Government shutdown day 2 – live: Trump claims closure will save billions of dollars with ‘dead wood’ cleared out

Members of congress will continue receiving their paychecks during the US government shutdown – while hundreds of thousands of other federal workers will remain unpaid until the service is resumed as normal.

Thousands of essential workers, such as TSA agents and air traffic controllers, will remain on job during the shutdown.

But many essential employees won’t receive payment until funding resumes, meaning they could miss multiple paychecks, depending on how long the shutdown lasts.

But members of Congress will be paid throughout, while postal workers will also be paid – as the U.S. Postal Service is a self-funded agency.

All furloughed federal workers will be provided retroactive pay once operations resume, thanks to a 2019 law.

In a late night Truth Social post, Donald Trump has called on the Democrats to “clear out dead wood” after the US government shutdown.

The Trump administration have said suggested they might use the government shutdown to lay off a number of federal workers, in a move the president says would “get rid of” `Democratic policies.

Here’s what President Trump wrote:

The Antideficiency Act includes explicit exceptions for “emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.”

Hence, when the government “shuts down,” federal law enforcers will keep up their investigations and border agents will stay on patrol. The CIA and NSA will continue their snooping.

The National Weather Service will keep its eyes on the skies, albeit with a skeleton crew, as will air traffic controllers. The TSA will also continue to scan your body parts and require you to remove your shoes.

Programs that are self-funding or funded by means other than annual appropriations usually continue. That includes the USPS, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Benjamin Civiletti’s memo back in the 1980s also ruled that the president’s constitutional duties were unaffected by shutdowns. That argument has since been extended to court employees, members of Congress, and aides who support them in their essential activities. So those will keep running.

Fortunately for Congress and the President, their salaries will continue to be paid, as mandated by the Constitution.

The U.S. government has once again been sent into shutdown.

For the 21st time in the past 50 years, Congress has not been able to reach an agreement on funding for federal agencies, despite negotiations stretching late into Tuesday night.

The U.S. Constitution hands Congress the sole power of the purse. “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury,” reads Article I, “but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”

Under the Antideficiency Act, passed in 1884 and amended in 1950, the government is also prohibited from incurring expenses that Congress hasn’t already appropriated. The idea was to prevent federal departments from forcing Congress’s hand by deliberately blowing their entire budget early in the year, which used to happen frequently.

For a while, the U.S. government operated on the assumption that Congress couldn’t possibly have meant this to cover routine annual budgets. However, in 1980 and 1981, Jimmy Carter’s attorney general, Benjamin Civiletti, ruled that, in fact, it did — meaning all non-emergency work had to stop as soon as the funds ran out.

How long this lasts is anyone’s guess: the shortest shutdowns last only a day or a few hours. The longest was in 2018-19, during Trump’s first term, which lasted 34 days and wiped an estimated $6 billion or more off the country’s economy.

Read more from Io Dodds about how the shutdown will impact most Americans:

Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, reportedly told House Republicans on Wednesday that the Trump administration would begin firing federal workers in “one to two” days.

Less than a day into the government shutdown, Vought signaled that the administration was keeping its promise to use this time to get rid of more federal employees – a continuation of their goal to slash the federal workforce that began earlier this year.

Vought, an architect of Project 2025, did not specify where the firings would begin, such as a specific department or specific type of employee. Earlier this year, probationary employees, or those who are newly in their position, were among the first to be fired.

Read more from Ariana Baio:

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, reacted to the Trump administration pausing infrastructure projects in New York in an MSNBC interview Wednesday night.

Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, announced Wednesday morning, roughly $18 billion in New York City’s Hudson Tunnel Project and Second Ave Subway have been put on hold because of “DEI principles.”

The Pentagon plans to introduce mandatory non-disclosure agreements and lie detector tests for thousands of people, a new report reveals.

Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon plans to require that some staff sign NDAs that prohibit the “release of non-public information without approval or through a defined process” and subsequently take random polygraph tests, according to a draft memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg reviewed by The Washington Post.

“The protection of sensitive information is paramount to our national security, the safety of our warfighters, and the preservation of critical decision space for our senior leaders,” Feinberg wrote.

The new orders would apply to an estimated 5,000 people working in the Office of the Defense Secretary and the Joint Staff, including military service members, civilian employees and contractors, the Post reports.

Read more from Katie Hawkinson:

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has left the door open on talks about the healthcare negotiations that Democrats want amid the government shutdown.

Thune said he’s willing to talk about how a negotiation on Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year might work once the government is open if a “critical mass” of Democrats back the GOP’s funding bill.

“I keep telling them: When they have eight or 10 — preferably 10, or more — when they have a critical mass, let me know if there’s a conversation they want to have,” Thune told Politico.

Democrats have demanded the reversal of cuts to Medicaid, set out earlier this year in Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful, Bill,” and an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies to support a spending plan.

Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, called federal messaging blaming Democrats for the government shutdown “illegal” in a CNN interview Wednesday night.