The Government Shut Downs After Failed Vote

A procedural vote to proceed with a spending bill failed late Friday night.

Ting Shen/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The federal government shut down at midnight Saturday, following the failure of last-minute budget negotiations to create a stopgap solution to protect the nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers. The nail-biting showdown coincides with the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration—a milestone Democrats are portraying as a glaring failure of leadership, given that Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress but were unable to muster the votes to pass the bill.

A critical procedural vote needed for the motion to proceed failed around 10:30 p.m. All but five Democrats appeared to vote “No”, joined by four Republicans: Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah), and Lindsay Graham (S.C.).

Republicans, though, are doing their best to sidestep blame, claiming Democrats are holding government hostage to their demands. Earlier on Friday, OMB director Mick Mulvaney said the White House was preparing for “what we’re calling the ‘Schumer shutdown.’”

As Mother Jones’ Kara Voght reports, only about half of federal agencies have publicly shared up-to-date contingency plans in the event of a shutdown. So many people could be screwed by the shutdown—including the president himself, whose social life took a hit Friday night when, with an agreement unsecured, he canceled his trip to Mar-a-Lago. It remains to be seen if he’ll resume his plans to celebrate one year in office Saturday with a $100,000-per-couple fundraiser at the resort.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate