Considered by some to be extreme, rhetoric that academics call Christian nationalism has become more prominent in Indiana politics.

On "The Breakfast Club" Wednesday, co-host Charlamagne Tha God urged Democrats to reopen the government and "stop playing politics with people's lives."

The U.S. government is due to lumber back to life on Thursday after the longest shutdown in U.S. history snarled air traffic, cut food assistance to low-income Americans and forced more than 1 million workers to go unpaid for more than a month.

The Congressional Budget Office says that the negative impact on the economy will be mostly recovered once the shutdown ends, but not entirely. It estimated the permanent economic loss at about $11 billion for a six-week shutdown.

House Speaker Mike Johnson accused top Democrats of putting politics before Americans in need after Congress voted to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Over the last week, cable news and political columns have been thick with criticism of the Republican Party for not paying attention to what voters want. “Last night was a disaster,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said on Fox’s “Hannity.

But either way – responding to crisis or finding a public change of heart – is a reminder that voters are the ultimate arbiters in a functioning democracy. Today, as in late-19th-century America, elections make a difference. They can mark continued division or they can take the nation in a new, and perhaps more unified, direction.

(This story was updated to correct an error and to add a comment.) In the eleventh hour, a federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration must continue paying ...

The government continues to reopen two days after the longest shutdown in history, with states reviving SNAP and airlines getting planes in place.

Food assistance benefits were cut off in November due to the government shutdown. That's led a handful of state agencies to post messages blaming Republicans or Democrats for the shutdown on official websites.