{"id":170472,"date":"2025-11-03T11:53:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T11:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-government-shutdown-nearing-record-for-longest-in-history-as-trump-delays-food-benefits-to-millions-us-politics-live-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T11:53:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T11:53:21","slug":"us-government-shutdown-nearing-record-for-longest-in-history-as-trump-delays-food-benefits-to-millions-us-politics-live-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-government-shutdown-nearing-record-for-longest-in-history-as-trump-delays-food-benefits-to-millions-us-politics-live-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"US government shutdown nearing record for longest in history as Trump delays food benefits to millions \u2013 US politics live – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republicans claim US president \u2018desperate\u2019 to end shutdown, which has now entered 33rd day
Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics<\/a>.
Republicans are claiming that the US president, Donald Trump<\/strong>, is \u201cdesperate\u201d to end the government shutdown, which has now entered its 33rd day, as lawmakers struggle to find common ground on previously bipartisan issues such as food aid and health care.
The last shutdown, which started in December 2018<\/a> and was brought about by disagreements over money to fund a wall along the US-Mexico border, lasted 35 days \u2013 the longest in American history.
Republicans have only 53 Senate seats, meaning they need at least seven Democrats or independents to reopen the federal government. But in repeated votes since federal agencies shut on 1 October, just three Democrats have been willing to support funding legislation.
Trump continues to exert an iron grip on the shutdown, which sees Democrats and Republicans stuck over passing a spending plan that would reopen federal agencies. He is resisting political and even federal court pressure to ease the burden on vulnerable Americans while protesting that he has no power to end the impasse.
\u201cI mean, the Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,\u201d Trump told 60 Minutes in an interview on Sunday. \u201cYou know, they\u2019ve never had this. This has happened like 18 times before. The Democrats always voted for an extension, always saying, \u2018Give us an extension, we\u2019ll work it out.\u2019\u201d
Two federal court judges ruled on Friday<\/a> that the Trump administration must use $5bn in contingency funds to keep paying food assistance Snap benefits for up to 42 million low-income Americans. The payments stopped Saturday under the shutdown, posing the risk of hunger for millions of people.
As my colleague Ed Pilkington reports in this story<\/a>, despite the two court orders, it remains unclear when or whether the administration will restart the payments. Trump has said he is waiting for clarification from the federal judges on where the money should come from.
Stay with us as we bring you the latest developments from Washington.
The US energy secretary, Chris Wright<\/strong>, has said the weapons testing that Donald Trump<\/a> ordered last week will not include nuclear explosions.
\u201cI think the tests we\u2019re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions,\u201d Wright told Fox News yesterday.
\u201cSo you\u2019re testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry, and they set up the nuclear explosion,\u201d Wright added.
Wright, whose agency is responsible for testing, said the planned testing involves \u201call the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry and they set up the nuclear explosion.\u201d
The confusion over Trump\u2019s intention started minutes before he held a critical meeting in South Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump took to his Truth Social platform and appeared to suggest he was preparing to discard a decades-old US prohibition on testing the nation\u2019s nuclear weapons<\/a>.
His comments sparked fears that the US could be preparing to restart full-scale nuclear blasts for the first time since the early 1990s.
As we mentioned in the opening summary<\/a>, two federal judges have ruled that the government cannot suspend food aid used by about 42 million low-income Americans during the shutdown.
Here is more on the story, courtesy of my colleague Lauren Gambino<\/a>:
<\/path><\/svg>The<\/em> United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has said insufficient funds exist to pay full benefits, as issuing food stamps costs the public purse between $8.5bn and $9bn every month.<\/em>
The Trump administration contends the agency lacks authority to pay them until Congress passes a spending bill that will ending the enduring government shutdown, which began on 1 October.<\/em>
Trump lambasted the decisions on Friday, writing<\/a> on Truth Social that he does \u201cNOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT\u201d.<\/em>
\u201cI have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible. It is already delayed enough due to the Democrats keeping the Government closed through the monthly payment date and, even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out,\u201d he wrote.<\/em>
\u201cIf we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding, just like I did with Military and Law Enforcement Pay.\u201d<\/em>
Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics<\/a>.
Republicans are claiming that the US president, Donald Trump<\/strong>, is \u201cdesperate\u201d to end the government shutdown, which has now entered its 33rd day, as lawmakers struggle to find common ground on previously bipartisan issues such as food aid and health care.
The last shutdown, which started in December 2018<\/a> and was brought about by disagreements over money to fund a wall along the US-Mexico border, lasted 35 days \u2013 the longest in American history.
Republicans have only 53 Senate seats, meaning they need at least seven Democrats or independents to reopen the federal government. But in repeated votes since federal agencies shut on 1 October, just three Democrats have been willing to support funding legislation.
Trump continues to exert an iron grip on the shutdown, which sees Democrats and Republicans stuck over passing a spending plan that would reopen federal agencies. He is resisting political and even federal court pressure to ease the burden on vulnerable Americans while protesting that he has no power to end the impasse.
\u201cI mean, the Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,\u201d Trump told 60 Minutes in an interview on Sunday. \u201cYou know, they\u2019ve never had this. This has happened like 18 times before. The Democrats always voted for an extension, always saying, \u2018Give us an extension, we\u2019ll work it out.\u2019\u201d
Two federal court judges ruled on Friday<\/a> that the Trump administration must use $5bn in contingency funds to keep paying food assistance Snap benefits for up to 42 million low-income Americans. The payments stopped Saturday under the shutdown, posing the risk of hunger for millions of people.
As my colleague Ed Pilkington reports in this story<\/a>, despite the two court orders, it remains unclear when or whether the administration will restart the payments. Trump has said he is waiting for clarification from the federal judges on where the money should come from.
Stay with us as we bring you the latest developments from Washington.<\/p>\n

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Republicans claim US president \u2018desperate\u2019 to end shutdown, which has now entered 33rd dayGood morning, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.Republicans are claiming that the US president, Donald Trump, is \u201cdesperate\u201d to end the government shutdown, which has now entered its 33rd day, as lawmakers struggle to find common ground on previously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":170473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}