Oct. 11, 2025 - Government shutdown updates

Our coverage of the government shutdown and the Trump administration has ended for the day. Explore more stories here or scroll through the posts below.

Passengers wait to board a flight at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta on July 2.

Three Federal Aviation Administration facilities are short-staffed Saturday evening, according to an FAA operations plan.

A 2 p.m. ET update included additional staffing warnings for New York Air Route Traffic Control Center until 3 p.m. ET.

The facility that handles flights approaching and departing Atlanta is experiencing staffing shortages from 4:30 p.m. ET to 8:30 p.m. ET.

The Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center in New Mexico has staffing shortages reported from 6 p.m. ET to 1 a.m. ET.

Not all staffing problems result in delays as air traffic controllers can sometimes divert planes to other airspace with more controllers, but occasionally planes must be slowed down for safety.

Air traffic controllers, along with Transportation Security Administration officers, are considered essential employees and have to work during the shutdown, despite not being paid.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suffered a round of deep staff cuts late last night, with disease detectives, outbreak forecasters, policy and data offices among those impacted, according to four sources with knowledge of the layoffs.

“The administration did not like that CDC data did not support their narrative, so they got rid of them. They didn’t like that CDC policy groups would not rubber stamp their unscientific ideas, so they got rid of them,” said an agency official who asked not to be named for fear of losing their job.

The notices were emailed shortly after 9 p.m. The exact number of cuts is still being assessed.

The CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, which trains the agency’s celebrated “disease detectives,” lost at least 30 of the staff who coordinate the program, and 40 EIS officers who were in their second year of training, according to a second agency official who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

More than 130 employees were laid off from the office of the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which coordinated activities for the entire center, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who recently resigned as the director of the NCIRD.

The layoffs come as the country is heading into the winter respiratory virus season.

“The damage is beyond repair,” Daskalakis said. “Crippling CDC, even as a ploy to create political pressure to end the government shut down, means America is even less prepared for outbreaks and infectious disease security threats.”

All the staff at the agency’s the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a journal known as the MMWR that has published surveillance data on the nation’s health for over a century, were also fired, according to Houry.

Military leaders listen as US President Donald Trump speaks at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia, on September 30.

President Donald Trump said Saturday that “we have identified funds” to pay military troops on October 15 as the government shutdown is headed into a third week.

In a post to Truth Social, Trump said he will “direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th.”

“We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS,” he wrote.

The funds for military pay will come from the Pentagon’s research and development money that’s available for two years, according to a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget.

The Pentagon said in a statement that it “has identified approximately $8 billion of unobligated research development testing and evaluation funds” from the prior fiscal year that will be used to issue paychecks if the shutdown continues past October 15.

Some context: As service members were in danger of missing their first paychecks, congressional GOP leaders had rejected the idea of voting on a standalone bill for military pay, marking the most dramatic step yet to attempt to force Democrats to end the shutdown.

Trump had previously promised that service members would still be paid despite the government shutdown.

“We will get our service members every last penny. Don’t worry about it,” Trump said at a Navy event in Norfolk, Virginia, last weekend.

This post has been updated with additional information.

The secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees compared the situations of essential federal workers — who still have to report to their jobs during the government shutdown despite not receiving paychecks — to slavery during an interview this morning.

Johnny Jones told CNN’s Victor Blackwell the US is the only country he’s aware of “that forced people to go to work without being paid,” adding that it reminds him of “somebody building pyramids back 4,000 years ago.”

“Those would be slaves,” Blackwell responded, “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Correct,” said Jones. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

AFGE President Everett Kelley pushed back on the comment during a later interview with Blackwell.

Federal employees who fall under the umbrella of “essential workers” notably include Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers and air traffic controllers, all of whom had been working without pay since the shutdown started on October 1.

But they remain eligible for back pay once the shutdown ends — an idea that President Donald Trump recently questioned.

Still, the stress induced by the shutdown and its resulting missing paychecks has led to an uptick in people calling out sick in recent days, as CNN has reported. The resulting staffing shortages have impacted air travel across many of the country’s major hubs by way of flight delays and cancellations.

President Donald Trump walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday.

