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(WASHINGTON) — The longest government shutdown in U.S. history appears to be nearing its end, after senators suddenly advanced a funding deal over the weekend after 40 days of little progress.

The agreement still needs to pass the Senate and the House before going to President Donald Trump’s desk. In the meantime, pain continues to grow for Americans on everything from food assistance to air travel.

Here’s a timeline of major developments from the weekslong impasse.

Oct. 1: The federal government shut down at 12:01 a.m. after competing Republican and Democratic proposals that would have funded the government failed in the Senate at the eleventh hour. The Democrat bill included extensions for health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act while the Republicans’ “clean” bill would have funded the government at current levels until Nov. 1.

Oct. 10: The Trump administration begins to lay off thousands of federal workers. Agencies impacted include the Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury departments.

Oct. 14: Two weeks into the shutdown with virtually no progress, House Speaker Mike Johnson predicts they are headed toward “one of the longest shutdowns in American history.” The House has remained out of session the entire shutdown after Republican members passed a clean, seven-week funding bill in mid-September.

Oct. 15: The Pentagon says that troops have been paid and will not miss a paycheck due to the shutdown after shifting existing funds.

Oct. 24: More than 500,000 federal employees miss their first full paycheck. Days later, the president of the country’s largest union representing federal workers called on lawmakers to pass a short-term spending bill to end the shutdown, a statement seized on by Republicans to ramp up pressure on Democrats.

Oct. 30: President Trump, after weeklong overseas trip, inserts himself in the shutdown showdown by calling on Senate Republicans to terminate the filibuster in order to unilaterally reopen the government. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune quickly rejected Trump’s demand.

Nov. 1: Funds run dry for SNAP benefits, leaving 42 million Americans vulnerable — and setting off a complex legal fight between the administration and states. Plus, open enrollment begins for Affordable Care Act recipients with prices for insurance premiums skyrocketing next year.

Nov. 4: The Senate fails for the 14th time to advance a clean, short-term funding bill.

Nov. 5: The shutdown becomes the longest in U.S. history. Trump brings Senate Republicans to the White House to talk shutdown, after Republican losses in key elections across the country. Democrats capitalize on election wins to argue Republicans should negotiate with them on health care.

Nov. 7: Air travel is even more heavily impacted as the Federal Aviation Administration begins to reduce flight capacity at major airports across the country. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put on the table a Democratic proposal for a short-term extension of government funding that includes a one-year extension of ACA subsidies. Republicans quickly rejected the offer.

Nov. 8: Thune said he plans to keep the Senate in session until the government is funded, and said Republicans will push forward with a plan to advance a short-term funding bill with a “mini-bus” of three, full-year funding bills for SNAP benefits and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, as well as veterans programs. Schumer calls it a “terrible mistake” for Republicans to have rebuffed Democrats’ offer.

Nov. 9: A sudden breakthrough moment on Capitol Hill as senators reach a bipartisan deal to end the shutdown. Eight Democrats vote with Republicans to advance the measure in a 60-40 vote.

The bill does not include any of the Democratic demands on health care, but sources told ABC News that Republican leadership promised to allow a vote on a bill of Democrats’ choosing related to the ACA in December.

It also includes a new government funding extension of Jan. 30, 2026; language to reverse Trump administration firings during the shutdown; and to ensure furlough workers receive backpay.

Nov. 10: Senate reconvenes to move ahead on the deal, with questions remaining on how fast they can get it done. Speaker Johnson tells House members to start returning to Washington immediately, and says the House will vote as quickly as possible on the funding bill once it clears the Senate to send it to President Trump’s desk.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Monday denied a bid from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to appeal her $100,000 damages suit and get the justices to revisit the landmark 2015 decision in Obergefell v Hodges.

The court did not explain its decision.  

Davis gained international attention after she refused to issue a marriage license to a gay couple on religious grounds in open defiance of the high court’s ruling and was subsequently jailed for six days. A jury later awarded the couple $100,000 for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees.

In a petition for writ of certiorari filed in August, Davis argued First Amendment protection for free exercise of religion immunizes her from personal liability for the denial of marriage licenses.

She also claimed the court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges — which rooted marriage rights for LGBTQ couples in the 14th Amendment’s due process protections — was “legal fiction.”

Lower courts had dismissed Davis’ claims and most legal experts considered her bid a long shot.

Davis’ appeal to the Supreme Court comes as conservative opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples pursue a renewed campaign to reverse legal precedent and allow each state to set its own policy.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Senate passed a key test vote Sunday night on a plan that would be a major step toward reopening the government.

After 40 days of a standoff, the bill advanced by a vote of 60-40, just barely meeting the 60 votes needed to keep it moving forward.

The vote was gaveled down to applause in the chamber at 10:49 p.m. ET.

Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen and Jacky Rosen were the Democrats who flipped to vote for this bill.

They join Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman and Independent Angus King, who have been voting in favor of a government funding bill for weeks. Sen. Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote against it.

The vote was a big test to gauge whether enough Democrats would vote with Republicans to break the impasse, even though they wouldn’t get an extension of Obamacare subsidies that expire at the end of the year, which they have been holding out for through the 40-day shutdown, the longest in U.S. history.

Multiple Senate sources told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl earlier on Sunday that the bill would extend funding to Jan. 31 as well as provide funding for the remainder of the fiscal year to other agencies like the Department of Agriculture to pay for SNAP benefits and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A senior Democratic senator told Karl there would be more than enough Democratic votes to pass this, although a majority of Democrats, including most of the leadership, voted against it.

