With a bipartisan Senate vote to approve funding the federal government now in the books, the longest shutdown in US history appears to be drawing to a close.
Furloughed federal employees will return to work. They, and those who were deemed too "essential" to send home, will start receiving pay cheques – including back pay – once again.
Air travel in the US will return to a somewhat tolerable normal. Food aid for low-income Americans will resume. National parks will reopen.
The ordeals, great and small, that the shutdown had triggered for many Americans will end.
The political consequences of this record standoff, however, will linger even as the government returns to work.
