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A shuttered government is familiar territory to President Donald Trump, whose first term saw three shutdowns, including a 35-day closure spanning the end of 2018 into early 2019. It remains the longest in U.S. history.
Congress failed to pass new spending authority by the start of Wednesday, Oct. 1, prompting a shutdown of the federal government, the fourth during a Trump presidency.
"A lot of good can come down from shutdowns," Trump told reporters in the White House a few hours before the deadline. "We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn't want."
The leaders of the two parties are standing their ground and it is unclear how long this shutdown might last. “I hope it’s very short because real Americans are going to suffer," Speaker Mike Johnson said on CNN on Sept. 30.
Republicans have demanded a stopgap solution that would extend current funding levels until Nov. 21.
Democrats want to undo large-scale Medicaid cuts Republicans made this summer. They also want to permanently extend tax subsidies millions of Americans use to purchase insurance on the federal and state health insurance marketplaces. Those subsidies are due to expire Dec. 31 and Republicans say there's time to negotiate about them later.
After weeks of not speaking to one another, as the deadline neared, Trump and the four top congressional leaders left a private White House meeting on Sept. 29 without an agreement to keep the federal government open.
A timeline of shutdowns
Trump had been in office exactly one year – Jan. 20, 2018 – when the government shut down for the first time under his leadership.
The three-day shutdown began when spending talks fell apart between Trump and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, partly over protections for young immigrants, known as Dreamers, who had been brought to the United States illegally as children.
Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, had put in place protections for these young adults under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump ended the program but gave lawmakers six months to come up with a replacement.
During budget negotiations, however, he demanded immigration concessions from Democrats. The government reopened after Congress passed a short-term compromise that did not include the immigration provisions Democrats had wanted.
Three weeks later, on Feb. 8, 2018, the government shut down for a second time, but just briefly.
Conservative Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul triggered that government closure when he blocked a Senate vote on a funding bill because it would have added more than $300 billion to the federal budget deficit. The shutdown ended after a few hours, when the Senate and the House both approved the spending measure.
The third shutdown of Trump’s first term – and the longest in U.S. history – started Dec. 22, 2018, and lasted until Jan. 25, 2019, after Trump demanded $5.7 billion to build a wall along the United States-Mexico border. Democrats flatly refused to negotiate on border wall funding until the government reopened.
That standoff stretched for 35 days, leading to the furlough of more than 350,000 federal workers and forcing 400,000 others to work without pay. Some food-safety inspections were temporarily stopped, trash piled up in national parks, federal landmarks and museums closed, and some airports shuttered checkpoints because of fewer Transportation Security Administration officers to screen passengers.
The shutdown ended only after Trump backed a bipartisan bill that contained none of the border wall funding he had demanded.
Trump waded into shutdown battles between terms as well. After winning re-election in 2024 but before taking office, Trump attempted to torpedo a short-term funding bill that would have kept the government running beyond his inauguration and through March. The Republican-led Congress passed a bipartisan spending bill with Democratic support to avoid shutting down the government days before Christmas and Hanukkah.
Not a record number of shutdowns
Trump might have the longest shutdown record, but he doesn’t hold the record for the most shutdowns. The government shut down eight times during Ronald Reagan’s eight years as president. All, however, were brief. The longest lasted just three days.
Jimmy Carter presided over five government shutdowns during his single term in office, the longest of which lasted 18 days.
There have been 20 government shutdowns lasting at least one full day since 1975, with most taking place before 1995 and half being very brief.
Prior to the 1980’s agencies didn't really shut down even if Congress hadn't yet approved a new spending plan. Instead, agencies would often continue to operate with the expectation that funding would be provided in the future, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Then, in 1980 and 1981 U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti wrote a series of legal opinions that established the basis for government shutdowns, saying that a longstanding law prohibited agencies from spending money without explicit authorization from Congress.
Contributing: Michael Collins
Sarah D. Wire writes for USA TODAY about how real people are affected by the federal government. She can be reached at swire@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No stranger to shutdowns: A look at Trump's history with government closures
Reporting by Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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