As we bring you today’s latest headlines from the Trump administration and government shutdown, read some of CNN’s latest reporting and analysis on the Gaza ceasefire, the president’s crime and immigration crackdown and the trade war:

• Trump says there’s consensus “for the most part” between Israel and Hamas on what the next steps of his Gaza ceasefire plan will look like, adding that hostages are being retrieved “now.” Follow live updates.

• Here’s how Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy — who is often referred to in Trump circles simply as “the prime minister” — has spearheaded the federal government’s crime and immigration crackdown in Democratic cities.

• Trump got his Covid vaccine and flu shot during a visit for his “semi-annual” exam at Walter Reed Medical Center yesterday, according to his physician. The visit comes as Trump has been under some scrutiny over his health.

• Check out Daniel Dale’s fact check on Trump’s repeated claim that he has secured “$17 trillion” in investment this year.

• The US trade war with China has a major sticking point: rare earth minerals. Here’s what you need to know about them.

• CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf has analysis on Trump’s back flip concerning free speech.

• An exclusive CNN report found the Trump administration sought to block Muslim groups from receiving FEMA security funding. You can watch more below from CNN’s Gabe Cohen, and subscribers can read the full story here.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine's president, at a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated President Donald Trump for his “outstanding achievement” in securing a ceasefire in Gaza during a “very positive and productive” phone call.

Zelensky said that “if a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well—including the Russian war.”

The pair also discussed Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system and ways to bolster the country’s air defenses, Zelensky said in a post in X, “as well as concrete agreements that we are working on to ensure this.”

“There needs to be readiness on the Russian side to engage in real diplomacy - this can be achieved through strength. Thank you, Mr. President!” he said.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

GOP leaders will not step in to prevent missed paychecks to the military. It’s the most dramatic step yet by Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson to attempt to force Democrats to end the government shutdown, even as they realize their party will, too, face political pain for the move.

And it comes at a high-stakes moment for both parties: This will be the first time in recent history that active-duty military service members will miss a paycheck on a large scale during a shutdown.

As the shutdown drags into its third week, tensions are rising in the GOP with no clear way out. Lawmakers are angry at each other for getting into now-viral hallway confrontations with Democrats or doing high-profile interviews where they blame their own party for the lapse. Some are angry at GOP leadership for failing to address the military pay issue from the start, or for the optics of keeping the House out of session for weeks on end. But those CNN spoke with expressed an acute anger at Senate Democrats.

Thune and Johnson are publicly resolute in their position and the party remains in lockstep on big-picture strategy: Republicans will make no guarantee on Affordable Care Act subsidies and the only way out of a shutdown is for Senate Democrats to retreat, despite any political pain that the GOP will feel in the coming days and weeks over the missed paychecks, according to interviews with two dozen lawmakers and senior aides. It underscores the depth of Congress’ ugly stalemate, with Democrats equally dug in.

Read more about the current state — and high stakes — of the shutdown.

The main campus of the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention is seen on April 1 in Atlanta.

Staffers in numerous divisions of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received reduction in force notifications late yesterday, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Notices went out to some workers in the following CDC offices:

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday.

President Donald Trump said yesterday that he plans to fire “a lot” of federal workers in retaliation for the government shutdown, vowing to target those deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party.

“It’ll be a lot of people,” he said from the Oval Office. “I must tell you, a lot of them happen to be Democrat-oriented.”

Trump did not specify how many workers would be laid off as part of the reduction in force that his administration announced earlier in the day, nor did he provide details on what qualified them as “Democrat-oriented.”

The Trump administration revealed in a court filing yesterday evening that more than 4,000 federal employees were laid off.

Trump blamed Democratic lawmakers for the cuts, arguing that their refusal to reopen the government forced his administration’s hand.

More than 4,000 federal employees received layoff notices Friday as part of the Trump administration’s broad effort to reshape the government while it remains shutdown, according to a court filing Friday.

The filing provides greater insight into an announcement from President Donald Trump’s budget chief earlier in the day that the administration had begun government-wide reductions in force that had been anticipated since federal funding lapsed on October 1.

“The RIFs have begun,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted on X, without elaborating on how many federal workers had received RIF — or reduction in force — notices.

As of Friday evening, RIF notices had gone out to employees at the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury, according to department spokespeople, union representatives and sources directly impacted.

Treasury and HHS saw the highest number of reductions, with more than 1,000 workers laid off at each department, according to the filing in a lawsuit brought by two federal employee unions seeking to stop the layoffs.