Seven Senate Democrats plus one independent voted on Sunday to support a Republican deal to reopen the US government.

The defections broke a weeks-long deadlock during which the Democratic Party resisted pressure to end the longest ever US shutdown.

During that period, the main reason the Democratic senators gave for refusing to back a funding deal was the expiry of healthcare subsidies – which they said would hit millions of households.

So who are the group who sided with the Republicans – and what have they said to justify crossing the floor?

Tim Kaine

The first thing to say about them all is that none of them faces re-election in 2026, and Virginia Senator Kaine is no different.

Known to many as Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election, he said he backed the Republican deal because it would protect workers and set the US on a path towards “fixing Republicans’ healthcare mess”.

• US Senate advances deal aimed at ending shutdown

His state is home to about 300,000 federal employees, many of whom are off work without pay because of the shutdown.

He said: “This legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay, as required by a law I got passed in 2019.”

Jeanne Shaheen

The New Hampshire senator was one of the architects of the deal that advanced on Sunday. She praised it as one that restores a cross-party spending process, including funds for food assistance and healthcare for military veterans.

“Weeks of negotiations with Republicans have made clear that they will not address healthcare as part of shutdown talks – and that waiting longer will only prolong the pain Americans are feeling because of the shutdown,” she said.

Maggie Hassan

New Hampshire’s other senator, Hassan told reporters her constituents had been hit hard by the shutdown and were now bracing for an impending spike in healthcare costs.

“My vote today was to do two things: both equally morally important and imperative,” she said.

Hassan spoke of the importance of a functioning government, “so that our kids eat, so that our elderly citizens eat, so that our air traffic controllers can get some sleep and earn money, get paid while they are working, so that our veterans are protected”.

In Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, the immigration debate has spilled into the streets, sparking almost daily demonstrations while immigration agents ramp up arrests.

But in El Paso – a city in Texas on the US-Mexico border – the streets are unusually quiet.

A year after the BBC last visited the border to understand the impact of the migrant crisis on the border, sites that were once teeming with migrants lie largely silent.

Just a few years ago, as many as 2,500 migrants once camped outside the city’s historic Sacred Heart Catholic church. Many lined the streets sleeping on donated blankets, idling while they waited for food and water to be distributed by local charities.

Now, only a handful of parishioners can be seen coming in and out of the church.

The same is true of a nearby park and of shelters throughout the city, where migrants once huddled to exchange their experiences of trudging through jungles and deserts or being detained, robbed or nearly kidnapped on their long journeys through Latin America to the border.

The influx prompted El Paso’s government to declare a state of emergency in late 2022 as local shelters ballooned beyond capacity.

Then, when US President Donald Trump came into office in January – elected in part because of his promise to fix the border – the regular flow of migrants into El Paso slowed to a trickle.

It is a trend that has repeated itself along the length of the 1,900-mile (3,145km) border, from the Pacific Coast in California toTexas’ Gulf coast.

Figures for detentions of border crossers are at a 50-year low.

In September alone – the last month for which complete data is available – 11,647 people were detained along the entirety of the US-Mexico border, compared with 101,000 in September 2024 and 269,700 the same month in 2023.

• Illegal border crossings lowest since 1970

One volunteer network, Annunciation House, once ran as many as 22 shelters throughout the region, catering in large part to thousands of migrants paroled into the US to await court dates, often years in the future.

There are now only two. The relative trickle of migrants – 15 to 20 in each location on a given night – is composed, in part, of those headed back home after years in the US.

“We have people who entered and were given employment authorisation, or temporary protected status that Trump has taken away, and they can’t renew their employment. Then they can’t pay rent,” Annunciation House director Ruben Garcia told the BBC.

Others, he added, are simply in need of a place to stay while “they can do the logistics” of leaving the country.

For some along the border, the new reality comes as a relief.

Demesio Guerrero, a naturalised US citizen originally from Mexico who lives in eastern Texas, described the border as “chaos everywhere” under the Biden administration.

“There were encampments everywhere along the border, with women, children and old people,” he said. “It was totally out of control.”

That chaos had now gone, he said, because Trump had a vision for how to fix the problem and did it. “He did what he had to do, where he had to do it.”

For six straight months, administration officials say, not a single undocumented migrant who was arrested was released into the US. Many have been deported, while others remain in immigration detention.

Flight delays and cancellations continue to snarl US air travel for a third day as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned air traffic will be “reduced to a trickle” if the US government shutdown continues.

Roughly 1,400 flights to, from, or within the US were cancelled and 2,700 delayed on Sunday morning, according to flight tracker FlightAware. The longest delays were reported in Newark, New Jersey – more than two hours on average.

In a hopeful sign, lawmakers are working on a possible deal to reach a compromise on government funding and end the shutdown, according to US media reports.

The Senate was scheduled to convene on Sunday in a rare weekend session.

Duffy warned the impacts on air travel will grow dire if they do not break the stalemate soon.

“You’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle,” he said on CNN on Sunday. He added that travellers trying to fly home for the Thanksgiving holiday later this month may not be able to get there.

“Many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up,” he said.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced last week that it would be reducing air travel capacity by up to 6% this weekend and 10% by next weekend at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports. The cuts do not apply to international flights, but some airlines may choose to also cancel some of those flights, the FAA said.

Air traffic controllers, who are not being paid during the shutdown, are reportedly fatigued and not coming to work, triggering the reductions in air traffic allowances.

Duffy said Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth offered to have military air traffic controllers step in to help but he declined the offer because they are not certified to direct air traffic at the civilian airports.

Altogether, hundreds of thousands of federal workers are not being paid since the Government ran out of money on 1 October. Food assistance for low-income Americans also has been in limbo, with the administration agreeing to pay only half of monthly benefits.

Sunday marked the 40th day of the longest shutdown in history as Republicans and Democrats still have not agreed on a funding resolution to reopen the government.

Republicans and Democrats have blamed each other for causing the impasse and for the travel disruptions.

The White House on Friday said Democrats are “inflicting their man-made catastrophe on Americans just trying to make life-saving medical trips or get home for Thanksgiving”.

Meanwhile, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on Saturday accused Republicans of “playing games with people’s livelihoods”.

Democrats have refused to back any Republican spending plan unless money for health insurance subsidies be included, while Republicans want to provide funding for the government without anything else attached.

President Donald Trump suggested over the weekend money should be sent directly to Americans to buy health insurance rather than to insurance companies.

Republican senators are working on a compromise package that could end the impasse with a vote to advance legislation possibly coming on Sunday.