In the slow-motion conclusion of the longest administrative shutdown in U.S. history, this Wednesday it was the House of Representatives’ turn to approve it. Its 435 members met in plenary for the first time since September 19 to vote on the proposal to reopen government funding, approved in the Senate on Monday after the defection of seven Democrats and one independent to the Republican ranks the previous day.
There were 222 of them if it is (216 Republicans and six Democrats) by 209 it isn’t (202 Democrats and 7 Republicans). The only thing left is Donald Trump’s signature, expected during a ceremony announced for 9.45pm. (Washington time) – in order to finish the stopwhich is what Washington calls the partial freeze of public money, a recurring threat that materializes when both sides disagree on budget issues. This time it lasted 43 days and broke all records due to lack of agreement on Capitol Hill.
With the presidential signature, normality will gradually return to dozens of closed federal agencies, closed or unattended monuments and national parks, as well as major US airports, which have recorded thousands of canceled flights and tens of thousands of delays due to the effects of the crisis. stop in air traffic controllers and security workers, officials considered “essential” and, therefore, forced to work without pay. The rest, around 750 thousand, have been suspended from work and wages in recent weeks.
It is not clear when all these problems can be considered resolved; above all, that of airports. Nor how much the 42 million food stamp recipients (SNAP) will ultimately be affected. The Trump administration tried in every way not to pay the corresponding sums in November, and last Friday the Supreme Court intervened to agree with the White House in this effort.
The agreement that reopens the tap of public money provides for the provision of funding to the Federal Administration until the end of January, when a new crisis could occur; voucher funding during fiscal year 2026 and a pledge that the Trump administration will reinstate officials fired during those 43 days. It will also retroactively pay unearned wages to those who kept their jobs and will not lay off any more federal employees over the next two and a half months.
Almost more important is what the pact does not provide. Especially in the case of the Democrats, who once again find themselves faced with an internal crisis just a week after the sensational electoral victories in New York, Virginia and New Jersey which had allowed them to overcome the previous one. Republicans are not committing to extending some of the health coverage under Obamacare (a law named after the president who inspired it). These are subsidies approved during the pandemic, and their foreseeable end will cause the price of health insurance for 24 million Americans to skyrocket. They agreed to vote on these subsidies soon, although it doesn’t appear that this initiative will gain traction on Capitol Hill.
The President of the Chamber, the Hon speaker Mike Johnson kept it on hold for 54 days to try, with that unprecedented gesture, to blame the Democrats for the effects of the administration’s shutdown. The last thing the deputies did before receiving indefinite holidays was to approve the budget plan which then did not obtain the necessary support in the Senate, a qualified majority of 60 votes which arrived only on Sunday, after 14 rejected votes. The Democrats, then, did not want to support the plan that would have kept the Administration open, which has been closed since October 1st.
During this time, Johnson also refused – all indications are due to a political calculation based on his unswerving loyalty to Trump – to allow Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva (Ariz.) to be sworn in after winning a special election on September 22 to succeed her father, Raúl Grijalva, who died in January.
Grijalva’s vote
He finally made it this Wednesday afternoon. The first thing he did was sign a petition with his people to force a vote in Congress. If it went ahead, which is also unlikely, it would force the White House to publish all the files that the Department of Justice has linked to the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire pedophile who died in 2019 in a maximum security cell awaiting trial. Johnson has set the vote for next week.
The Democrats and a handful of Republicans who allow them to add the necessary 218 votes (these are Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace) want to know the contents of those documents that the Department of Justice had been promising for months would see the light until last July, when Attorney General Pam Bondi released a statement, signed by the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, in which they changed their mind and announced that they would no longer distribute them.
This Wednesday, new emails from Epstein, released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, were revealed in which he repeatedly names Trump. The two were friends for 15 years, until their separation in 2004. That is, before the first trial against the financier and even before the real estate tycoon and reality TV star became president for the first time.
The White House’s sudden refusal to shed light on those files has fueled suspicions that they contain something Trump doesn’t want anyone to know. At the beginning of the summer, these maneuvers caused the most serious crisis among his followers in the MAGA world (an acronym for the Trumpist slogan Make America Great Again). Conspiracy theorists have suspected for years that these files contain a list of rich and famous people involved in Epstein’s crimes and are not made public to protect them. Also that the financier did not commit suicide, as the forensic report claims.
Until the Trump administration releases all that material, Congress will have obtained waves of documents from Epstein’s family since August. The emails released this Tuesday correspond to the latest shipment, from last week. Bondi has the complete dossier, as he stated, on the table in his office.
Trump claims he knew nothing of his old friend’s crimes. This Wednesday dismissed the new revelations as another manifestation of a “Democracy hoax” to divert attention from the end of the administration’s shutdown which, after all, came after a slow-motion ending.
