Donald Trump has signed legislation ending the longest government shutdown in the US.
But despite hailing the long-awaited funding bill, the US President did not field questions from the media as questions swirled around him following the release of thousands of files related to Jeffrey Epstein just hours earlier.
The Republican-controlled chamber passed the package by a vote of 222-209, with Trump's support largely keeping his party together in the face of vehement opposition from House Democrats.
Trump's signature on the bill, which cleared the Senate earlier in the week, will bring federal workers back to their jobs following a 43-day shutdown.
"We can never let this happen again," Trump said in the Oval Office during a late-night signing ceremony that he used to criticise Democrats. "This is no way to run a country."
The deal extends funding through January 30, leaving the federal government on a path to keep adding about $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion in debt.
It came hours after the House of Representatives voted to restart disrupted food assistance, pay hundreds of thousands of federal workers and revive a hobbled air-traffic control system – just two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday.
The vote came eight days after Democrats won several high-profile elections that many in the party thought strengthened their odds of winning an extension of health insurance subsidies, which are due to expire at the end of the year.
While the deal sets up a December vote on those subsidies in the Senate, Speaker Mike Johnson has made no such promise in the House.
Despite the recriminations, neither party appears to have won a clear victory from the standoff.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 50% of Americans blamed Republicans for the shutdown, while 47% blamed Democrats.
The vote came on the Republican-controlled House's first day in session since mid-September, a long recess intended to put pressure on Democrats.
The chamber's return also set the clock ticking on a vote to release all unclassified records related to late convicted sex offender Epstein - something Trump has resisted up to now.
Democrats released three emails relating to Epstein on Wednesday, including one from 2019 in which the disgraced financier wrote that Trump “knew about the girls”.
What exactly Epstein was referring to is unclear.
In another, from 2011, Epstein told confidant Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump had "spent hours" at Epstein's house with a sex trafficking victim.
The name of the victim if redacted in the released copy, but Republicans later said it was Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with a number of his rich and powerful friends.
Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.
Giuffre, who died earlier this year, long insisted that Trump was not among the men who had victimised her.
In an April 2, 2011, email to Ghislaine Maxwell, the former Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote, "I want you to realize that that dog that hasn't barked is Trump. Virginia spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there."
Maxwell replied the same day: "I have been thinking about that."
Being named in the emails is not evidence of any criminal activity, and Trump has vehemently and consistently denied knowing about Epstein's sex trafficking.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
