Could the US government shut down and does it really matter?
The United States government is, once again, on course to shut down.
In just a few hours, when the clock strikes a minute past midnight, the state will likely be unable to pay its bills.
What happens?
It means all non-essential federal services are frozen. Government, military, waster disposal and air traffic control staff are unlikely to be paid. Federal agencies, national parks, federal courts, museums and a plethora of state bodies will be hit.
They simply won’t have the funding to have meet their wage and other bills.
Lawmakers, however, will continue to be paid, thanks to provision in the US constitution.
Why is this happening?
Congress, encompassing the US Senate and House of Representatives, have yet to approve discretionary spending, a necessity for the new US financial year, which starts on 1 October.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has not succeeded at getting hard right wing Republicans to agree a deal. If he pushes too hard, or gets a bill passed that the right flank of his party don’t like, he risks losing his job.
Mr McCarthy’s job is predicated on not upsetting that far right cohort. In order to secure his job as speaker he agreed that any House of Representatives member could call for a vote to oust him.
In a way he’s backed himself in to a corner, promising something he couldn’t deliver: to return federal spending to pre-COVID levels. Many Republicans loath the trillions spent on health measures and economic stimulus.
While he secured a deal to lift the debt ceiling with President Joe Biden back in May to avert the US being unable to meet debt repayments, this is a different situation.
There aren’t the same catastrophic economic consequences hanging over a government shutdown and so there’s less of a threat to Mr McCarthy.
Had the US defaulted it would have been first time in the country’s history and would have led to a near total shutdown of the economy. There would have been severe consequences to the worldwide economy.
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he is directing committees to open a formal investigation into a ‘culture of corruption’ around Joe Biden
When has it happened before?
Many times. In the last decade alone there have been four shutdowns over topics such as Obamacare and Trump’s border wall. This one is harder to tie to a specific event.
Most recently, in 2018, Democratic politicians refused to pass a Trump-led spending plan to fund his disputed southern border wall. The shutdown then lasted 35 days.
Numerous government organisations have manuals for furloughing staff in the event of a shutdown.
What are the consequences/effects?
Last time roughly 800,000 workers were furloughed but exact numbers for a 2023 repeat are unclear.
As the first day of the shutdown would be Sunday, the effects will not be immediate as many employees won’t be due at work.
When people activity falter so too does production.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the five-week Trump shutdown in 2018-2019 reduced economic output by $11bn, including $3bn that the US economy never regained.
Shutdowns also impact America’s reputation as a stable, functioning financial leader, and it had an influence on government spending plans, delaying legislative agendas.
Some consequences are less quantifiable.
The US’s credit rating was already downgraded after just months of debt limit debate that brought the country to the brink of default.
Fitch brought down the rating from AAA – the highest possible – to AA+ over debt and governance concerns.
Lower credit ratings can increase the cost of government borrowing, adding to taxpayer bills, reducing spending and shrinking the economy.
US officials criticised the move, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calling it “arbitrary” and “based on outdated data”.
Another credit agency, Moody’s, said a shutdown would threaten the triple A credit rating it designated for the US.
What are the odds of this happening?
It’s highly likely. Hard-line Republicans in the House of Representatives voted down a long-shot bill proposed by Mr McCarthy to halt the shutdown.
The Senate, which would need to vote to approve any plan, is not scheduled to take a final vote until Sunday despite the final deadline being midnight on Saturday.
How long will it go on for?
No one knows.
Dozens of websites, banks and apps are being affected by a major internet outage.
The problem, which started on Monday morning, appears to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
As of 9.20am, there were more than 2,000 reports of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US alone, according to Downdetector, which monitors issues and outages in real-time.
On its service status page, the company said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”.
Here’s what we know so far.
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
What has been affected?
Multiple banks, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website, mobile phone networks and video-chatting platform Zoom are among the websites having technical issues.
All Amazon products – including Prime Video and Amazon Music – have also been affected, as well as the main Amazon website.
Here’s a full list of what has been affected by the internet outage, according to Downdetector:
• Snapchat
• Ring
• Roblox
• Amazon Web Services
• Life360
• My Fitness Pal
• Amazon
• Xero
• Signal
• Canva
• Fortnite
• Blink Security
• Zoom
• HMRC
• Clash Royale
• Clash Of Clans
• Asana
• Wordle
• Slack
• Smartsheet
• Epic Games Store
• Duolingo
• Amazon Alexa
• Jira
• Vodafone
• Tidal
• Coinbase
• Atlassian
• IMDB
• Amazon Prime Video
• Pokemon Go
• BT
• Peloton
• EE
• Ancestry
• Square
• Playstation Network
• Eventbrite
• Amazon Music
• Sky
• Flickr
• Hay Day
• Rocket League
• Perplexity AI
• Dead By Daylight
• Bank Of Scotland
• Lloyds Bank
• Halifax
What has AWS said?
