Federal offices reopen as the government shutdown ends

The most advanced U.S. aircraft carrier is expected to reach the waters off Venezuela in days, a flex of American military power not seen in Latin America for generations.

Experts disagree on the possibility that American warplanes will catapult off the USS Gerald R. Ford to bomb targets inside Venezuela and further pressure authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro to step down. Still, whether it may serve that purpose or only patrol the Caribbean as the U.S. blows up boats it accuses of trafficking drugs, the presence of the 100,000-ton warship alone is sending a message.

“This is the anchor of what it means to have U.S. military power once again in Latin America,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the Andes region. “And it has raised a lot of anxieties in Venezuela but also throughout the region. I think everyone is watching this with sort of bated breath to see just how willing the U.S. is to really use military force.”

▶ Read more about the aircraft carrier

Trump in a tele-rally on Thursday touted Republican Matt Van Epps in the Dec. 2 special election for the 7th Congressional District seat in Tennessee that opened after former Republican Rep. Mark Green resigned.

On the call, Trump said Van Epps is a “true America First patriot who has dedicated his entire life to serving our country.” He called Epps’ opponent, Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn, a “left-wing lunatic.”

Ahead of the call, Behn sent out a campaign email saying: “If the President of the United States is getting involved in this race, you know that Republicans are scared.”

Early voting is underway in the district that spans 14 counties. Along with parts of left-leaning Nashville, it includes rural areas, wealthy suburbs and part of a military installment, Fort Campbell.

Democrats have their hopes up after the party’s performance in other states during special elections and contests last week in New Jersey and Virginia.

The Democratic leader of the state Senate said Thursday he’s worried about whether the Trump administration will abide by the agreement to end the shutdown and what might happen next.

“We’re not operating within the bounds of conventionality here,” said Senate President Martin J. Looney, calling the temporary account, funded with state budget reserves, a “cushion against whatever may come.

Democrats, who control the state’s General Assembly, suggested the account could be tapped to help cover expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits, delayed heating assistance, impacts from Trump’s huge tax-and-spending plan or even a possible second government shutdown.

“This is a reasonable and prudent response to the crisis that we are in right now,” Looney said.

Vital federal funding is on the way for Head Start centers that were thrown into crisis by the government shutdown, but it could take time before some children who rely on the federal program can return to preschool.

Some centers that missed out on federal payments had to furlough staff. Others had to shut down entirely, destabilizing thousands of needy families around the country.

Head Start serves children from low-income families from birth to age 5. The program offers a variety of services to families, such as early learning, support for children with disabilities, free meals and health screenings.

Even when agencies receive long-delayed grant money, centers will have to rehire staff members and bring back families — both of which may have grown wary of instability in the program, which relies almost entirely on federal grants.

“The damage has been done in a lot of ways,” Executive Director Michelle Haimowitz of Massachusetts Head Start Association said. “We know that it’s going to take some time to fill back up.”

▶ Read more about the shutdown’s impact on Head Start programs

Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, predicted it could take until mid-December or later before states receive their annual funds from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

The $4.1 billion program helps millions of low-income households pay to heat and cool their homes.

The funds are typically released in early November, but this year there’s a lot of uncertainty, Wolfe said, especially considering federal staff who ran the program were laid off in April.

“They fired all the staff. So the question is: What does that mean in practice?” Wolfe said. “Nobody knows.”

Some states have told recipients in recent weeks that heating assistance was being delayed because of the government shutdown. On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services said it’s unable to provide a timeline for reopening the program because the federal funding hasn’t been disbursed.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced in a social media post that he is formally naming the anti-drug mission in the Caribbean “Operation Southern Spear.”

The move emphasizes the growing significance and permanence of the military’s presence in the region, which started over the summer as part of what the Trump administration is calling its war against narcoterrorism.

At least 19 known U.S. strikes on vessels in South American waters have killed 76 people.

The newly named operation will encompass the nearly one dozen U.S. Navy ships as well as around 12,000 sailors and Marines that will be in the area after the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.

“This mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people,” Hegseth said in his post.

A union for department workers says employees who were laid off in mass government firings last month and then reinstated were unable to access their work accounts Thursday, the first day back after the government reopened.

The American Federation of Government Employees Local 252 says workers who were furloughed during the government shutdown also did not receive official notices to return to work.

