Government services that had been curtailed or suspended entirely will resume. Air travel, which had become a nightmare for many Americans, will return to being merely frustrating.

After the dust settles and the ink from President Donald Trump's signature on the funding bill dries, what has this record-setting shutdown accomplished? And what has it cost? Senate Democrats, through their use of the parliamentary filibuster, were able to trigger the shutdown despite being a minority in the chamber by refusing to go along with a Republican measure to temporarily fund the government. They drew a line in the sand, demanding that the Republicans agree to extend health insurance subsidies for low-income Americans that are set to expire at the end of the year. When a handful of Democrats broke ranks to vote to reopen the government on Sunday, they received next to nothing in return – a promise of a vote in the Senate on the subsidies, but no guarantees of Republican support or even a necessary vote in the House of Representatives.

Since then, members of the party's left flank have been furious. They've accused Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer – who didn't vote for the funding bill – of being secretly complicit in the reopening plan or simply incompetent. They've felt like their party folded even after off-year election success showed they had the upper hand. They feared that the shutdown sacrifices had been for nothing. Even more mainstream Democrats, like California's Governor Gavin Newsom, called the shutdown deal "pathetic" and a "surrender". "I'm not coming in to punch anybody in the face," he told the Associated Press, "but I'm not pleased that, in the face of this invasive species that is Donald Trump, who's completely changed the rules of the game, that we're still playing by the old rules of the game." (BBC)