US Government Partially Shuts Down Amid Funding Dispute
The U.S. federal government entered a partial shutdown early Saturday morning, after Congress failed to reach an agreement on the yearly budget in time, marking the second shutdown in six months, according to Fox News. The funding lapse began at midnight Eastern Time (05:00 GMT), hours after senators approved a last-ditch funding deal to fund most agencies until September, the BBC reported.
The immediate cause of the shutdown was a disagreement over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees immigration enforcement. The approved bill included just two weeks' funding for the DHS, instead of shutting it down entirely, according to the BBC. The House of Representatives, however, is out of session and has yet to approve the bill.
President Donald Trump struck the deal with Democrats after they refused to give more funding for immigration enforcement following a fatal shooting, the BBC reported. Senator Lindsey Graham blocked what Fox News described as a Trump-backed deal aimed at avoiding the shutdown.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was expected to notify federal agencies to begin shutdown preparations shortly after midnight on January 31, Fox News reported.
This partial shutdown arrives as the United Nations faces its own financial crisis. UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the UN risks "imminent financial collapse" due to member states not paying their fees, the BBC reported. Guterres stated the organization's money could run out by July and urged all 193 member states to honor their mandatory payments or overhaul the organization's financial rules to avoid collapse. The US, the UN's largest contributor, has refused to contribute to its regular and peacekeeping budgets and withdrew from several UN agencies, according to the BBC.
The partial government shutdown coincides with the release of millions of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by the US Department of Justice. The BBC reported that the release included three million pages, 180,000 images, and 2,000 videos, marking the largest number of documents shared by the government since a law mandated their release last year.
Meanwhile, in Israel, a political push is underway to pass a controversial new capital punishment law targeting Palestinians convicted by Israeli courts of fatal terrorist attacks, the BBC reported. Zvika Fogel, the far-right chair of the parliamentary national security committee, told the BBC, "It's another brick in the wall of our defence. To bring in the death penalty is to create deterrence."
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