“This disorganization and chaos only further demoralizes the hardworking public servants at the Education Department that have faced threats, harassment, illegal firings — and 44 days without paychecks,” said Rachel Gittleman, president of the union.

The department says it has brought back all the workers affected by the shutdown.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem awarded the checks to two dozen TSA agents during a news conference at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, saying the payments recognize employees who went “above and beyond” while working without pay during the shutdown.

Noem said the department will continue awarding bonuses to TSA employees who showed “exceptional” performance, noting that eligibility isn’t limited to those with perfect attendance. She added that some officers went above and beyond by giving coworkers rides to work.

One of the recipients at the news conference was an officer Noem praised for reporting to all of his shifts and volunteering for extra ones to help cover staffing shortages.

The BBC apologized Thursday to Trump over a misleading edit of his speech on Jan. 6, 2021 but said it strongly disagreed that there was a basis for a defamation lawsuit.

The BBC said Chair Samir Shah sent a personal letter to the White House saying that he and the corporation were sorry for the edit of the speech Trump gave before some of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. It said there are no plans to rebroadcast the documentary that spliced together parts of his speech that came almost an hour apart.

Trump’s lawyer sent the BBC a letter demanding an apology and threatened to file a $1 billion lawsuit.

The president has agreed to pardon Joe Lewis, 88, the former Premier League soccer club owner who was convicted last year of insider trading and securities fraud, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the yet to be formally announced decision.

Lewis wasn’t sentenced to any time in prison after pleading guilty to federal insider trading and conspiracy charges in New York but did pay a $5 million fine.

When he entered his plea, Lewis admitted that he agreed in 2019 to share secrets about publicly traded companies with several individuals.

His company, Broad Bay Limited, and Lewis, a British citizen and resident of the Bahamas, agreed to pay $50 million in financial penalties.

The official noted that Lewis admitted he made a mistake, did not fight extradition in the case, and paid a hefty fine.

Lewis transferred his majority ownership interest in Tottenham to his family via a trust in 2022, the year before he was charged.

Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously stated Lewis did not pay a $5 million fine. It has been updated to reflect that he did pay it.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, of Wisconsin, said Thursday that she remained optimistic a deal could be reached with Republicans who share her concerns about rising health care costs. Baldwin said some Republicans are hearing from voters “about the pain that the expiration of these tax credits will cause.”

“I’ve talked to folks who would like to provide some relief for the people who sent them to Washington to represent them,” she said at a news conference.

Baldwin said some deals being floated by Republicans that would approve a multi-year extension of the tax credit, but perhaps with income limits and other changes, are “workable and sensible.”

“We’re going to see if they’re serious and if there’s enough of them to get to the 60 vote threshold,” Baldwin said. “And we’ve got to do that quickly.”

The president signed an action championed by his wife, first lady Melania Trump.

She said it is meant to provide “individuals from the foster care community with technology-based scholarships to attend colleges and universities throughout America” and to equip “each scholarship recipient with a fundamental foundation of knowledge that will endure throughout their lifetimes.”

The initiative creates public- and private-sector partnerships that give young people who have experienced foster care “more pathways to success.” It also includes a push to provide “decommissioned federal laptops to youth in foster care,” meant to help them “bridge the digital divide and increase access to online resources.”

The president was addressing an East Room event when he paused to indicate the huge, active construction site nearby where the ballroom is being built – and where the East Wing was demolished to make room.

“In about two years from now, we’ll use a much bigger room,” Trump said, adding that the new ballroom’s entrance will be “right here” and suggested that the project might require removing more of the existing White House.

“It looks pretty nice right now. It’ll look a lot better in a little while,” Trump said. He also said the ballroom has “really become very popular” – an assertion the president has frequently repeated that is not backed up by recent polling.

The Trump administration is designating four European left-wing groups as terrorist organizations, following through on the president’s vow to crack down on leftists after the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The networks all appear to be based in Europe, with no operations in the United States. They are an Italian anarchist front that sent explosive packages to the then-president of the European commission in 2003, two Greek networks believed to have planted bombs outside riot police and labor department buildings in Athens, and an anti-fascist group whose members were prosecuted by German authorities for a hammer attack against neo-Nazis in Dresden.

The designation allows the administration to target any financial support the networks may have in the U.S. Most anarchist and antifa, or anti-fascist, groups are technically not organizations but rather loose affiliations of individuals who join up for specific actions.

