US President Donald Trump has signed a federal spending bill, officially ending the longest government shutdown in American history.

The legislation, passed by the House of Representatives in a 222–209 vote, followed narrow approval in the Senate just two days earlier. The bill restores funding to federal agencies after 43 days of closure, bringing relief to millions of government employees and citizens affected by halted services.

Speaking after signing the measure on Wednesday night, Trump described the deal as a political victory, asserting that Democrats unnecessarily prolonged the shutdown.

“They didn’t want to do it the easy way. They had to do it the hard way, and they look very bad,” he said.

The temporary funding bill maintains government operations only through 30 January, creating a new deadline for lawmakers to negotiate a long-term budget solution.

As part of the agreement, Senate leaders committed to an early December vote on Obamacare subsidies, a key priority for Democrats during the shutdown standoff.

In addition to reopening federal offices, the bill provides full-year funding for the Department of Agriculture, military construction projects, and several legislative branch offices.

It also ensures retroactive pay for federal workers affected by the shutdown and allocates funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, which helps about one in eight Americans access food.

The shutdown, which began in October, forced the suspension of many government services, leaving an estimated 1.4 million federal employees either furloughed or working without pay. It also disrupted food assistance programmes and caused widespread delays in domestic air travel.

With federal operations now resumed, attention in Washington has turned to whether Congress and the White House can reach a longer-term funding agreement before the new deadline at the end of January.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to Israel’s parliament – the Knesset – on Monday, declared that the Israel-Gaza war “has not ended.”

“Those who seek to do us harm are re-arming,” he said. “They did not give up their aim of destroying us.”

Netanyahu said Hamas “will be disarmed” and “Gaza will be demilitarized.”

“It will either happen the easy way, or it will happen the hard way,” he continued. “But it will happen.”

According to ABC News, four deceased hostages are believed to remain inside Gaza following Sunday’s return of the body of Hadar Goldin, an Israeli soldier killed in the 2014 Gaza war.

Israeli authorities are releasing the bodies of Palestinians in exchange for the return of hostage remains.

As of Saturday, Israel had returned 300 Palestinian bodies to Gaza, of which only 89 have been identified, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The ceasefire is broadly holding in Gaza. Elsewhere, Israel is continuing strikes on what it says are Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

New York City mayoral election, becoming the city’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor-elect, Republican detractors in Washington, DC, said they would try to stop him from taking office.

President Donald Trump, who threatened to withhold federal funds to New York City if Mamdani won, lent credence to misleading questions about Mamdani’s citizenship and falsely accused the Ugandan-born 34-year-old of being a communist.

Some Republican lawmakers requested investigations into Mamdani’s naturalisation process and have called for stripping him of his United States citizenship and deporting him, accusing him without evidence of embracing communist and “terrorist” activities.

“If Mamdani lied on his naturalisation documents, he doesn’t get to be a citizen, and he certainly doesn’t get to run for mayor of New York City. A great American city is on the precipice of being run by a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology,” Representative Andy Ogles from the Republican party said in an October 29 news release, after asking US Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Mamdani.

“The American naturalisation system REQUIRES any alignments with communism or terrorist activities to be disclosed. I’m doubtful he disclosed them. If this is confirmed, put him on the first flight back to Uganda.”

Randy Fine, the Republican representative from Florida, misrepresented Mamdani’s time in the US when he said on October 27 on Newsmax: “The barbarians are no longer at the gate, they’re inside. … And Mamdani, having just moved here eight years ago, is a great example of that, becoming a citizen. Look, it is clear with much of what I have read that he did not meet the definition to gain citizenship.”

PolitiFact found no credible evidence that Mamdani lied on his citizenship application.

Born in Uganda, Mamdani moved to the US in 1998, when he was seven years old, and became a US citizen in 2018. For adults to become US citizens, they generally must have lived continuously in the country as a lawful permanent resident for five years, or three years if married to a US citizen.

Denaturalisation, the process of revoking a person’s citizenship, can be done only by judicial order. It’s been used sparingly, such as for removing Nazis who fled to the US after World War II or people convicted of or associated with “terrorism”.

Immigration law experts said they have seen no evidence to support Ogles and Fine’s assertions about Mamdani’s application.

“Denaturalisation is an extreme, rare remedy that requires the government to prove either illegal procurement or a willful, material lie – at a minimum, clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence that the fact would have changed the outcome at the time of naturalisation,” said immigration lawyer Jeremy McKinney. “I’ve seen no credible proof he was ineligible when he took the oath or that any omission was material.”

Ogles and Fine did not respond to PolitiFact’s requests for comment by publication.