The U.S. government shut down Oct. 1, 2025 because Congress, which is responsible for passing the government’s yearly budget, could not garner the votes to do so.
Toward the end of October, as the shutdown approached its one-month mark, social media users made posts claiming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had demanded certain things from Republicans in order to reopen the government. The posts, which cited an Oct. 28 news conference from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, claimed one thing Schumer demanded was $4 million dedicated to LGBTQ+ awareness campaigns around the world. Johnson called Schumer’s reported asks a no-go in the news conference: “We’re not doing that.”
Snopes readers also wrote in looking for more information on the claim in the wake of Johnson’s news conference.
We found no evidence to support the idea that Schumer — or any Congressional Democrat — specifically demanded $4 million dedicated to LGBTQ+ awareness campaigns in order to reopen the government. (It’s important to note that the posts online spreading the claim specifically blamed Schumer. Johnson never claimed the demand came from Schumer — he blamed the Democratic party as a whole.)
Rescinding federal spending
Johnson’s claim echoed Republicans’ long-term talking point of how the GOP cuts so-called waste from the government while Democrats want to spend taxpayer money.
In July 2025, Republicans passed a bill rescinding more than $9 billion in funding from what was the largest foreign assistance agency in the world, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS stations nationwide.
In August, President Donald Trump issued an unprecedented (and according to opponents, illegal, though the Supreme Court later issued a shadow docket ruling favoring him) “pocket rescission” on an additional $5 billion in funding that had already been approved. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, those funds would expire at the end of the 2025 fiscal year.
The official rescission process lets the White House withhold funds for 45 days while Congress decides what to do, according to Politico. The funds in question in this case were less than 45 days from expiring, meaning they were effectively rescinded without any input from Congress.
On Aug. 29, the White House published information highlighting some of the awards it said were included in the pocket rescission. It included the purported $4 million grant for LGBTQ+ awareness campaigns that Johnson claimed Democrats wanted reinstated.
According to Politico, a Democratic proposal to reopen the government first published in September involves provisions that would hamper Trump’s ability to rescind funds without Congressional approval. It involved extending the deadline on funding, thus taking the funds out of the 45-day window where the White House could withhold funds without Congressional approval.
We reached out to both Schumer and Johnson’s offices for comment, and neither responded as of this writing. We will update this story if they do.
Why did the government shut down?
Understanding the claim requires explaining why the government shut down in the first place, which requires understanding one effect of the massive piece of tax and spending legislation Trump signed into law in July, the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
Since 2010, when then-President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Republicans (who opposed its passage) have repeatedly attempted to repeal it, either in parts or in whole. For instance, then-Sen. John McCain famously made a “thumbs down” gesture while bucking his party to vote against a bill that would repeal parts of the ACA in 2017, the last time Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.
Given that Republicans again held the presidency and had majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate in 2025, it was only natural they wanted to try cutting back the government’s health insurance system again. Their budget bill contained billions of dollars in tax breaks as well as billions of dollars in reductions to government spending — including a 12% cut to Medicaid, according to The New York Times.
But the critical point involved in the shutdown was something the budget bill did not do — it declined to extend tax credits originally implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic that, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (which is in charge of producing reports informing members of Congress how proposed laws would affect the nation’s budget), reduce the out-of-pocket costs for premiums on health insurance obtained through the ACA marketplace. Getting rid of those tax credits will cause premiums to skyrocket, meaning patients must pay more up front to be insured.
As Johnson correctly noted in his news conference, legislation to fund the federal government requires 60 votes in order to break a filibuster in the Senate. Because Republicans control 53 seats in the Senate, they need seven Democratic votes in order to fund the government. Democrats refused to approve any budget proposal that didn’t extend those tax breaks. Republicans said they would only discuss extending those tax breaks when the budget proposal was approved. The two parties deadlocked, and the government shut down.
Since then, both parties have taken turns largely reiterating their stances — Democrats claim Republicans are refusing to negotiate, while Republicans claim Democrats are holding the government hostage in order to get their way. “Republicans are not demanding anything,” Mike Johnson said during the news conference. “Literally nothing. All we want is to reopen the government.”
Republicans aren’t willing to backtrack on parts of their signature piece of legislation, while Democrats don’t seem to believe Republicans would actually come to the bargaining table if they vote to reopen the government. As Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told Politico, “Nobody has any incentive to reach a deal if it’s not going to be honored.”
Where does LGBTQ+ awareness come in?
In his Oct. 28 news conference, Johnson claimed Democrats were “demanding … some really crazy things” in order to secure votes to reopen the government.
In addition to the tax credits, Johnson claimed Democrats were demanded reinstating billions in foreign-aid programs and $500 million to “left-leaning news organizations.” That was an apparent nod to the July rescission passed by Congress and the pocket rescission Trump approved in late August.
The supposed $4 million for global LGBTQ+ awareness campaigns was just one of the programs Johnson later described as Democrats wanting to “send money to foreign countries.” Snopes found a grant that closely matched Johnson’s description on USASpending, the federal government’s public grant database. USAID issued the grant to an organization called Outright International in 2022, and the grant was set to run through 2027. The grant’s description read:
THE ALLIANCE FOR GLOBAL EQUALITY (ALLIANCE) SEEKS TO ADVANCE THE HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL INCLUSION OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER, QUEER, AND INTERSEX (LGBTQI+) PEOPLE IN PRIORITY COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD.
USASpending did not note that grant was rescinded by either the July or August rescissions. Snopes contacted Outright International to ask for information about the grant, including whether it had been rescinded, but had not heard back.
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