First lady Melania Trump kicked off an East Room event on Thursday to promote an executive order meant to help current and former foster youth.

Her husband, the president, is to sign the executive order shortly. Melania Trump said it was “truly inspiring to see everyone gather here together, united in support of this remarkable initiative.”

Two of the Smithsonian’s museums along the National Mall in Washington, D.C. – American History and Air and Space – were set to reopen Friday after people had been turned away from the free attractions for more than four weeks during the government shutdown.

The organization says on its website that the rest of the Smithsonian’s sites across the Washington area and New York will reopen by Monday, on a rolling basis.

All Smithsonian buildings and the National Zoo were first closed Oct. 12.

Most of the Smithsonian museums are typically open every day of the year with just one exception for Christmas. The 20 sites together hosted more than 16 million people last year, and the organization has more than 3,600 federal employees.

While the zoo has been closed, the popular livestream feeds capturing the famous giant pandas playing, rolling in the grass or eating were offline. The normally active social media pages sharing animal updates and colorful photographs were silent. Still, even during a shutdown, the animals continue to be fed and get care, unpublicized.

The Education Department said Thursday it had brought back all its staff members who were furloughed during the government shutdown or dismissed in the Trump administration’s round of mass firings in October.

The administration laid off 466 Education Department staffers in the cross-government firings meant to pressure Democratic lawmakers over the shutdown. Those layoffs had been halted by a federal judge.

The department furloughed 2,117 employees at the start of the shutdown, but some were brought back for essential work.

New grants were put on hold during the shutdown. Most school districts received the bulk of their federal funding over the summer, but some grants that schools were counting on for this year have been delayed.

Recipients of Impact Aid, which boosts the budgets of districts with large amounts of federal land that can’t be taxed for local schools, were waiting to learn when their payments would be processed.

The Justice Department on Thursday sued to block new congressional district boundaries approved by California voters last week, joining a court battle that could help determine which party wins control of the U.S. House in 2026.

The complaint filed in California federal court targets the new congressional map pushed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in response to a similar Republican-led effort in Texas backed by President Donald Trump. It sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Republican administration and the Democratic governor, who’s seen as a likely 2028 presidential contender.

“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an emailed statement. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”

California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50, a constitutional amendment changing the congressional boundaries to give Democrats a shot at winning five seats now held by Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.

The Trump administration is working to push out pay for federal workers that had been on hold because of the government shutdown by the middle of next week.

The money will go out in four separate tranches, depending on the agency, according to a senior administration official. The varied dates are because agencies are on different pay schedules and payroll providers.

The White House had pushed federal agencies to expedite backpay for employees, said the official, granted anonymity to discuss the administration’s plans.

The schedule is as follows:
--Nov. 15: Employees at the General Services Administration and Office of Personnel Management will be paid a “supercheck” that covers the period of Oct. 1 to Nov. 1
--Nov. 16: Employees at the Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs will be paid for the period from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1, as well as civilian employees at the Pentagon.
--Nov. 17: Employees at the Departments of Education, State, Interior, and Transportation, as well as those at the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, National Science Foundation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Social Security Administration will be paid for the period from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1.
--Nov. 19: Employees from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, Treasury and the Small Business Administration will be paid for the period from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15.

On Wednesday evening the House voted on a budget bill that ended the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

Voto Latino leaders said the House “chose to ignore the health crisis millions of Americans are facing” when it voted on a budget bill that they claim will jeopardize the health of Latino communities by failing to fund subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act that make health coverage more accessible.

“Latinos are already left behind when it comes to accessing health care coverage,” Voto Latino leaders said in a statement. “With lawmakers choosing to turn a blind eye to this reality, these disparities will only grow, and families will be pushed to make difficult decisions when it comes to seeking medical attention.”

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman had what his office says was a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up” that caused him to feel light-headed and fall during an early morning walk Thursday. He was doing well and was hospitalized in Pittsburgh, his office said. He sustained minor injuries to his face and was under “routine observation” at the hospital, the office said.

Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in 2022, has disclosed that he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and a heart condition called atrial fibrillation.

Cardiomyopathy can impede blood flow and potentially cause heartbeats so irregular they can be fatal. Atrial fibrillation can cause blood to pool inside a pocket of the heart, allowing clots to form. Clots then can break off, get stuck and cut off blood, causing a stroke.

