Category World News

The United States Senate has taken its first step towards ending the longest government shutdown in the country’s history as lawmakers agreed to move forward with a stopgap funding package.

The Republican-led proposal, which would keep the government running until January 30, comes after weekend negotiations between the Republicans and Democrats to end the shutdown, which on Monday entered its 41st day.

The shutdown, which has surpassed the 35-day record in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term, has disrupted flights across the country, deprived millions of Americans of food aid and left more than 1.3 million federal government employees furloughed or working without pay.

What exactly did the Senate vote on?

The Senate passed a procedural vote on Sunday, which means the vote was not over the bill, but it will allow the bill to move forward so senators can debate and eventually vote on it. This 60-40 test vote marks the first step in a series of procedural manoeuvres.

“Now, this is what is called a cloture vote, a procedure by which the Senate agrees to continue the debate about the legislation and begins introducing and passing the bills aimed at ending the shutdown,” Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna said, reporting from Washington, DC.

If the Senate eventually passes the bill, the package still must be approved by the House of Representatives before being sent to Trump for his signature to become law.

In the Senate, Republicans hold 53 seats and Democrats have 47, but Republicans do not have the 60 votes needed to advance bills. Eight senators who caucus with the Democrats voted to move the Republican measure forward.

In the House, Republicans hold 220 seats while Democrats have 212.

What is included in the funding package, what isn’t and why that matters

The measure would provide yearlong funding for certain parts of the government, including for food assistance programmes and the legislative branch.

It does not extend health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which Democrats have been demanding to pass any funding measure. The ACA was passed in 2010 under President Barack Obama and expanded health insurance coverage.

However, centrist Democrats and Republicans reached a deal to vote in December on extending the healthcare tax credits, which are due to expire this year. The subsidies under the ACA help low-income Americans pay for private insurance.

Democrats have been promised that the Trump administration will continue to employ government employees furloughed due to the shutdown and extend the expiring healthcare tax credits, according to the US-based news site Politico.

But no official information about the bill has been available so far.

In a statement before the vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the Republican leader of the chamber, lauded the “bipartisan way” to address the crisis.

But Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, expressed concerns. “For months and months, Democrats have been fighting to get the Senate to address the healthcare crisis. This bill does nothing to ensure that that crisis is addressed,” he said.

On Saturday, Trump proposed to send ACA subsidies directly into people’s bank accounts, building pressure on the Democrats.

“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

In July, Trump and Congress cut Medicaid funding by $930bn over the next decade as part of his “Big Beautiful Bill”. Medicaid is the biggest government-run health programme and provides care to low-income people.

Which Democrats voted for the bill?

The measure passed in a 60-40 vote. Eight members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate voted for the bill. All Republicans voted for the measure except Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky.

Democratic senators who voted for the motion to advance the bill included Dick Durbin of Illinois; Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire; John Fetterman of Pennsylvania; Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada; and Tim Kaine of Virginia.

Independent Senator Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, also voted in favour of the measure.

Did the bill receive pushback from other Democrats?

Yes.

Schumer said before the vote that he could not support the measure “in good faith”. The Senate minority leader, who faced criticism from fellow Democrats in March for voting with Republicans to keep the government open, said the party has now “sounded the alarm” on healthcare.

“We will not give up the fight,” Schumer said.

Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, said that giving up the fight would be a “horrific mistake”.

Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said local and state elections last week saw support for Democratic candidates because voters were expecting Democrats to hold firm in the negotiations.

On Tuesday, Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral election. Democrats also won gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia on the same day.

Since the beginning of the shutdown, Democratic senators voted 14 times not to reopen the government as they demanded the extension of the ACA tax credits.

How much money has been lost during the shutdown and how has it impacted people?

The shutdown has resulted in about 750,000 federal employees being furloughed, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). A furloughed employee is suspended or discharged for a period of time without pay.

This would result in a daily loss of about $400m in wages, the CBO said. Based on this number, the shutdown has resulted in an estimated loss of $16bn in pay over 40 days.

Scott Lucas, a professor of US and international politics at the Ireland-based University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute, put the loss to the US economy at $7bn to $14bn. “That loss in gross domestic product, GDP, is estimated to be around 1.5 percent this quarter,” he told Al Jazeera.

