US Government Faces Extended Shutdown

Photo Credit: ABC News

On Oct. 1, the US government shut down for the first time in six years after it failed to agree on a 2026 budget. As of Oct. 22, it is the second-longest shutdown in US history, with over an estimated 1 million government employees forced to work without pay as Democrats and Republicans debate government spending.

The disputes centre around Trump’s unprecedented initiatives to bend Congressional funding toward his priorities, which include halting Obamacare, defunding healthcare and environmental science, and withdrawing billions pledged to foreign aid.

The Democrats have refused to reopen the government until the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, is extended into next year. The ACA provides subsidies to lower the cost of healthcare for households with incomes between 100 per cent and 400 per cent of the federal poverty level, and currently insures over 40 million people. Republicans say they will discuss the subsidies when the government reopens, but Democrats are concerned that if they don’t use the shutdown as leverage to get their voices heard, the ACA will be cancelled permanently, according to BBC News.

In 2023, President Trump posted on Truth Social to declare his intention to scrap the ACA if he were to be elected president. He wrote, “The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare.”

More recently, Republican Vice-President J.D. Vance told CBS News on Oct. 12, “We think the tax credits actually go to a lot of waste and fraud within the insurance industry.” The concern that insurers could be exploiting the subsidies by raising premiums and manipulating billing to capture more government money is echoed by many other Republicans.

Currently, the healthcare subsidies keep costs down for consumers, but cost the government billions annually. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cost the government approximately $350 billion to extend the subsidies into the next decade, or about $35 billion a year.

A secondary demand from Democrats is to discuss Trump’s use of executive power to cancel and withhold funds approved by Congress, which he has used to target foreign aid and science funding.

In May, the Trump administration pulled over $700 million committed to Moderna for developing future flu vaccines, and in August, it cancelled another $500 million in grants for mRNA vaccine research. According to Cidrap, President Trump has historically opposed vaccinations, most recently declaring in a September press conference that children should receive fewer childhood vaccinations, because they are linked to autism.“You have a little child, little fragile child, and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends, and they pump it in,” he told reporters, adding, “This is based on what I feel. It seems to be that when you mix them, there could be a problem. So, there’s no downside in taking them separately.”

This claim was denied by the American Psychiatric Association, which released a formal statement the same day as the conference. “Vaccines do not cause autism,” the statement reads. “Claims of any such association have been repeatedly discredited in peer-reviewed studies.”

Reuters shares that a key discussion point for the Democrats is also Trump’s plan to cut around $5 billion from the National Science Foundation (NSF), $6 billion from NASA, and $18 billion from the National Institute of Health (NIH), or 40 per cent of its current budget. The NIH is the world’s largest biomedical research funder, typically awarding over 60,000 research grants per year, and supplying funding for over 99 per cent of the drugs approved in the US. These budget cuts, incorporated into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, passed through the House of Representatives by a narrow vote of 215-214. However,  it may not come into effect if the Democrats have their way in the shutdown.

Many citizens are concerned that Trump is using budget cuts to defund science that opposes right-wing ideologies, including vaccine development, gender/minority health, and climate change research. According to a statement in January from the White House, Trump has cancelled policies and initiatives in diversity, equity and inclusion, which he has described as illegal, radical and wasteful. He has also banned studies that mention particular words relating to sex and gender, race, disability and other protected characteristics, as reported by HHR Journal.

According to Forbes, Trump has cancelled thousands of grants from the NIH and NSF. Dr. Bruce Lee, a senior contributor to the paper, described the cancellation process as “as clear as mud mixed with spray tan.” The termination letters often provide very little explanation about the reason for the cancellation, using stock language such as the research award “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

These cancellations are causing instability in academia, particularly within climate change research and healthcare. Many scientists worry that this will repel younger researchers from the field. Courts in Massachusetts and California have already ruled that some cancellations were illegal, and protests from scientists and concerned citizens are occurring across the nation.

Another issue on the table is Trump’s withholding of money that the government has already set aside for foreign aid. Reuters reports that on Sept. 26, four days before the shutdown, the Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump to withhold $4 billion that Congress had previously allocated for foreign aid, United Nations peacekeeping, and democracy-promotion efforts overseas.

Nicolas Sansome, a lawyer representing nonprofit groups that sued, warned that “this result further erodes separation of powers principles that are fundamental to our constitutional order. It will also have a grave humanitarian impact.”

This reflects one of the first orders of the Trump administration, titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid.” The order, published on the White House website, declared that “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.”