smartcybers786@gmail.com 
US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks during an event with fellow House Democratic members on the steps of the US Capitol, as members of the US House of Representatives returned to Washington after a 53-day break, for a vote that could bring the longest U.S. government shutdown in history to a close, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, November 12, 2025. — Reuters
#Congress #clears #deal #longest #govt #shutdown
A deal to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history cleared Congress on Wednesday, as the House voted to restore food aid, pay millions of federal workers and get the crippled air traffic system back on track.
The Republican-controlled chamber approved the package by a vote of 222-209, with President Donald Trump’s support largely holding his party together in the face of stiff opposition from House Democrats, who are angry that a long impasse by their Senate colleagues has failed to secure a deal to extend federal health insurance subsidies.
The bill has already passed the Senate, and the White House said Trump would sign it into law later Wednesday, ending the shutdown.
That would extend the fund through Jan. 30, and leave the federal government on track to continue adding about $1.8 trillion a year.
“I feel like I just won a Seinfeld episode. We’re 40 days in now and I still don’t know what the plot line is,” Arizona Republican Representative David Schweickert said, likening it to a popular 1990s US sitcom dealing with congressional corruption.
“I really thought it would be like 48 hours: people would piece together, they’d have a moment to rant, and we’d get back to work.”
He added: “What happened now when there is a policy of anger?”
No health care promises
The vote came eight days after Democrats won several high-profile elections that many in the party thought bolstered their odds of winning an extension of health insurance subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year. While the deal sets up a December vote on those subsidies in the Senate, Speaker Mike Johnson has made no such promise in the House.
Democratic Representative Mickey Sherrill, who was chosen last week as New Jersey’s next governor, spoke out against the funding bill in his final speech on the US House floor before resigning from Congress next week, and encouraged his colleagues to stand with the Trump administration.
“To my colleagues: Don’t let this body become a ceremonial red stamp from an administration that takes food away from children and takes away health care,” Sherrill said.
“For the country: stand strong. As we say in the Navy, don’t abandon ship.”
No clear winner from the shutdown
Despite the recovery, neither party seems to have won a clear victory. A Reuters/IPSOS poll released on Wednesday found that 50% of Americans blamed Republicans for the shutdown, while 47% blamed Democrats.
The vote was the first day the Republican-controlled House has been in session since mid-September, a long recess aimed at putting pressure on Democrats. The chamber’s return also set the clock ticking on a vote to release all unredacted records related to late-convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which Johnson and Trump have so far resisted.
Johnson on Wednesday swore in Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who won a September special election to fill the Arizona seat of her late father, Raul Grijalva. Hours after House Democrats released a new batch of Epstein documents, they provided the final signatures needed for a petition to force a House vote on the matter.
That means that, after fulfilling its constitutionally mandated duties of funding the government, the House could once again be consumed by an investigation into a former friend of Trump, whose life and death in prison in 2019 have sparked countless conspiracy theories.
The funding package would allow eight Republican senators to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for alleged privacy violations stemming from a federal investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. capital by Trump supporters.
That makes it illegal to obtain a senator’s phone data without disclosure in most cases and allows those whose records can be obtained to pay the Justice Department $500,000 in damages, along with attorneys’ fees and other costs.