If the bill advanced on Sunday would eventually pass and become law, it would bring back furloughed federal workers, repay states that funded federal programmes during the shutdown, prevent further layoffs until January and ensure workers are paid once the shutdown ends.

Lucas added that millions of Americans are now paying more than double in premiums for their health insurance as the tax credits are slated to lapse. And there is no surety that the December vote would extend those credits, he said.

He also pointed out that nearly 42 million Americans have lost their food assistance provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). “No government support for those payments, and the Trump administration has ordered states, which offered food assistance payments, to return that money,” he told Al Jazeera.

What’s next?

Al Jazeera’s Hanna explained that once a cloture vote passes, all later votes on a bill need only a simple majority in the Senate.

“The important thing about the cloture vote is that once it is passed at that 60 percent majority, every subsequent vote is by a simple majority. So it would appear to be plain sailing in the Senate for the Republicans to pass this bill and end this closure,” Hanna said.

An explosion near New Delhi’s Red Fort reportedly has killed at least eight people. Footage from the scene showed a smouldering vehicle frames and scattered wreckage.

Nearly a million evacuees face returning to destroyed homes and flooded streets after Super Typhoon Fung‑Wong hit the northern Philippines. Now residents must begin the task of rebuilding their lives.

Today, the United States marks its 41st day of a federal government shutdown that has seen federal employees unpaid, air travel disrupted and millions of poor Americans losing food assistance.

To be sure, this is not the first time that the government of the reigning global superpower has deliberately ceased to function – although the current shutdown recently bagged the dubious distinction of being the longest in modern US history.

And this time around, the political spectacle is beyond dystopian.

In short, the suspension of government transpired as a result of a budgetary disagreement between Republicans and Democrats over draconian healthcare cuts favoured by President Donald Trump. This is the same Trump, of course, who fancied the US wealthy enough to propose a defence budget for fiscal year 2026 of more than $1 trillion.

Following the shutdown, the Trump administration decided that poor and hungry Americans should pay the price, and on November 1, the nation’s crucial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) came to a halt for the first time since the programme’s creation in 1964.

Nearly 42 million Americans – or one in eight people – rely on SNAP to eat. According to the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the US Department of Agriculture, children accounted for 39 percent of the programme’s participants in the fiscal year 2023.

When I visited the ERS website on Sunday, I encountered the following very professional alert at the top of the screen: “Due to the Radical Left Democrat shutdown, this government website will not be updated during the funding lapse.”

The message continued in slightly smaller print: “President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel and clothe the American people.”

It could be funny, if only it weren’t so macabre.

Last week, the administration was forced to reverse its starvation campaign after a ruling by two federal judges that the freeze in SNAP benefits was unlawful. The resumption of food aid was, however, only partial – and came accompanied by an appeal to the Supreme Court to intervene in favour of mass hunger.

These days, the top US judicial body rarely encounters a sociopathic initiative that it doesn’t endorse. And in this case too, it did not disappoint.

On Friday, The Associated Press news agency reported that the Supreme Court had “granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states already have received the funds”.

Indeed, it is harder to think of a more pressing “emergency” than having to use the vast resources at one’s disposal to ensure that one’s own citizens do not starve.

Given the Israeli military’s contemporary use of enforced starvation as a key component in its US-backed genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, it may seem like a crass exaggeration to invoke such terminology in a domestic American context. But intentionally depriving people of the sustenance required for survival amounts to starvation plain and simple – whether it’s as a weapon for genocide or simply as the latest iteration of the ongoing US war on the poor.

On October 31, the day before the SNAP freeze, CNN ran an article headlined, “‘I feel guilty eating a meal’: Low-income families prepare to lose access to billions in federal aid,” which quoted an Ohio mother who spoke of preemptively going without food on her children’s behalf.

Describing her family’s suffering on account of the federal shutdown, the mother opined: “It’s no longer a Democrat thing. It’s no longer a Republican thing. It’s our lives.”

And while the Democrats may come out looking like the more polite party against the present backdrop of Trump’s unrepentant derangement, it’s helpful to recall that the war on the poor has long been a bipartisan one. In the 1990s, for example, Democratic President Bill Clinton oversaw “reforms” to the US welfare system that ultimately caused the number of Americans living in extreme poverty to skyrocket.

At the end of the day, both parties are firmly committed to upholding the plutocracy on which the US itself is founded – since you can’t sustain the tyranny of an elite minority if everyone is created equal with equal rights, including the right to adequate food.

Rich Americans like to howl about the existential perils of taxing their wealth. But for the tens of millions of people now set to be deprived of necessary nourishment, the existential peril is real.

Last night, eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans as a first step to temporarily end the shutdown and resuscitate the government until January. Another vote in the House of Representatives is needed and then Trump’s signature, which could take days. If passed, the bill would extend SNAP through September but fundamentally resolve zero issues. The hungry remain in limbo, and healthcare remains up in the air.

Over recent weeks, some observers cast the possibility of mass  starvation as “collateral damage” of partisan bickering. And though the war terminology is no doubt apt, the poorest sectors of US society are far from just provisional “collateral” casualties of the federal government shutdown.

They are the intended targets of a capitalist system engineered to keep them down.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the United States on Saturday, ahead of a historic meeting with his US counterpart, Donald Trump.

This marks the first time a Syrian president has visited the White House in at least 80 years.

The meeting is of particular importance considering the US’s power in removing sanctions, something Syria badly needs to kick-start its economy.

What will be on the agenda when the two leaders meet? Read on to find out.

What is this trip about for Syria?

For Syria, it is likely about making moves to finally repeal the Caesar Act, a series of sanctions the US applied to Syria in 2019, during the rule of former President Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown by a lightning offensive led by al-Sharaa in December last year.

While the Trump administration gave an executive order to lift sanctions on Syria, the US Congress has to vote to repeal the Caesar Act.

US sanctions on Syria date as far back as the late 1970s, though more were applied in 2004 and again in 2011.

Republican Congressman Brian Mast, who has previously compared Palestinian civilians to Nazis, was reportedly an obstacle to the Caesar Act’s repeal.

However, Mast reportedly met with the 43-year-old al-Sharaa in the early hours of Monday morning and had a “positive and constructive” meeting, Syrian journalist Fared al-Mahlool reported on his Instagram account.

Removing all the sanctions on Syria means the country can return to the global financial system, making investments and business smoother.

It will also help it rebuild its devastated healthcare system and infrastructure damaged during the 13-year civil war that broke out after Syria’s 2011 revolution and the al-Assad government’s heavy-handed response to it.

Al-Sharaa is reportedly also seeking funds for Syrian reconstruction after the war.

Many neighbourhoods were turned to dust and continue to sit in piles of rubble. The World Bank estimates the battered country needs at least $216bn to rebuild.

What about the US?

For the US, the trip has a different significance.

Washington has high hopes it will convince Damascus to join its coalition against the armed group ISIL (ISIS).

The coalition is made up of 89 countries from across the world, and includes over a dozen Arab states.

Syria’s joining the coalition will further signal its regional integration under the new administration led by al-Sharaa.

Trump would also like to expand the Abraham Accords, a group of US-brokered normalisation deals between Israel and Arab states, by adding Syria.

Will Syria join?

Arab media is reporting that Syria is likely to sign on to the fight against ISIL.

As al-Sharaa landed in Washington, Syria’s Ministry of Interior announced the launch of a “large-scale security operation”, carrying out 61 raids that targeted ISIL cells across the country.

The ministry said operations were carried out in Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs and Damascus.

Earlier this month, US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said al-Sharaa would “hopefully” sign an agreement that would have Syria join the anti-ISIL coalition.

Normalisation, however, may have to wait.

Why is this visit so historic?

It’s the first time a Syrian president will visit the White House since the country’s independence from French colonial rule in 1946.

Al-Sharaa and Trump met before in Saudi Arabia, with the latter describing the former as an “attractive, tough guy”.

But this is the first time al-Sharaa or any other Syrian president will visit the White House, signalling a warming of relations between the two countries after more than five decades of the al-Assad family’s reign.

The trip comes after al-Sharaa visited United Nations headquarters in New York City in September, his first time visiting the US.

It has been an improbable development, considering that al-Sharaa fought US forces in Iraq and was then captured and spent 2006-2011 in US prison camps.

The meeting also comes as the US is reportedly establishing a military presence at the Mezzeh airbase in Damascus.

Some reports say the US will use this presence to work at brokering a peace pact between Israel and Syria, though Syrian officials have denied this.