Around 750,000 federally employed individuals in the USA are locked out of their workplaces after politicians in Washington failed to reach an agreement on a temporary budget.
A new proposal in the Senate to end the shutdown was voted down on Wednesday, after the Democrats opposed the Republican proposal.
The dispute concerns an extension of tax benefits for recipients of the healthcare reform Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as "Obamacare". The Democrats are demanding that the financing should continue after the turn of the year, which the Republicans say no to.
"Absolute lie"
Instead, there are repeated claims from their side that the Democrats want to give migrants without residence permits the same rights as American citizens.
They want to open up the government again, but only if they get several billion dollars to provide health care to illegal immigrants. A ridiculous proposal, says JD Vance at a press conference at the White House according to the news agency AFP.
Similar words have come from several leading Republicans, but the claim is completely rejected by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate.
It's a total, absolute damned lie, he says to NBC News and notes that it would have been against the law.
Instead, it is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, who is behind the shutdown, says Schumer.
Johnson is the really ugly fish in this. He made sure that Congress was not even assembled when the shutdown was to begin. How could we then negotiate?
Stopped New York projects
President Donald Trump believes that the whole thing can have positive effects. On Tuesday, he said according to the news agency AFP that "good things can come out of shutdowns".
We can get rid of a lot of things we didn't want, Democratic things, he said.
On Wednesday, it was announced that one of the first projects to be scrapped is an investment of $18 billion in infrastructure in New York - the state that Chuck Schumer represents.
We will fight everywhere, on TV channels like this, on social media, in demonstrations, via email, in all ways, says Schumer to NBC.
We will emphasize that it is the Republicans who are behind this.
