The Government Shutdown Just Became the Longest Ever, With No End in Sight

Congress is presiding over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, and members have only recently started talking about digging their way out.

On Tuesday night, the 2025 government shutdown became the longest shutdown of any kind, surpassing the 35-day partial shutdown that began in 2018. Federal workers are missing paychecks and facing layoffs. Food benefits have been delayed. Government services are shuttered. And Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday that if the shutdown goes into next week, airspace closures and mass flight delays could ensue.

While there’s been talk of improved negotiations, next steps and off-ramps on Capitol Hill, there’s no immediate plan to reopen the government. Senate Republicans have refused to nuke the filibuster despite President Donald Trump’s demands. House Speaker Mike Johnson has no solid plans to bring members back to negotiate a different deal; he’s instead banking on the Senate’s moderate Democrats to cave.

“It’s frustrating as hell,” Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern told NOTUS on Tuesday of the shutdown, “made even more frustrating by the fact that Republicans are nowhere to be found.”

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Senators from both parties told NOTUS they’ve never seen anything like this shutdown, and not just because of its length.

“This is the strangest shutdown I’ve ever been involved in. I came in 2017 to the House, and nothing has ever been like this,” Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, told NOTUS. “There’s no pain points. We’re going home. The Senate is conducting business as if there’s no shutdown and just doing our nominations. The House is not here. I mean, there’s a lot. It’s very different. It’s induced by Democrats. Usually, it’s Republicans.”

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, agreed. She was a member of the House during the 2013 shutdown, which she called “so opposite” from this one.

“There was so much urgency during that shutdown to bring it to a conclusion,” Lummis told NOTUS. “This one’s blasé.”

Lummis added that during the 2013 shutdown, members received “daily conferences and updates” from then-Speaker John Boehner.

“We were made aware of the status of negotiations that the leadership in both parties were undertaking with each other. And I don’t even know if our leaders are talking, so this is a very different shutdown,” Lummis said.

Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat who was a senator during the 2019 shutdown, concurred.

“I have never been in a shutdown like this — either at the state level or the federal level — where one side, Donald Trump and Republicans, just refuse to negotiate with others,” Smith said.

While lawmakers reflect on a frustrating lack of urgency in Washington, plenty of Americans are feeling the pain of the shutdown. Some political pressure points have been avoided, however, which lawmakers say has allowed the shutdown to drag on.

“Some have said it’s the ‘Seinfeld’ shutdown because it’s about nothing,” Johnson said Tuesday before making his routine argument that the shutdown was caused by Democrats’ “fear” of political retribution from their left flank as elections take place in blue areas around the country, including New York City.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers are at an impasse. Republicans have refused Democrats’ demands to include an extension of Affordable Care Act insurance premium subsidies in their seven-week funding patch. It set off a “Groundhog Day” effect in the Senate, where most Democrats have repeatedly refused to vote for the House-passed Republican continuing resolution that could open the government.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Monday that his chamber would no longer be voting on that CR, as the Nov. 21 deadline has become too close, and the Senate will need to update it.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted on that CR for the 14th time. It failed.

Senators have said this week that they’re making small steps toward progress.

“I think we’re getting close to an off-ramp here, but, again,” Thune told reporters Monday, “this is unlike any other shutdown.”

Sen. Susan Collins, the Senate Appropriation Committee’s chair, said Tuesday that “the talks are more productive because they’re more specific” when NOTUS asked her about a funding patch with a new deadline beyond Nov. 21.

“It’s still a challenge, and there are issues to be resolved, but I do feel progress is being made,” Collins said.

A chorus of other lawmakers has been calling for a longer CR, potentially into January or February. Johnson said Tuesday that punting the new CR deadline to January “makes sense.”

“But we’ve obviously got to build consensus around that. There’s some discussion about it, but we’ll see where it goes,” he said.

As the shutdown stretches on, lawmakers are getting frustrated.

“Several days was long enough. I mean, more than long enough,” Rep. Adrian Smith, a Nebraska Republican, told reporters Friday.

The dismay on Capitol Hill has extended beyond lawmakers.

“Lord, remind our lawmakers that no gold medals are given for breaking shutdown records,” the Senate’s chaplain, Barry Black, said in an opening prayer last week.

“When our children and grandchildren want to know what we were doing in the 119th Congress during the famous shutdown, may we not have to give these answers: I helped set a new record for keeping the government closed. I failed to appeal to the better angels of my nature,” Black continued.