WASHINGTON - The U.S. government was two days from a partial shutdown on Friday, as a handful of hardline House Republicans refused to support a bipartisan stopgap spending bill meant to give lawmakers more time to negotiate a full-year deal. The National Park Service will close, the Securities and Exchange Commission will suspend most of its regulatory activities, and hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be furloughed beginning at 12:01 a.m. ET on Sunday (0401 GMT on Sunday) if Congress does not pass a spending package that can be signed into law by President Joe Biden before then. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives was due to hold ...Keep on reading: Hardline Republican holdouts push U.S. gov’t closer to shutdown