Government shutdown live updates: Biden signs funding bill after chaotic scramble in Congress

Joe Biden has signed into law a last-minute spending freeze, according to the White House.

The Senate passed the bill shortly after midnight, averting a shutdown that would have had far-reaching consequences, after a last-minute scramble in Congress. The House passed the bill on Friday night.

A statement from the White House read: “On Saturday, December 21, 2024, the President signed into law: HR 10545, the American Relief Act of 2025, which provides fiscal year 2025 appropriations to federal agencies until March 14, 2025 to continue projects and activities of the Federal Government; provides disaster relief funds and economic assistance to farmers; extends the Law on the Improvement of Agriculture from 2018; and extends several expiring powers.”

Congress is appropriating more than $100 billion in emergency aid to deal with major disaster damage after struggling this week to reach consensus on a government spending bill.

The money comes after back-to-back hurricanes — Helena and Milton — slammed into the southeastern United States this fall, leaving devastation in their wake. But the money would go to much more than just those two storms under a bill that was supposed to keep the federal government funded until March 14.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said that by passing the spending bill, House Democrats have stopped the “billionaires’ club.”

“We successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, wrecking the economy and hurting working-class Americans,” Jeffries told reporters after Friday’s vote, adding that the standoff was a “victory for the American people.”

Donald Trump has announced that Brian Burch, a critic of Pope Francis, is his choice for ambassador to the Vatican.

“I am pleased to announce that Brian Burch will serve as the next United States Ambassador to the Holy See. Brian is a devout Catholic, father of nine, and president of CatholicVote.

“He has received numerous awards and demonstrated exceptional leadership, helping to build one of the largest Catholic advocacy groups in the country. He represented me well in the last election, garnering more Catholic votes than any presidential candidate in history!

“Brian loves his Church and the United States – He will make us all proud. Congratulations to Brian, his wife Sara and their amazing family!”

Burch criticized the pope’s leadership on social media and shared the writing of some right-wing clerics who criticize him.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said he voted against the spending bill in “protest” against the way the government is run.

“Although I support keeping the government open, I voted no for CR – a simple protest at the absurd way the government is run,” he wrote on X.

The House of Representatives approved the government’s spending bill with just hours to go before a key midnight deadline that would shut down the government before Christmas.

The Senate followed suit around 40 minutes after midnight.

Read The Independent’s summarize here:

Deported by ICE 271,484 people this year, the most since 2014 when the agency deported more than 300,000 people, according to their fiscal year 2024 report.

In the days of the president’s decline Joe BidenThe government’s Highway Safety Administration is proposing voluntary safety guidelines for self-driving vehicles.

But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule setting up the plan will not be approved before the end of Biden’s term in January and will likely be left to whoever leads the agency under a Republican Donald Trump.

Director of Tesla Elon Muskappointed by Trump to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency” to cut costs and regulations, floated the idea of ​​helping develop safety standards for self-driving vehicles — even though the standards would affect Tesla’s automated driving systems.

Peter Mandelson’s the nomination to be the new British ambassador to the United States sparked outrage from within Donald Trump‘s team, with one insider describing it as a “terrible, arrogant” choice, and his campaign co-ordinator publicly calling Labor a “moron”.

Choice of the first EU Commissioner and the Blair-era minister, who previously attacked Trump as “little more than a white nationalist and a racist”, sparked a warning that Britain would be “locked out of key talks” with the president-elect’s team due to a lack of confidence.

Lord Mandelson’s appointment to Washington means three people in charge of building relations with the arrival administration everyone bashed Mr Trump: Foreign Secretary David Lammy once tweeted that Mr Trump was a “tyrant” and a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathizer”, while Foreign Secretary Stephen Doughty organized a petition in 2017 to prevent Trump from addressing joint session of parliament.