here.

A federal workers union has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for altering U.S. Department of Education employees’ out-of-office email messages to include partisan language about a government shutdown without their consent.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which is represented by Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group in the matter, accused the administration of going to “unprecedented lengths” to use government infrastructure to “shift the public debate in its favor.”

“This whole-of-government approach to partisan messaging is unprecedented, and it makes a mockery of statutory prohibitions like the Hatch Act,” the complaint states. “Especially pernicious, however, are the Administration’s efforts to co-opt the voices of rank-and-file employees in the nonpartisan civil service to take part in political messaging.”

The lawsuit comes after furloughed employees discovered their out-of-office replies had been manipulated to include language blaming a government shutdown on Democrats.

Read the full story here.

A woman who pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh three years ago was sentenced today to more than eight years in prison.

Sophie Roske, now 29, was arrested near Kavanaugh’s home in June 2022 and told officials at the time that she intended to kill the associate justice, then herself.

She appeared in court today for her sentencing in a yellow jail jumpsuit. Members of Kavanaugh’s family as well as Roske’s were present in the courtroom.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman sentenced Roske to 97 months in prison — eight years and one month — saying that she felt Roske has shown remorse for her actions. She also ordered Roske, whom she referred to as a transgender woman, to a lifetime of supervised release.

Read the full story here.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee today tasked an independent council to find another prosecutor to handle Trump’s 2020 election interference case in Georgia, warning that failure to find an alternative attorney would result in the case's dismissal.

In an order today, McAfee wrote that if an appointed prosecuting attorney or representative from the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council doesn't assign a new attorney or request an extension within 14 days, "the Court will issue a dismissal without prejudice for want of prosecution."

Pete Skandalakis, the head of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council, did not immediately respond to a request for comment today.

The Georgia Supreme Court last month declined to hear Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ appeal of a December ruling from the Georgia Court of Appeal. That ruling disqualified her office from prosecuting the case, citing the “appearance of impropriety” tied to an alleged romantic relationship between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said today that he is not seeking to overturn the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage even as a case is pending asking the justices to do just that.

Alito made his remarks on the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, in which he dissented, as an aside in a speech at an academic conference in Washington in which he outlined his judicial philosophy.

“In commenting on Obergefell, I am not suggesting that the decision in that case should be overruled,” he said before repeating his criticisms of the decision.

Read the full story here.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reacted to the news that the House will not return next week, slamming House Republicans for caring “more about protecting the Epstein files than protecting the American people.”

Schumer made the remarks while at a press conference alongside Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Brian Schatz of Hawaii.

“There is not a clearer illustration of their lack of seriousness in terms of reopening the government and solving the health care crisis,” Schatz said.

Schumer concluded that if Republicans keep “running the same play,” they’ll get the same result.

“The votes aren’t there” for the House-passed stopgap bill, Schumer said.

The Supreme Court paved the way today for the Trump administration to revoke temporary legal status for up to 600,000 venezuelan immigrants, meaning some could ultimately be deported.

The court granted an emergency request filed by the Trump administration seeking to block a judge’s ruling that said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem failed to follow the correct process in revoking temporary protected status for venezuelans.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, in May granted an earlier emergency request filed by the Trump administration in the same case.

The latest filing came after California-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen on Sept. 5 again ruled against the administration, this time in the form of a final decision rather than a preliminary one.

Read the full story here.

The House is no longer scheduled to return next week, with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., now designating it as a district work period. 

The announcement was made during the House’s pro forma session, though Johnson was not presiding. 

The House was supposed to return on Oct. 7, but Johnson slightly changed his message this morning at his press conference, saying, “The House will come back into session and do its work as soon as Chuck Schumer allows us to reopen the government.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., was asked if he would bring Democrats back even if the House was out of session. Jeffries answered that he would. 

The House was last in session on Sept. 19, when it passed the seven-week continuing resolution.

The Treasury shared draft images today of a $1 commemorative coin, featuring President Donald Trump’s visage, that the United States Mint is preparing in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Trump’s instantly recognizable profile is featured on the “heads” side of the coin. On the “tails” side, the coin will have an image of Trump with his first raised, standing in front of an American flag.