Funding the government is the most basic responsibility of Congress, yet it’s one that lawmakers increasingly struggle to meet.

The process for approving a budget and appropriating funding is broken, with Congress rarely able to pass the 12 annual appropriations bills by the end of a fiscal year. It last happened in 1997, according to the Pew Research Center, and has happened only four times in the modern era.

Staring down a funding deadline every Sept. 30, Congress has increasingly been forced to rely on temporary continuing resolutions — effectively keeping government funding at the same levels — while they work to finish full-year funding legislation. That’s exactly what happened this week, as Congress passed three appropriations bills that last through Sept. 30, 2026. The rest of the government is funded at current levels through Jan. 30, creating a new deadline early next year to avoid a partial shutdown.

Several factors contribute to the broken process. Partisanship and polarization have made passing appropriations bills difficult. Congressional workweeks are shorter due to lawmakers mostly living outside of Washington. And the parties have deep disagreements about the size and scope of government programs that leaders often struggle to resolve.

Then there’s the tactical element. In recent decades, both parties have grown comfortable withholding support for funding legislation and forcing a shutdown to try and extract concessions from the other side.

History suggests forcing a shutdown almost never works. But there seem to be few political repercussions for it, as voters move on quickly to other issues.

The federal government is back but it is unclear when and if Washington, D.C., will be reimbursed for the payments it made to programs for its more needy residents while the government was shut down.

Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered that the thousands of recipients of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the WIC program receive their benefits during the shutdown. The city ultimately covered $18.5 million of the SNAP expense after the federal government made a partial payment of $8 million at the direction of a federal district judge.

Overall, it will be months before city officials know the full impact of the shutdown in terms of economics although at least budgetarily it will be a better outcome than 2024 when the city was unable to spend more than $1 billion of its own tax revenue on its budget because of action by the House.

This year the city retained its spending authority on the budget the council passed.

With the longest U.S. government shutdown over, state officials said Thursday they’re working quickly to get full SNAP food benefits to millions of people, though it still could take up to a week for some to receive their delayed aid.

A back-and-forth series of court rulings and shifting policies from Trump’s administration has led to a patchwork distribution of November benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. While some states already had issued full SNAP benefits, about two-thirds of states had issued only partial benefits or none at all before the government shutdown ended late Wednesday, according to an Associated Press tally.

The federal food program serves about 42 million people, about 1 in 8 Americans, in lower-income households. They receive an average of around $190 monthly per person, though that doesn’t necessarily cover the full cost of groceries for a regular month.

▶ Read more about the shutdown and SNAP food benefits

Lawyers for two of President Trump’s foes who’ve been charged by the Justice Department asked a judge Thursday to dismiss the cases against them, saying the prosecutor who secured the indictments was illegally installed in the role.

U.S. District Cameron McGowan Currie didn’t immediately rule from the bench but said she expects to decide by Thanksgiving on challenges to Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The requests are part of multiprong efforts by former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James to get their cases dismissed before trial.

At issue during Thursday’s arguments are the complex constitutional and statutory rules governing the appointment of the nation’s U.S. attorneys, who function as top federal prosecutors in Justice Department offices across the country.

▶ Read more about the Justice Department cases

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the first female U.S. ambassador to Greece and a close ally of President Trump, visited the head of Greece’s Orthodox Church on Thursday, telling him he was the first person she called after being nominated to her new post.

Guilfoyle’s visit to Archbishop Ieronymos II came just over a week after she took up her new position in Athens. A former California prosecutor and Fox News host who was once engaged to Donald Trump Jr, the 56-year-old presented her diplomatic credentials to Greece’s president on Nov. 4.

“It’s wonderful to be here and I’m just very grateful that President Trump has blessed me with the opportunity to serve the United States here in Greece, for the relationship that we have and for that growing and blossoming going forward,” Guilfoyle said during the meeting with the 87-year-old archbishop.

Ieronymos extended his thanks “to the president for the opportunity that he gave us today. May God bless these relations.”

▶ Read more about the ambassador’s visit in Greece

Medicare telehealth waivers that allow millions of older adults to get virtual health care without leaving home were restored through Jan. 30 in the government funding bill, after lapsing during the 43-day shutdown.

Patients and caregivers reacted with relief — but called for more action.

