White House declares imminent government shutdown after Senate fails to pass funding bill. - Fox News

White House declares imminent government shutdown after Senate fails to pass funding bill. - Fox News

The White House has declared an imminent government shutdown after the Senate failed to pass a funding bill before the midnight deadline. The deadline, which has now passed, marks the end of the fiscal year, and the lack of funding extension will result in a shutdown that will halt non-essential activities from Wednesday .

The Senate's failure to pass the funding extension, with both Republican and Democratic proposals failing to bridge the gap, has left the government on the brink of its first shutdown in six years. The clock was ticking, and despite frenetic negotiations, there was no breakthrough between Democrats and Republicans to fund the government beyond Tuesday .

The 55-to-45 vote on Tuesday (September 30, 2025) in the US Senate all but ensured that US government agencies will have to discontinue all but "essential" activities, such as law enforcement, starting on Wednesday (October 1, 2025). Republicans and Democrats have shown no sign that they can bridge their divides over healthcare spending and stopgap measures .

House Republicans have passed a stopgap measure to extend funding until late November, pending negotiations on a longer-term spending plan. However, Democrats want to see hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare spending for low-income households restored, which the Trump administration is likely to eliminate .

The gridlocked Congress regularly runs into deadlines to agree on spending plans, and while the negotiations are typically fraught, they do not result in shutdowns. The longest shutdown in history—and the latest—came during Trump's first term, when government functions were halted for 35 days beginning in December 2018 .