US government shuts down as Trump threatens to fire a 'lot of people'

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : READ | Oregon sues Trump administration over troop deployment in 'war ravaged' Portland The shutdown, the first such funding lapse since 2018, means that some government services deemed to be non-essential will come to a halt, including the publication of key economic data and loan approvals for small businesses.
35% : "We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programmes that they like," Trump said, adding that "a lot of good" can come from government shutdowns.
35% : "I think that it is impossible to predict what Trump is going to do," Gerald Epstein, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, told Al Jazeera.
33% : While hundreds of thousands of federal employees were placed on temporary leave and received back pay upon returning to work during previous shutdowns, Trump has threatened to use the current funding lapse to fire a "lot of people".
19% : Speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump warned that he could use the shutdown to take actions that are "bad" for Democrats.
8% : "And they're Democrats; they're going to be Democrats," Trump said. Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer under former US president George W Bush, called the threats "typical of President Trump's strong-arm tactics".

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