The US federal government’s longest-ever shutdown is to come to an end after Congress finally voted through a funding deal.

The shutdown, which started on 1 October, has disrupted the lives of millions of Americans as all non-essential parts of government have been frozen.

It came after Democrats and Republicans refused to budge in their stand-off over healthcare spending, causing the first shutdown in almost seven years as the parties failed to agree on a government funding bill.

But on Wednesday night in Washington DC, the House of Representatives voted through a deal to reopen the government after the Senate – the upper chamber of Congress – reached a deal on Monday.

It will now go to the desk of President Donald Trump, who the White House has said will sign it tonight. It will fund the government through to 30 January.

How shutdown reached its end

The breakthrough came over the weekend, when a handful of Democrats in the Senate rebuffed their party’s leadership and teamed up with Republicans to strike a deal.

The Democrats had refused to support a Republican budget plan unless tax credits that made medical insurance cheaper for millions of people were renewed.

The willingness of eight moderate Democrats to break the Senate deadlock without that guarantee has provoked fury among many in the party.

While it will restore funding to federal agencies that have gone without since 1 October, and also prevent any further layoffs until 30 January, many voters will be left to count the cost of higher costs for their healthcare.

What’s a federal government shutdown?

A shutdown of the federal government means that all non-essential functions of government are frozen, affecting everything from social security to air travel to national park access.

Federal agencies are dependent on funding being approved by Congress to allow the president to sign budget legislation for the fiscal year ahead.

If they cannot approve funding (because of political differences – and America is bitterly divided) then those agencies are forced to shut down.

This means that workers cannot do their jobs and are not paid.

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A series of emails between disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and others which feature the name of Donald Trump have been released.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee who put out the messages claim the correspondence “raises questions about Trump and Epstein’s relationship, Trump’s knowledge of Epstein’s crimes” and the president’s relationship to Epstein’s victims.

But White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, says the “selectively leaked emails” are an attempt to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump“.

The messages are dated between 2011 and 2019 and some are between Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and others between Epstein and author Michael Wolff.

The US president has consistently denied any involvement or knowledge about Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

Trump latest: 20,000 pages published in response to ‘leak’

Here’s what the emails say…

In the first exchange of emails, between Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, dated 2 April 2011, Epstein wrote:

i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [REDACTED NAME] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75% there

Maxwell responded:

I have been thinking about that…

In the second exchange of emails, between Epstein and Michael Wolff, a journalist who has written several books about the Trump administration, dated 31 January 2019, Epstein wrote:

[REDACTED NAME] mara lago. [REDACTED] . trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop

The third email exchange, between Epstein and Wolff, dated between 15 and 16 December 2015 shows that Wolff wrote:

I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards.

Epstein replied:

if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?

Wolff responded:

I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.

Explainer: Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘friendship’

Whose name has been redacted?

The White House and Republicans on the committee have said that the redacted name in one of the emails was Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein survivor who died in April and had never accused Mr Trump of wrongdoing.

Ms Giuffre made allegations of three sexual encounters with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his prince title, in her autobiography which was released last month – allegations Andrew has denied.

Read more from Sky News:
Key claims by Virginia Giuffre in memoir
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Sky News’s US news partner NBC News has reached out to lawyers for Michael Wolff, Maxwell and the family of Virginia Giuffre for comment.

The top Democrat on the House committee, Robert Garcia of California, said in a statement that the released emails “raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President”.

The Oversight Committee Democrats say the email strike “a blow against the White House’s Epstein cover-up”.

But White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.

“The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions.”

Donald Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for $1bn (£760m) – but this is not his first legal battle with the media.

The US president has clashed with the broadcaster over edits made to one of his 2021 speeches in a Panorama documentary aired before last year’s election.

Mr Trump’s legal team has accused the BBC of using “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements”.

BBC Chair Samir Shah has apologised for an “error of judgment” over the way the speech was edited, while director-general, Tim Davie, and CEO of BBC News, Deborah Turness, have both announced their resignations.

But this is not the first time Mr Trump has taken on the media – and is in fact the latest in a recent spate of legal battles with the press.

Trump vs CNN

If past examples are anything to go by, Mr Trump’s legal threat is not an empty one.

He previously filed a $475m (£360m) defamation suit against CNN, alleging it had compared him to Adolf Hitler.

It came after CNN referred to Mr Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him as the “Big Lie” – an expression also used by Hitler in Mein Kampf.

But the case was thrown out after US district judge Raag Singhal ruled that the term “does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews”.

Election campaign lawsuit

His election campaign in 2020 also sued the New York Times and the Washington Post over opinion pieces alleging ties between with Russia.

These cases were dismissed in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

Yet, Mr Trump has had more success in recent years.

ABC settlement

In 2024, Trump sued American broadcaster ABC and its news host George Stephanopoulos, after the anchor falsely referred to the president being found “liable for rape” in an interview.

In the civil case in question, he was actually found liable for sexual abuse and defamation – a verdict which Trump is appealing.

Given the high bar for proving defamation against public figures, experts were sceptical that he could win the lawsuit.

George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center told CBS at the time: “I don’t know of any president who successfully sued a media company for defamation.”

Yet ABC, which is owned by Disney, agreed to settle, paying $15m (£11.4m) to Trump for his future presidential library, and a further $1m (£760,000) towards his legal fees.

Battle with CBS

In another lawsuit, the president demanded $20bn (£15.2bn) from CBS over an interview with his election rival Kamala Harris broadcast on 60 Minutes.

His team accused the broadcaster of “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” with its editing of the interview, saying it intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” in the contest.

Read more:
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Trump’s lawyer threatens BBC – read the letter in full

First Amendment attorney Charles Tobin of the law firm Ballard Spahr told CNN at the time: “This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”

Yet they too settled out of court, with CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, paying $16m (£12.1m) to end the legal dispute – again towards Trump’s future presidential library.

Trump vs Meta

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also settled with the president to the tune of $25m (£19m).

That lawsuit came after he sued over the suspension of his accounts in the wake of the 6 January riots.

Why the recent spate?

While Mr Trump has made several threats to media organisations in recent years, it is not the first time he has done so.

According to Columbia Journalism Review, he threatened to sue a journalist at New York’s Village Voice as far back as 1979, and actually sued the Chicago Tribune in 1984.

That 1984 lawsuit, which came after Mr Trump took umbrage at a column by the paper’s award-winning architecture columnist criticising his plans for a huge tower block in New York City, was thrown out as an opinion by a judge.

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However, the number of lawsuits, and the size of his compensation demands, have increased of late. So what has changed?

“As president, Trump’s leverage has increased exponentially,” wrote media reporter Paul Farhi in Vanity Fair.

“It’s no coincidence that Disney and Meta have settled since Election Day, and Paramount has come to the table.”

Now that he’s turning his ire on the BBC, what will the outcome be?

Mr Freeman called his threat to the broadcaster “totally meaningless”, noting that he “has a long record of unsuccessful libel suits” intended to “threaten and scare media he doesn’t like”.

Can the BBC rely on that assessment?

With a deadline set for Friday, 10pm UK time, we may be about to find out.