Federal Shutdown Becomes Longest in U.S. History

The federal government shutdown has entered its 36th day, becoming the longest shutdown in U.S. history. On Tuesday, the Senate rejected a House-passed funding bill for the 14th time, as Democrats demand an extension to health insurance premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that allowing the subsidies to expire would more than double the average enrollee’s out-of-pocket premium payments, with some people seeing even larger increases of over 500%.

On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned the U.S. could be forced to close vast swaths of U.S. airspace due to severe shortages of air traffic controllers, about 11,000 of whom have gone without pay throughout the shutdown. Duffy cautioned of “mass chaos” at airports if the shutdown continues for another week. Mere hours after Duffy’s comments, a UPS freight plane crashed at a Louisville, Kentucky, airport, killing at least nine people and leaving 11 others injured.

Meanwhile, President Trump on Tuesday appeared to defy federal court orders in a social media post in which he proclaimed that SNAP food assistance benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” That’s despite orders from two separate federal judges mandating that the administration keep funding SNAP, which helps some 42 million people purchase groceries each month. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later walked back Trump’s threat, saying the administration is following court orders to fund SNAP using a contingency fund. The White House says it’s only partially funding SNAP. On Tuesday, lawyers for cities and nonprofits returned to court seeking an order forcing the Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits rapidly and in full. This is Daletia Chung, a SNAP recipient in Maryland who predicted any further delays could lead to civil unrest.

Daletia Chung: “They’re asking for trouble, because people got children to feed, you know, and people know, people will go off on that. Now, I don’t know if anybody is trying to declare martial law under stuff like that, but you can set off a lot of huge problems. People have to eat.”