U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said in a social media post on X that the images were “first drafts,” adding that more information on the coin will be released when the current government shutdown is resolved.

Read the full story here.

The GOP-backed stopgap funding bill has failed to advance, 54-44. Three Democrats voted yes, the same who have voted yes the last two times, and Sen. Rand Paul was, yet again, the sole GOP no vote. There were no new Democratic yes votes, and Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., did not vote.

The chamber is adjourning until Monday, meaning the government shutdown will continue for at least two more days.

The Senate is now voting on the House-passed clean stopgap funding bill.

The bill would fund the government through Nov. 21 without extraneous provisions and needs 60 votes to pass.

Democrat Cori Bush announced today that she's running for her old House seat in Missouri.

Bush was defeated in the Democratic primary in 2024 by now Rep. Wesley Bell after a pro-Israel super PAC spent close to $9 million in ads attacking her and boosting his campaign.

Bush, one of a group of progressive lawmakers known as "the squad," had been a vocal critic of the Israeli government and its response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Oct. 7. 

The vote to advance a Democratic-backed plan to temporarily fund the government has failed, 46-52.

The Smithsonian announced today that it can stay open during the shutdown a few days longer than previously thought.

"Smithsonian museums, research centers, and the National Zoo will use prior-year funds to remain open to the public during the federal government shutdown through Saturday, October 11," the institution — a major tourist attraction in D.C. — said in a statement.

The Smithsonian said earlier this week it would likely have to close by Oct. 6 because of the shutdown.

The Senate is taking a procedural vote in an attempt to move forward on a stopgap funding measure written by Democrats.

This needs 60 votes to pass, and it’s expected to fail. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the White House today that Democrats are to blame for upcoming layoffs of federal government workers, saying that the Trump administration is "focusing on waste, fraud and abuse.

"We are $37 trillion in debt, and the federal government is currently shut down. There is no more money coming into the federal government’s coffers. ... And so, Democrats have given this administration an unenviable choice to have to take a look at the balance sheet and identify where these cuts and layoffs can be made," Leavitt told reporters.

"The Democrats have given the administration this opportunity, and we don’t like laying people off," she added. "Nobody wants to do that, but sometimes in government you have to make tough decisions."

The White House plans to review federal aid that goes to Portland, Oregon, to determine what it can cut, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at her briefing this afternoon.

Leavitt alleged the move was in response to "left-wing anarchy that has been destroying this great American city for years, leaving police officers battered, citizens terrorized, and business properties damaged."

Leavitt said Trump will "restore" Portland. "I just spoke with the president about this, and he has directed his team here at the White House to begin reviewing aid that can potentially be cut in Portland," she said.

"We will not fund states that allow anarchy," she added. "There will also be an additional surge of federal resources to Portland immediately, including enhanced [Customs and Border Protection] and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] resources. Law and order will prevail, and President Trump will make sure of it."

Trump has already ordered the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland, which the city and state have sued the administration over.

In a post on Truth Social, the president said he is reversing a move the Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this week, which would have made $187 million in cuts to law enforcement funding for New York.

"I am pleased to advise that I reversed the cuts made to Homeland Security and Counterterrorism for New York City and State. It was my Honor to do so. Thank you for your attention to this matter!" Trump wrote in his post.

When they were first announced, the cuts faced major criticism, especially from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who called the move "utterly shocking."

The New York Police Department also said the cuts were "incredibly dangerous" when they were first announced.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is now criticizing Democratic leaders' handling of the ongoing government shutdown.

In an interview on CNN, the New Hampshire Democrat said that in order to find middle ground, "it takes people on both sides of the aisle."

"I think the good news is that people are still talking. I think the bad news is that we’re not seeing the leadership on both sides really willing to sit down and negotiate, and I think that’s what it’s going to take," said Shaheen, who is not running for re-election next year.

The Senate will vote this afternoon on the two stopgap government funding measures that have already failed three times in the past weeks. 

If these stopgap votes fail again, the Senate is expected to go home for the weekend, meaning the shutdown will last at least six days.

