US lawmakers have announced a tentative deal to avert another government shutdown, raising hopes that Congress can pass a spending bill before the Friday deadline, if President Donald Trump decides to sign it.
For weeks a team of bipartisan lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate have been working behind closed doors to hammer out a deal that would satisfy Mr Trump’s demands for funding for a US-Mexico border barrier, while also mollifying Democrats who repeatedly stated during the course of the earlier partial federal government shutdown that they would not give the president money for his wall.
While congressional negotiators did not share immediate details about the agreement that had been struck, they suggested that it would resolve issues about the number of beds at detention centres as well as how much money should be allocated for border barriers.