'It's a great day!' Donald Trump formally ends longest US Government shutdown in history

Donald Trump has formally ended the US Government shutdown after 43 days.

Earlier, Congress passed the Bill by 222 votes to 209 - it needed 215 "yea" votes in order to pass after the Senate gave it the go-ahead just days ago.

The President then signed off on it shortly after 3am, UK time.

"I just want to tell the American people: You should not forget this when we come up to the midterms," he warned - and accused the Democrats of being "happy for millions of Americans to suffer".

Before signing off on the Bill, Mr Trump declared: "The country has never been in better shape... It's a great day."

A total of six Democrats backed the Republican-led measure on Capitol Hill.

Applause rang out in the chamber after the vote went through.

Congresspeople were seen hugging and smiling as the longest shutdown in US history came to an end.

After the President formally gave the Bill the green light, food assistance programmes will be fired back up, US Government workers will be paid, and a chaos-ridden air traffic control system may be nursed back to life.

ATC workers - as well as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents who had to work without pay were forced to take second jobs during the shutdown.

This led to nationwide flight delays and cancellations at some of America's busiest airports.

Some federal employees and contractors are set to go back to work as soon as Thursday morning.

The Bipartisan Policy Centre says 670,000 staff were furloughed during the shutdown, with another 730,000 made to work without pay.

Those hundreds of thousands will now receive their payslips - while those who weren't working can go back to the office.

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Tonight's Bill also made cannabis-derived hemp illegal again. Its legalisation in 2018 led to the start of the multi-billion-dollar industry of "low dosage THC" products in the States.

"I feel like I just lived a Seinfeld episode. We just spent 40 days and I still don't know what the plotline was," Republican Representative David Schweikert of Arizona had said earlier.

While House Speaker Mike Johnson declared "the Democrat shutdown is finally over" after the vote, adding: "We feel very relieved tonight."

Mr Johnson blasted that the outcome was "totally foreseeable", with the shutdown itself "utterly pointless and foolish".

"Millions of families went without food on their table," he said. "It was a game they played with real people's lives."

And the President earlier accused Democrats of "using the Jeffrey Epstein hoax" to deflect from the shutdown.

"Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap," he said.

Senators voted through their own Bill to end the shutdown earlier this week.

A breakthrough agreement to bring the longest shutdown in history to a close secured cross-party backing - with a formal vote passing in the Capitol 60-40.