Congress Passes Bill Ending Shutdown

President Donald Trump on Friday brought a temporary end to the longest government shutdown in US history, while dropping his previous insistence on immediate funding for wall construction along the Mexican border.

The announcement in the White House Rose Garden on the bipartisan deal marked a retreat by Trump, suspending a political row that has paralysed Washington, disrupted air travel and left more than 800,000 federal employees without pay for five weeks.

The Senate and House of Representatives both passed the deal by unanimous consent Friday. The White House later confirmed Trump had signed it into law.

Trump’s reversal came as the full weight of the shutdown, including the financial cost on struggling employees and the national economy, became ever more apparent to the administration and power brokers in Washington, and as the president appeared outfoxed by his political nemesis Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House.

But while the president climbed down in agreeing to reopen the government without first getting $5.7 billion in border wall funds, he still threatened to renew hostilities with a new shutdown, or a state of emergency, if there is no breakthrough on his pet project in the next three weeks.