US President Donald Trump (PTI)
As the US government shutdown entered its 18th day on Friday, President Donald Trump called it a “Democrat shutdown,” accusing the opposition of blocking efforts to curb illegal immigration.“The shutdown continues. The Republican Party is not going to pay a trillion and a half dollars to illegal immigrants coming into our country, coming in for a lot of reasons, coming in from prisons, from jails, from all over the place, from Venezuela, many countries. We’re not going to do that. So the shutdown continues. It’s a Democrat shutdown. It’s a Schumer shutdown because his career has failed, and it’s over,” Trump said.The impasse shows no sign of ending after senators failed for the tenth time to resolve the dispute in votes on Thursday, CBS News reported. The current shutdown is now the third-longest funding lapse in modern US history, surpassed only by the shutdowns of 1995 and 2018–19. Shutdowns in their current form have been in place since 1980.Senate majority Leader John Thune adjourned the upper chamber for the weekend following Thursday’s votes, meaning the funding lapse will continue at least until Monday. The House of Representatives has been out of session since September 19, with no plans to reconvene until the shutdown ends, according to CBS News, as cited by ANI.As the shutdown continues, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent warned that the ongoing partial shutdown could take a serious toll on the US economy. Speaking at a news conference, Bessent said the shutdown is “starting to cut into muscle here.”He initially estimated that the shutdown could cost the economy up to $15 billion per day, though the Treasury later clarified that he meant $15 billion per week. The funding lapse began on October 1 after Congress and the White House failed to pass a budget bill for fiscal year 2026, according to Fox Business.Bessent urged moderate Senate Democrats to “be heroes” by breaking ranks with party leadership and supporting the Senate Republicans’ continuing resolution to reopen the government for Americans.Meanwhile, Thune’s office said he plans to introduce a bill next week to ensure federal employees and military service members who have continued working during the shutdown are paid. Passing the legislation, however, will require support from Democrats, who recently blocked a long-term defense spending bill from advancing.