Day 16 of government shutdown; Senate voting for 10th time on funding bill

It’s now Day 16 of the government shutdown, which officially makes it the third-longest shutdown in history. (It’s tied with the 2014 shutdown, which happened under former President Barack Obama).

The Democrats and Republicans are still deadlocked as the Senate failed to muster enough votes for a ninth time on the House-passed Republican bill. The Senate is voting for the 10th time Thursday, Oct. 16th.

The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Congress failed to reach an agreement over health care subsidies. The longest government shutdown in US history lasted 35 days in 2019, during President Doanld Trump’s first term in office.

Meanwhile, Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget ,said more than 10,000 federal workers may face layoffs during the government shutdown.

“I think we’ll probably end up being north of 10,000,” Vought said in an interview on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” the podcast of the late conservative activist.

Funding vote fails for the 10th time

The vote count was 51-45, with the same small group of Democrats and one independent voting yes, with one Republican voting no (Senate Majority Leader John Thune also voted no, but simply as a procedural mechanism to reconsider the bill). A few senators also didn’t vote.

Senate starts funding bill vote

Senators began voting just before noon on a weekslong funding extension that would reopen the government. It’s unlikely to pass. It’s less clear what votes will look like to proceed with a separate defense spending bill senators will take up later in the day.

In the hallways of the Capitol on Thursday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said she would vote yes, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said she would vote no — a good indication of an emerging split between progressives and moderate Democrats on whether to try and fund at least some parts of the government during the shutdown.-Zachary Schermele

Defense bill up for a vote, too

Though the weekslong funding extension isn’t expected to pass, there’s less certainty around how senators will vote on advancing a full-year defense appropriations bill.

If that measure ultimately passes, it would ease shutdown uncertainty on military families. While some moderate Senate Democrats have indicated they support moving forward with the defense bill, it’s not clear whether it will get the required 60 votes in the Senate.

Thune guarantees Democrats Obamacare vote

Republicans have privately guaranteed Democrats a vote on potentially extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies at the center of the shutdown fight, according to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota.

Thune, a key figure in the funding crisis, said on MSNBC Thursday that while he couldn’t promise Democrats that such a measure would pass, he could assure them a vote would happen.

“We can guarantee you get a vote by a date certain,” he said.

The deal would only work, though, if Democrats first vote to reopen the government, he said.

10th time’s the charm?

Senators will vote, again, around 11 a.m. on a short-term funding measure mostly backed by Republicans. With little new movement in either party’s position, the vote to move forward with the bill is likely to fail (for the 10th time).

Judge blocks mass layoffs

Vought’s comments came just as a federal judge on Oct. 15 temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s mass layoff plans.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ruled that the reduction-in-force notices sent to more than 4,000 employees on Oct. 10 were “both illegal and in excess of authority,” and granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting most agencies from proceeding with the layoffs.

She said Trump and his top aides have made several comments showing explicit political motivations for the layoffs, such as Trump saying that cuts would target “Democrat agencies.”

“You can’t do that in a nation of laws. And we have laws here, and the things that are being articulated here are not within the law,” said Illston.

A list of cuts by Friday?

Trump said on Oct. 14 at the White House that his administration planned to produce a list on Friday of “Democrat programs” that will be closed if the government remained closed.

He did not specify the programs but indicated that the closures would be permanent, saying some were “never going to open up again.”

More than 750,000 federal workers have been furloughed, which stops them from reporting to work. Employees deemed essential to public safety, including military personnel, law enforcement officers, border patrol and air traffic controllers are required to report for duty without pay.

Trump on Oct. 15 signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to make sure that active-duty military personnel are paid, regardless of the shutdown.

The executive order directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “to use for the purpose of pay and allowances any funds appropriated by the Congress that remain available for expenditure in Fiscal Year 2026 to accomplish the scheduled disbursement of military pay and allowances for active duty military personnel.”