The White House is ordering federal employees back to work Thursday, as the government reopens following a historic shutdown that furloughed about 600,000 federal employees, shuttered offices and froze billions in salaries and payments.

The backlog of work could take federal employees weeks to resolve.

The longest government shutdown in US history has ended, but it could take days — and in some cases a week or more — before normal operations resume.

In this year’s elections, Democrats across the political spectrum built their campaigns around a single word: affordability. It paid off.

A top CIA official warned that an extended government shutdown could pose serious national security risks to the US, and that the foreign intelligence agency was already struggling to fund some critical operations.