The Senate on Sunday took a crucial step toward reopening the government when a group of seven Democrats and Senator Angus King, a Maine independent, broke from their party and voted with Republicans to advance legislation that would end the longest government shutdown in history

The shutdown is not over yet. The 60-to-40 vote cleared the way for the Senate to formally debate the spending measure before a final vote. If the Senate approves it, the package still must be passed by the House — which has been on an extended recess and has not yet scheduled a return date — and signed by President Trump.

How Every Senator Voted

The US Senate took the first step to end the longest shutdown in history on Sunday night, after a group of Democratic lawmakers crossed party lines and endorsed a compromise plan to reopen the government.

Eight Democrats voted along with all but one Republican senator to advance a deal, which was negotiated behind closed doors by rank-and-file Democrats, Republican senators and the White House. The final vote was 60-40 in favour of advancing the agreement.

A deal would reopen the federal government and keep it funded until the end of January. It would also reverse the lay-offs initiated by the White House during the shutdown and guarantee that furloughed workers receive back pay, while including a concession by Democrats on healthcare tax credits that have been a key sticking point in the funding stand-off.

After Sunday’s procedural vote, the deal will now need to be debated and passed by the Senate and signed off by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives before the shutdown can end.

US President Donald Trump appeared confident late on Sunday, the 40th day of the shutdown. “It looks like we are getting close to the shutdown ending,” he told reporters. “You’ll know very soon.”

The Senate vote was a breakthrough in a shutdown that has dragged on for nearly six weeks, rattling the federal workforce, bringing many public services to a halt and jeopardising welfare benefits for tens of millions of Americans.

Tim Kaine, Democratic senator for Virginia and one of the eight to side with Republicans, said a possible deal would “protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay”.

However, the vote exposed deep divisions among Democrats as many lawmakers accused fellow party members of caving in to Republican demands.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, voted against the deal, while Hakeem Jeffries, his counterpart in the House, said he would also oppose it.

The agreement included a concession by Democrats on healthcare tax credits, which are due to expire at the end of the year and which the Democratic party has insisted should be extended. Trump on Saturday poured cold water on the idea of an extension.

The deal struck on Sunday gives no guarantees on the future of the tax credits but only offers an assurance that a vote will be held on the issue no later than mid-December.

“We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives,” Jeffries said. “As a result of the Republican refusal to address the healthcare crisis that they have created, tens of millions of everyday Americans are going to see their costs skyrocket.”

Sunday’s vote came after top Trump administration officials warned that US air travel would slow to a “trickle” and economic growth could turn negative if the stalemate continued for much longer.

US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said the economic impact of the shutdown would only get “worse and worse”.

US futures tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 rose 0.7 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively on Monday.

Yields on 10-year US Treasuries rose 0.04 percentage points to 4.14 per cent. Bond yields move inversely to prices. 

The government shut down on October 1, after Republican and Democratic lawmakers failed to agree on a plan to fund the government for the new federal fiscal year.

Funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) lapsed on November 1 for the first time in more than 60 years, affecting 40mn-plus poorer Americans who rely on the benefits.

On Friday the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates air travel in the US, ordered airlines to begin reducing flight numbers. More than 2,700 flights were cancelled in the US on Sunday, according to tracking website FlightAware, while more than 10,000 others were delayed.

Richard Yetsenga, chief economist and head of research at ANZ, said the shutdown had contributed to falling bond yields and a correction in gold prices. “If the shutdown’s over I would expect a reversion of some of those shifts.” 

Additional reporting by William Sandlund in Hong Kong

The resignations of the BBC’s director general and its head of news over claims of bias were “a coup” orchestrated from the inside, a former newspaper editor has claimed.

David Yelland, who edited the Sun from 1998 to 2003, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday that the departures of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness followed the systematic undermining of them by people close to the BBC board over a lengthy period.

“It was a coup, and worse than that, it was an inside job. There were people inside the BBC, very close to the board … on the board, who have systematically undermined Tim Davie and his senior team over a period of [time] and this has been going on for a long time. What happened yesterday didn’t just happen in isolation,” Yelland, who also co-presents the BBC podcast When it Hits the Fan, said.

“What has happened here is there was a failure of governance. I don’t blame the chairman [Samir Shah] as an individual, but the job of the chair of any organisation, a company – including the BBC – is to keep their CEO, their top man or woman, in post or fire them. And that has not happened, because Tim Davie was not fired. He walked and so there was, that is the definition of, a failure of governance.”

The resignations on Sunday followed days of attacks from the White House and rightwing commentators in the UK that were prompted by claims published by the Daily Telegraph.

The paper reported a leaked record of the findings of a former independent external adviser to its editorial guidelines and standards committee, Michael Prescott, who left his role in the summer.

He had criticised the editing of a speech by Donald Trump in an edition of Panorama, which he claimed made it appear that Trump had encouraged the US Capitol attack. Two sections of the speech that were spliced together were made an hour apart, and the edit did not note that Trump had also said he wanted his supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Yelland’s criticisms echo a mood of dismay described by sources within BBC News on Sunday night, with one saying: “It feels like a coup. This is the result of a campaign by political enemies of the BBC.”

Others, including Sky’s former political editor Adam Boulton, have said the overall impression that Trump egged on the insurrection was fundamentally true. It is not unusual practice to edit together sections of a long speech to accurately summarise it.

Davie said his departure would not be immediate and that he was “working through” timings to ensure an “orderly transition” over the coming months. Turness said controversy around the Panorama edit had “reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC – an institution that I love”.

On Monday, the BBC journalist Nick Robinson said there had been paralysis at the top of the BBC because, while its senior journalists wanted to apologise for the editing error – but insist there was “no intention to mislead” the audience – the politically appointed directors wanted to go further.

Shah is expected to apologise on Monday to the Commons’ culture, media and sport committee, and to provide further details on the Panorama episode in his response to the Commons culture media and sport committee, which had asked how he would address the concerns.

Speaking after the resignations, the government minister Louise Sandher-Jones rejected suggestions the BBC was institutionally biased. The veterans minister told Sky News: “When you look at the huge range of domestic issues, local issues, international issues, that it has to cover, I think its output is very trusted. When I speak to people who’ve got very strongly held views on those, they’re still using the BBC for a lot of their information, it’s forming their views on this.”