US President Donald Trump marked the first anniversary of his inauguration Saturday with his government in shutdown, accusing Democrats of taking Americans hostage with their demands and putting immigrants ahead of the nation’s military.
As the clock struck midnight, in the absence of an agreed spending plan, federal services began to come to a halt or be scaled back, AFP reported.
Essential services and military activity will continue but many public sector workers will be sent home without wages and even serving soldiers will not be paid until a deal is reached to reopen the US government.
“Democrats are far more concerned with illegal immigrants than they are with our great military or safety at our dangerous southern border,” Trump wrote in an early morning tweet.
Democrats accused Republicans of poisoning chances of a deal and pandering to Trump’s populist base by refusing to fund a program that protects 700,000 “Dreamers – undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children–from deportation. Trump shelved plans to fly to Florida to celebrate at his Mar-a-Lago estate the first anniversary of his inauguration to remain in Washington to ride out the storm.
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