Associated Press: “Many are left feeling that their livelihoods served as political pawns in the fight between recalcitrant lawmakers in Washington and are asking themselves whether the battle was worth their sacrifices.”

“Back pay owed to federal workers for the time they were furloughed during the government shutdown is expected to land in their bank accounts early next week,” CNBC reports.

“The turning point in the government’s longest shutdown didn’t involve President Trump or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Instead, after the Senate adjourned for the day and most reporters had emptied out of the halls, a small group of breakaway Democrats and an independent slipped unnoticed into the office of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD).”

Punchbowl News: “So who won? No one. This record-breaking shutdown was bad for the country, bad for the economy and especially bad for Congress as an institution — particularly the House. It was bad for hundreds of thousands of federal workers, it was bad for law enforcement, bad for military service members.”

“And closest to home, it was bad for the legions of Capitol Hill aides and employees who had to work without getting paid.”

“There were two competing visions about how this impasse would end. Democrats swore that President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune would cave and negotiate on health care. Republicans said they wouldn’t — and they didn’t. After more than 40 days of stalemate, Democrats folded a hand that was getting worse by the moment.”

Politico: “The bipartisan deal to end the funding lapse includes a long-term agreement on just three of the dozen bills lawmakers need to finish each year to keep cash flowing to federal programs. And those three measures are some of the easiest to rally around — including money for veterans programs, food aid, assistance for farmers and the operations of Congress itself.”

“Together, they represent only about 10 percent of the roughly $1.8 trillion Congress doles out each year to federal agencies. Under the deal, everything else is funded on a temporary basis through Jan. 30 at levels first set by Congress in March 2024, when Joe Biden was president.”

“That leaves behind major open decisions about the vast majority of discretionary dollars — including for the military and public health programs — along with the stickiest policy issues. It doesn’t help that House and Senate leaders still haven’t agreed on an overall total for fiscal 2026 spending, amid GOP divisions over how deeply to cut.”

Joe Klein: “Let’s keep this simple: shutdown politics is sandbox politics. For much of the public — those who live heavy lives and have more to think about than the tactical gullies rutted in the rules of Congressional procedure — shutdown politics is about politicians being stubborn, petty and stupid to little effect except human suffering. It is confirmation of the worst caricatures of right-wing populist democracy. It only works for nihilists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and would-be authoritarians like Donald Trump.”

“Democrats used to know this: If they are to be taken seriously, they must be the party that believes in the hard pull of governance, which is why their old symbol, now foolishly abandoned — the donkey, that working-class animal, the embodiment of stubborn effort — was so apt… Sweat, compromise and earnest effort to make lives better is the essential card Democrats have to play.”

“I can’t fucking believe it… They fucking caved on the shutdown, not even a full week removed from the best election night results they’ve had in years.”

— Jon Stewart, in a brutal take down of Democrats on the Daily Show.

“A federal appeals court late on Sunday allowed a judge’s order to stand that directs President Donald Trump’s administration to fully fund this month’s food aid benefits for 42 million low-income Americans during the ongoing government shutdown,” NBC News reports.

Dan Pfeiffer: “Well, no one can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like the Democrats.”

“Less than a week after a resounding victory — one Trump even blamed on the government shutdown — a group of Senate Democrats reached a deal with Senate Republican leadership and the Trump White House to open the government…”

“Some Democrats are trying to spin this whole thing as a win. That is absurd.”

“Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Americans may receive a tariff ‘dividend’ of at least $2,000 could come via the tax cuts passed in his signature economic policy bill earlier this year,” Bloomberg reports.

Bessent was asked about a social media post by Trump earlier Sunday that derided people who oppose tariffs and said a “dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

“The Trump administration told states that they must ‘immediately undo’ any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the government shutdown,” the New York Times reports.