Senate Democrats are holding a regular lunch meeting today at in the Capitol building, where they will discuss the path forward ahead of the votes.

It will be notable if any additional Senate Democrats vote with Republicans to move forward with the clean stopgap funding bill that the house has passed.

President Donald Trump said he’s giving Hamas until 6 p.m. Sunday to accept the ceasefire proposal his administration offered this week to end the war in Gaza.

“If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas,” Trump wrote Friday in a lengthy post on Truth Social.

Trump said earlier this week that he would give Hamas three to four days to respond to the plan, which Israel has backed. Qatar, which had been helping facilitate peace efforts, said it was delivered to a Hamas delegation on Monday evening by Qatari and Egyptian officials.

The president claimed 25,000 members of Hamas have been killed following the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel. He also suggested that he would “give the word” on whether to further decimate the group, though U.S. forces are not in Gaza.

Read the full story here.

The Senate has reconvened on the third day of the government shutdown.

The upper chamber is expected to again take up spending bill proposals from Democrats and Republicans today.

Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday said that the Trump administration is making tough decisions about layoffs and cuts to federal government programs, even though the president, at times, is trolling Democrats.

"Are they taking great pleasure in that? No. Is he trolling the Democrats? Yes. I mean, yes, because that's what President Trump does, and people are having fun with this. But at the end of the day, the decisions are tough ones," Johnson told reporters at a press conference on Capitol Hill.

Trump faced criticism earlier this week for posting an AI-generated meme on Truth Social that featured House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries with a large mustache and a sombrero.

During the press conference, Johnson multiple times doubled down on the Trump administration's strategy, saying the trolling is pointing out "the absurdity of the Democrats' position."

"The effects are very serious on real people, real Americans. We support federal employees who do a great job in all these different areas, but, but what they're having trying to have fun with, trying to make light of, is to point out the absurdity of the Democrats' position. And they're using memes and all the you know, tools of social media to do that," Johnson added.

Thune on Friday blamed Democrats for allowing the president to move forward with cuts to federal government services and potential mass layoffs of government workers.

He said it was ironic, given that Democrats oppose those moves by the Trump administration.

"When you're in a shutdown situation, you have to manage the government, and any administration is going to make decisions based on their priorities, figure out where to move, move money from here to here, this agency, this department, these employees, that's the situation the Democrats have put this the administration in," Thune told reporters on Capitol Hill.

"That's what the Democrats have wrought by doing this. They are, they are allowing the administration to do the very thing that back in March they said they didn't want to give them the authority to do, and that's to make decisions just like that," the majority leader added.

Trump said this morning that he's giving Hamas until 6 p.m. Sunday to accept the ceasefire proposal his administration offered this week to end the war in Gaza.

“An Agreement must be reached with Hamas by Sunday Evening at SIX (6) P.M., Washington, D.C. time. Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas," Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social.

Trump said earlier this week that he would give Hamas three to four days to respond to the plan.

The president said 25,000 members of Hamas have been killed following the militant group's Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. He also suggested that he would have the power to decide whether to target the rest of the group's members, though U.S. forces are not in Gaza.

vice President JD vance could hardly mask his delight.

Four minutes into his appearance on the conservative podcast “Ruthless” this summer, one of the co-hosts pronounced him a “really cool and normal guy.” With a twinkle in his eye, vance turned toward the camera.

“Thank you!” he replied. “We can wrap the interview now.”

It was a revealing moment. vance, 41, has spent so much of his life, from his traumatic upbringing in Ohio to his elite education at an Ivy League law school, striving for normalcy. It was also validation for someone whom Democrats have tried to brand as precisely the opposite of normal — as weird.

Read the full story here.

The Trump administration announced today that it is putting $2.1 billion in funding for Chicago infrastructure projects on hold, the latest move to target Democratic-run cities during the government shutdown.

The director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell vought, said in a post on X that the funding is for “specifically the Red Line Extension and the Red and Purple Modernization Project.” He said it has been “put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting.”

Read the full story here.

