WASHINGTON–President Donald Trump signed legislation to reopen the government on Wednesday, ending the 43-day Democrat shutdown.
The clean continuing resolution (CR) funds the government through the end of January and includes three of twelve appropriations for Fiscal Year 2026–agriculture, military construction-Veterans Affairs, and legislative branch–with funding for those through the end of September.
Trump, flanked by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), and cabinet officials, blasted Democrats for refusing to open government ahead of the signing.
“For the past 43 days, Democrats in Congress shut down the government of the United States in an attempt to extort American taxpayers for hundreds of billions of dollars for illegal aliens and people that came into our country illegally,” Trump said.
“Today, we’re sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion, because that’s what it was. They tried to extort–the Democrats tried to extort our country,” he added.
Trump said that Democrats “inflicted massive harm” in keeping the government closed since October 1.
“They caused 20,000 flights to be cancelled or delayed; they departed so many times so late. People were hurt so badly. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this one. This was a no-brainer, this was an easy extension, but they didn’t want to do it the easy way,” he said, adding:
They deprived more than one million government workers from their paychecks and cut off food stamp benefits for millions and millions more Americans in need. They caused tens of thousands of federal contractors and small businesses to go unpaid, and the total effect of the damage their antics caused will take weeks and probably months to really calculate accurately, including the serious harm that they did to our economy and to people and to families.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted earlier Wednesday at a press briefing that it is unlikely October’s Consumer Price Index and jobs reports will materialize due to the shutdown.
“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released, and all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period,” she said.