AWS confirmed it was suffering from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services.
In a statement on its website, the company said: “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” an update on its website says.
“We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”
The company is posting regular updates on the situation and said its engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as they spotted the issue.
Concentrated in the US
ThousandEyes, a website that tracks the performance of local and wide area networks, servers and applications, shows many of the outages appear to be concentrated in the US.
A large portion is focused in Virginia, which is widely considered as the global capital for data centres.
Has something like this happened before?
US
Donald Trump mocks ‘No Kings’ protests with AI video of himself dropping brown sludge on protesters from jet
Donald Trump has responded to so-called “No Kings” rallies with an AI video of himself in a fighter jet, pouring brown sludge over protesters.
Millions of people were expected to take part in the demonstrations this weekend – the second such gathering after an initial nationwide day of protest in June coinciding with the US president’s birthday.
The term “No Kings” reflects the belief by some that Mr Trump is behaving like a “king” and some in his administration are depicting him as a monarch.
A protester in costume as Donald Trump presents the president as a prisoner in chains in Seattle. Pic: AP
One of the rallies in New York. Pic: Reuters
On Sunday, the president shared the AI video on his social media platform, Truth Social.
In the clip, an AI-generated version of Mr Trump is wearing a crown and sitting in a jet with “King Trump” written across it, to the soundtrack of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone, from the film Top Gun.
The jet then drops thick brown sludge on to AI-generated protesters.
Supporters say the marches are a patriotic defence of free speech, while critics are calling them anti-American.
A large inflatable effigy of Mr Trump in Chicago. Pic: Reuters
This protest took place in Washington DC. Pic: AP
Mr Trump’s Republican Party has dismissed the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies.
Many of the events featured marching bands, huge banners and signs, as well as effigies of the president and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes.
Thousands gathered along the waterfront in Portland, Oregon. Pic: AP
Protesters at the Wyoming State Capitol got creative with their signs. Pic: Wyoming Tribune Eagle/AP
The protests follow Mr Trump’s return to the White House and come against the backdrop of a government shutdown which has closed federal programmes and services.
There has also been criticism of what some see as an aggressive executive, confronting Congress and the courts, in ways that protest organisers believe are a slide toward authoritarianism.
This event in San Francisco was among thousands taking place across the US. Pic: Reuters
A ‘No Kings’ sign, outside City Hall in Los Angeles. Pic: Reuters
So far, the atmosphere at most of the protests appears to have been largely energetic and upbeat, with protesters calling for accountability and protections for civil liberties.
Organisers said events would be peaceful – a direct response to Republican and Trump administration claims that the protests could be unsafe.
Two survivors of a US airstrike, targeting what Donald Trump has described as a “drug-carrying submarine” in the Caribbean, have been repatriated to their home countries.
The US president posted footage of Thursday’s operation, part of a recent military campaign targeting boats transporting drugs to America.
“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“US intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics,” he added.
The US military staged a helicopter rescue for the survivors on Thursday after the strike on their semi-submersible
vessel, suspected of trafficking illegal narcotics. They were then transported to a US Navy warship.
Two other crew members on board were killed.
The semi-submersible vessel was struck by US forces on Thursday, leaving two dead and two survivors. Pic: @realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
President Trump confirmed the survivors would be returned to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador “for detention and prosecution”. Both countries subsequently confirmed they had been handed over.
“America will not tolerate narcoterrorists trafficking illegal drugs, by land or by sea,” he added.
On Saturday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on X: “We have received the Colombian detained on the narco submarine, we are happy he is alive and he will be processed according to the law.”
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Trump sends CIA into Venezuela and threatens land attack
Read more from Sky News:
Venezuela’s president pleads for peace
Is Trump planning to attack Venezuela?
Venezuela’s Nobel Peace Prize winner
The Trump administration has said previous strikes in the Caribbean have killed 27 people, raising concerns among some about the legality of the military operations.
The strikes also come against the backdrop of a US military buildup in the Caribbean that includes guided missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear submarine and around 6,500 troops as the US president escalates a standoff with the Venezuelan government.
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Venezuelan president: ‘We don’t want a war’
On Wednesday, Mr Trump disclosed he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, adding to speculation in Caracas that the US is attempting to topple Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Mr Maduro has denied any connection to drug smuggling and claimed the US boat strikes are a pretext for regime change, and violations of sovereignty and international law.
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