Democrats would get nothing on health care beyond a promise that the Senate will vote on extending Affordable Care Act subsidies before the end of the year — essentially what Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered more than a month ago and Democrats objected to.

Although most Senate Democrats may have opposed this bill, they were resigned to the fact that this part of the fight is over, sources said. They will take the battle over health care to the midterms and argue that Republicans refused to do anything for the millions of Americans who will see their health insurance premiums skyrocket.

Passage of the bill does not immediately reopen the government. The House will also have to approve the bill. The House has been out of session since September and Speaker Mike Johnson would need to call his members back to Washington to consider this bill before it could head to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The Senate wants to modify the bill in a number of ways. Now that the bill has passed the test vote, the debate can begin. There are some key modifications that senators want to make to the bill:

• They want to change its expiration date from Nov. 21 to the end of January.
• They want to attach three full-year funding bills to it. The government is usually funded through 12 full-year appropriations bills. The three that senators hope to include are Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, the Legislative Branch, and the Department of Agriculture. If lawmakers fail to fund the government by the new deadline, programs covered by these bills would be fully funded through the end of the fiscal year.
• There could be the inclusion of some sort of language guaranteeing Democrats a vote by a certain date on a bill to address health care. There could also be some sort of language to reverse some of the administration’s reductions in force of government workers that occurred during the shutdown.

Unless there’s total agreement by all senators to quickly adjust the bill, it could take the Senate up to a week to process it. 

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump issued a sweeping pardon to key figures allegedly involved in the plan to arrange an alternate slate of electors and “expose voting fraud”  during the 2020 election, according to U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin.

Trump pardoned high-profile individuals allegedly involved in his attempt to overturn the election, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman and Mark Meadows — and 72 other individuals allegedly associated with the effort to challenge the 2020 election results.

The pardon, which Trump appears to have signed on Friday, covers each of the president’s co-defendants who were charged in Georgia for a sweeping scheme to overturn election results.

Four of the pardon recipients pleaded guilty in the Georgia case.

“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” the pardon says.

The pardon language explicitly states that it does not apply to Trump himself. “This pardon does not apply to the president of the United States,” according to the pardon.

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(NEW YORK) — For the first time in more than two decades, the Pentagon has begun sending conventional ground forces to Panama to train in the jungle there, returning U.S. soldiers and Marines to a three-week course once called the “Green Hell” because of its similarities to Vietnam.

The training program at Base Aeronaval Cristóbal Colón, formerly known as Fort Sherman, is relatively small in scope but is expected to ramp up over the next year, according to one defense official.

The program began earlier this year and is not intended to prepare troops for a potential mission, including inside Venezuela, the official said.

Still, the military’s interest in jungle warfare in Latin America is noteworthy given Trump’s heightened focus there. Since taking office, Trump has vowed to “take back” the Panama Canal and repeatedly threatened to attack Venezuela because of its alleged role in transiting illegal narcotics.

“If you can train and fight in one of the most difficult and challenging locations in the world, you build a really lethal, effective force,” the defense official said of the rationale behind the new training program.

Alex Plitsas, a former Pentagon official and senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, said the new training course wouldn’t likely play a role in potential operations inside Venezuela. The training effort appears to be more about building Panama’s capacity to handle security threats in the region.

But the move signals a shift in priorities by the Trump administration, he said.

“It’s an expansion of an existing military relationship, but it’s not happening in a vacuum,” Plitsas said. “It’s happening as a broader change in policy. There’s a renewed interest in South America, where the president sees the drug flow to the United States as a national security issue with the intention of potential military action.”

Jungle training hasn’t been a priority for the military since 9/11, when the nation’s focus shifted to counterterrorism operations in the Middle East. The Defense Department in recent years has relied on a smaller Army jungle training center in Hawaii and at a Marine Corps site in Okinawa, Japan.

During the Vietnam War, however, Fort Sherman was considered a prime location where most troops could hone their jungle survival skills before shipping off to war.

Conditions at the Panamanian training site are considered among the harshest in the world, including venomous snakes and several layers of thick, towering vegetation that can make it difficult to operate communications and night-vision equipment or evacuate wounded personnel.

By 1999, the training site shuttered and the last of the U.S. military departed Panama as part of an agreement ceding U.S. control of the Panama Canal.

Shortly after taking office, though, Trump expressed renewed interest in the region, declaring the U.S. would be “reclaiming” the Panama Canal. That effort has since been couched by Pentagon officials as a renewed “partnership” with Panama to prevent Chinese influence over the canal, which the U.S. relies on heavily for shipping.

Trump also has overseen an unprecedented buildup of U.S. troops to the region, deploying 10,000 troops and, more recently, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier. The public display of force appears to be a kind of pressure campaign aimed at forcing out Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

By August, the military had set up the “Combined Jungle Operations Training Course” with Marines and Panamanian forces training as part of a pilot program. A military spokesperson said there have since been 46 graduates of the three-week course: 18 Marines, one Army soldier and 27 personnel from Panama’s National Aeronaval Service, National Border Service and National Police.

According to the Defense official, the Army plans to ramp up training over the next year, eventually sending in platoons of some 40 soldiers at a time to train.

Steve Ganyard, a retired Marine Corps colonel and ABC contributor, said the renewed interest in Panama is likely a practical one, but it also can be used to send a message.

“From a practical perspective, it’s easier to get to Panama than Okinawa. And the jungles of Central and South America have their own unique challenges,” he said. “That said, no doubt a message is being sent to Maduro by conducting combat training in his neighborhood.”

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