EMILY’s List, the political group supporting female Democratic candidates who favor abortion rights, endorsed Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton for the Senate today, picking sides in the state’s crowded Democratic primary.

It’s the group’s first endorsement in a Senate campaign in the 2026 midterm elections, and it’s a significant boost in support for Stratton — who isn’t the only woman running in the open Democratic primary.

Stratton is running against a field that includes Rep. Robin Kelly — a former state Democratic Party chair whom EMILY’s List has endorsed in the past, when she ran for her seat in the House — and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has built up significant cash in his campaign account and has already spent more than $7 million on advertising in the race, according to AdImpact.

Read the full story here.

Trump’s victory last year was fueled in part by improvement among young voters. But new focus groups reveal why some young voters who backed Trump are beginning to sour on his administration’s approach to immigration and the economy.

“I believe my trust in the administration has completely nosedived because of how he’s mishandled things,” said Anthony H., a 22-year-old Republican from Nevada, pointing to immigration and foreign affairs.

Anthony was one of 14 swing-state Trump voters under age 30 who participated in recent focus groups observed by NBC News as part of the 2025 “Deciders” series, produced by Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago.

These voters were a key part of Trump’s coalition in 2024, as he made gains among 18-to-29-year-old voters, especially young men, compared to his 2020 loss. Trump won 43% of young voters in this age group last year after winning 36% of them in 2020, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. The exit poll also showed Trump winning 49% of young men in 2024, compared to 48% for then-vice President Kamala Harris, while Trump trailed among young women, winning 38% of that group.

Read the full story here.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., continued to blame Democrats for the government shutdown that began Wednesday in an interview on NBC’s “TODAY," saying it's up to them to end the impasse.

"We’ve done exactly what is always done, a very clean, very simple resolution to keep the government open so that we can negotiate all these other issues," Johnson said, explaining Congress was in the midst of negotiations on spending levels for the coming year, but ran out of time to pass those measures when the fiscal year ended.

"They’ve rejected it because they’re trying to make a political play," he said of Democrats, whom he accused of unnecessarily introducing a health care debate into what should be a simple, weekslong extension of current funding to buy time to talk about such issues.

"The ball is in the courts are the Democrats, not the Republicans," he said. "The Republicans have done our job, done our work, and now Chuck Schumer and 43 of his colleagues have to decide to do the right thing."

For people who closely follow the U.S. economy, the first Friday of every month is known as “jobs Friday,” when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the previous month’s employment report at precisely 8:30 a.m. ET.

But on this jobs Friday, September’s employment data — a critical window into the health of the U.S. labor market — will not be released. Like many other federal offices, the BLS is temporarily closed because of the ongoing government shutdown.

Until Congress approves its funding, the bureau’s more than 2,000 employees will remain furloughed, unable to release any reports. The data blackout comes at a perilous time for the U.S. economy.

Read the full story here.

Most of Trump’s supporters back keeping enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, the central obstacle in ending the government shutdown, according to a new poll from the nonpartisan health policy research group KFF. It was conducted Sept. 23 through Sept. 29, just days before Congress failed to pass a funding measure to keep the government open.

More than 22 million people receive the subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress extends them. Losing the subsidies could mean that average out-of-pocket premium payments could double in 2026, from $888 a year to $1,904, an earlier KFF analysis found.

Around 4 million people are projected to go without coverage next year because they can no longer afford it, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Extending them would cost the federal government around $350 billion over the next decade.

The new survey found 59% of Republicans and 57% of “Make American Great Again” supporters favor extending the enhanced subsidies.

Read the full story here.

The Senate convenes at 11:30 a.m. and will vote starting at 1:30 p.m. on the Democratic and Republican short-term spending bills after refraining from votes on the legislation yesterday in observance of Yom Kippur.

The bills under consideration have already failed to advance three times.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters yesterday that if the measures are blocked a fourth time, the Senate will probably adjourn until Monday, when the House is also planning to be in session.

“They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to keep, to open up the government,” Thune said. “And if that fails, then we have the weekend to think about it. We’ll come back. We’ll vote again on Monday.”

That means if the votes fail, the government shutdown will go into a sixth day.