The partial shutdown of US government operations ended Tuesday after President Donald Trump signed a budget package into law.
Earlier, the House of Representatives approved the package in a close 217-214 vote. The Senate had already passed the measure last week. Trump called the legislation “a great victory for the American people.” Democrats had opposed parts of the bill over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and controversial federal actions targeting migrants.
The package funds most government agencies through the end of September but provides only temporary transitional funding for DHS, extending that department’s funding until February 13 as a compromise.
Funding for some agencies expired on Saturday when Congress missed its deadline, triggering a partial shutdown that, so far, has not caused major disruptions to government services. Last week Trump negotiated a spending deal with Senate Democrats, who sought new limits on aggressive immigration enforcement following the killing of two US citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis.
The administration has taken one step toward those demands by deploying body cameras for immigration agents in Minnesota. The previous shutdown — a record 43 days in October and November — furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers and cost the US economy an estimated $11 billion (€9.3 billion).
Edited by: Rana Taha