No stranger to shutdowns: A look into Trump's history with government closures

WASHINGTON – A federal shutdown scheduled to begin at midnight Friday, just days before Christmas and Hanukkah, would mark the fourth time during Donald Trump’s reign as leader of the GOP that a funding dispute closed the government’s doors.

The Republican president-elect’s decision to torpedo a short-term funding bill that would have kept the government running beyond his inauguration and through March has instead put it on the brink of another shutdown and triggered a sense of déjà vu among Americans who watched this show play out before.

During Trump’s first term, the government shut down three times, including a 35-day closure spanning the end of 2018 into early 2019 that remains the longest in U.S. history.

Trump and his close adviser, billionaire business titan Elon Musk, touched off the latest crisis when they effectively killed a funding bill negotiated by Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress to keep the government open through March 14. Trump complained that the legislation included too many concessions to Democrats and called on negotiators to start over.

Raising the stakes even higher, Trump suggested Congress should eliminate the debt ceiling, which caps the amount of money the federal government can borrow. "There won't be anything approved unless the debt ceiling is done with," he said during an interview with ABC News.

The debt ceiling had not been part of the discussions to keep the government open.

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For his part, Musk trashed the bipartisan bill that emerged from the negotiations. Musk, who Trump has tasked with helping to lead an initiative to improve government efficiency, wrote on his social media platform X that lawmakers should kill the legislation.

“This bill should not pass,” he said.

It didn’t. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., pulled the bill that he had negotiated with Democrats without putting it to a vote. He instead scheduled a vote on a different Republican plan embraced by Trump. But the House rejected that bill, too, late Thursday, with 38 Republicans joining with Democrats to kill the measure.

The floor debate on the measure Thursday night was so intense that Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., who presided over the chamber, broke a gavel trying to keep order.

"Put on your big boy pants and pass your own bill," Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., demanded of his GOP colleagues.Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he didn’t know why Republicans proposed the bill.“Because you’re liars,” Democrats shouted in response.

Unless lawmakers reach a last-minute funding deal, the government will run out of money and large parts of it will begin to shut their doors at midnight Friday.

In a Truth Social post early Friday morning, Trump encouraged lawmakers to hash out their differences over spending levels now, while President Joe Biden is still in office so his administration carries the blame for the looming government shutdown.

"If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under “TRUMP.” This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!" the former and future president wrote on his social media platform.

Trump had been in office exactly one year – Jan. 20, 2018 – when the government shut down for the first time under his leadership.

The three-day shutdown began when spending plan talks broke down between Trump and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, partly over protections for young immigrants who had been brought to the United States illegally as children.

Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, had put in place protections for the so-called DREAMERS under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump ended the program but gave lawmakers six months to come up with a replacement. During budget negotiations, however, he demanded concessions from Democrats on immigration.  The government reopened after Congress passed a short-term compromise that did not include the immigration provisions Democrats had wanted.

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Three weeks later, on Feb. 8, 2018, the government shut down for a second time during Trump’s tenure, but just briefly.

Sen. Rand Paul, a conservative Kentucky Republican, triggered the government closure when he blocked a Senate vote on a funding bill because it would have added more than $300 billion to the federal budget deficit. The shutdown ended after a few hours when the Senate and the House both approved the spending measure.

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The third shutdown of Trump’s reign – and the longest in U.S. history – started Dec. 22, 2018, and lasted until Jan. 25, 2019, after Trump demanded $5.7 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats flatly refused to negotiate on border wall funding until the government reopened.

That standoff stretched for 35 days, leading to the furlough of more than 350,000 federal workers and forcing 400,000 others to work without pay. Some food-safety inspections were temporarily stopped, trash piled up in national parks, federal landmarks and museums closed, and some airports shuttered checkpoints because of fewer Transportation Security Administration officers to screen passengers.

The shutdown ended only after Trump backed a bipartisan bill that contained none of the border wall funding he had demanded.

If the government closes a fourth time under Trump’s reign, he still won’t hold the record for the most shutdowns. The government shut down eight times during Ronald Reagan’s eight years as president. All, however, were brief. The longest lasted just three days.

Jimmy Carter presided over five government shutdowns during his single term in office, the longest of which lasted 18 days.

Contributing: Riley Beggin

Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No stranger to shutdowns: Trump's history with government closures