The U.S. government shut down as of today after Democrats in Congress refused to support a Republican funding bill that didn’t include concessions on healthcare. It’s the first shutdown in seven years; the last time, the government shut down for 35 days during President Trump’s first term. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans, saying in a joint statement, “After months of making life harder and more expensive, Donald Trump and Republicans have now shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people.” President Trump has threatened mass firings of federal workers in the event of a shutdown. Here’s Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

Randy Erwin: “You know, we’re going to be over 300,000 federal employees will have been lost after today, since the start of this Trump administration. And we don’t know what our functionality of government looks like with that level of staff, because the size of the federal workforce has been almost entirely flat for the last 60 years.”