“We are pleased that Congress has worked together to temporarily restore the telehealth funding, but we hope they can make this a permanent part of the healthcare system,” said Martha Swick, a full-time caregiver for her husband Bill, who uses the program for speech therapy to treat his degenerative brain disease.

The deal also restored funding through Jan. 30 for a Medicare program that allows some patients to receive hospital-level acute in-person care at home.

Federal workers deemed essential, including Capitol Police officers, TSA workers and air traffic controllers, had been forced to work without pay during the shutdown.

But Kevin Hassett, chair of the National Economic Council at the White House, said their checks should soon be on the way.

“I think that the payments will come probably come in the next week,” Hassett said. “Maybe even before.”

It’s unclear whether the parties will find any common ground on health care before the December vote in the Senate. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he will not commit to bringing it up in his chamber.

Some Republicans have said they’re open to extending the COVID-19 pandemic-era tax credits as premiums will soar for millions of people, but they also want new limits on who can receive the subsidies. Some argue the tax dollars for the plans should be routed through individuals rather than go directly to insurance companies.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Monday that she was supportive of extending the tax credits with changes, such as new income caps. Some Democrats have signaled they could be open to that idea.

The frustration and pressures generated by the shutdown was reflected when lawmakers debated the spending measure on the House floor.

Republicans said Democrats sought to use the pain generated by the shutdown to prevail in a policy dispute.

“They knew it would cause pain and they did it anyway,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

Democrats said Republicans raced to pass tax breaks earlier this year that they say mostly will benefit the wealthy. But the bill before the House on Wednesday “leaves families twisting in the wind with zero guarantee there will ever, ever be a vote to extend tax credits to help everyday people pay for their health care,” said Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts.

The shutdown created a cascade of troubles for many Americans. Throughout the shutdown, at least 670,000 federal employees were furloughed, while about 730,000 others were working without pay, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The plight of the federal workers was among several pressure points, along with flight disruptions and cuts to food aid, that in the end ratcheted up the pressure on lawmakers to come to an agreement to fund the government.

Throughout the six-week shutdown, officials in President Trump’s administration repeatedly used the federal workers as leverage to try to push Democrats to relent on their health care demands. The Republican president signaled that workers going unpaid wouldn’t get back pay. He threatened and then followed through on firings in a federal workforce already reeling from layoffs earlier this year. A court then blocked the shutdown firings, adding to the uncertainty.

Jessica Sweet spent the federal government shutdown cutting back. To make ends meet, the Social Security claims specialist drank only one coffee a day, skipped meals, cut down on groceries and deferred paying some household bills. She racked up spending on her credit card buying gas to get to work.

With the longest shutdown ever coming to a close, Sweet and hundreds of thousands of other federal workers who missed paychecks will soon get some relief. But many are left feeling that their livelihoods served as political pawns in the fight between recalcitrant lawmakers in Washington and are asking themselves whether the battle was worth their sacrifices.

“It’s very frustrating to go through something like this,” said Sweet, who is a union steward of AFGE Local 3343 in New York. “It shakes the foundation of trust that we all place in our agencies and in the federal government to do the right thing.”

▶ Read more about how federal workers felt about the shutdown

The Office of Personnel Management posted on X that federal workers are expected to be back to the grind on Thursday, with Trump signing a measure ending the record 43-day shutdown.

“Federal agencies in the Washington, DC area are open. Employees are expected to begin the workday on time. Normal operating procedures are in effect,” the OPM posting says.

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• FAA says flight cuts will stay at 6% because more air traffic controllers are coming to work
  
• Tribes that restored buffalo are killing some to feed people because of the shutdown
  
• The timeline for SNAP benefits remains uncertain, even as the government is set to reopen
• Takeaways from the newly released Epstein documents
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• 50-year mortgages? NFL kickoff rules? Here’s where some of Trump’s latest jaw-dropping musings stand
  
• These are the 37 donors helping pay for Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom
  
• Judge to hear arguments challenging appointment of prosecutor who charged James Comey, Letitia James
  
• Transgender members of the Air Force sue over losing retirement pay
  
• US bishops officially ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
  
• Atlanta Fed president Bostic to retire in February, opening seat on key committee
  
• Trump’s decision that the US boycott the G20 summit is ‘their loss,’ South African president says
• Chinese scientist pleads guilty in US smuggling case and will be quickly deported