Reposted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/us/politics/government-shutdown-effects.html
Reverberations of the federal government shutdown, now in its second week, are starting to be felt by certain segments of Americans, hinting at problems that could deepen for the public if Congress cannot reach a funding agreement soon.
In some Native American communities, key medical services, such as diabetes monitoring and telehealth sessions, have been curtailed or canceled. Veterans no longer have access to career counseling or regional benefits offices. Taxpayers rushing to meet a Wednesday deadline for extended filing are going to have to wait on hold because fewer Internal Revenue Service customer service agents are working to answer questions.
In addition, many of the country’s fruit and vegetable farmers face hurdles in planning for next year’s crops because there is so much uncertainty about what federal assistance they can expect. Large segments of the federal work force on Friday received what will be their last paycheck until the government reopens.
And the Trump administration said on Friday that more than 4,000 federal employees will be laid off in a new round of mass firings, a maneuver that is already facing a legal challenge.
As the strains deepen, the fallout has so far done little to tip the scales in Washington, where Republicans and Democrats are locked in a standoff over how to extend funding to keep the government open.
President Trump has sought to ramp up the pressure on Democrats by cutting or pausing billions in funding for Democratic jurisdictions and intensifying his threats to overhaul the federal bureaucracy. This week, he publicly mulled denying legally mandated back pay to some federal workers, inserting more anxiety into a work force that has faced stress and uncertainty since he returned to the Oval Office.
“Most of them are going to get back pay, and we’re going to try and make sure of that,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday. “But some of them are being hurt very badly by the Democrats and they therefore won’t qualify.”
The White House did not respond directly to a question seeking to clarify what the president meant, instead issuing a statement blaming Democrats for the shutdown.
About 600,000 federal workers are furloughed because of the shutdown. Others are working without pay because they hold jobs the administration considers critical to protecting property and keeping people safe.
Employees at the General Services Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services were among those who received their last paychecks on Friday, which were smaller than usual because the pay period included four days of the shutdown.
Others, including employees at the National Park Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration, are expected to see a similarly partial, final paycheck next week. Federal workers are required by law to be paid back once the government reopens.
Yolanda Jacobs, a single mother of three, said getting furloughed from her job as a health specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meant she had to immediately cut back on spending. She said her family liked to go to the movies once a week. “That stops until the shutdown ends,” she said. “Eating out — that’s out of the question.”
Ms. Jacobs, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, has worked at the agency since 2004 and weathered several shutdowns over the years. This one, however is different, she said.
“We’ve never had a shutdown before where federal employees have been used as bargaining chips,” she said, adding that it was taking an especially hard toll on C.D.C. workers who were already under stress. A gunman attacked the agency’s Atlanta headquarters in August.
Among the furloughed workers are those who administer grants and oversee programs relied upon by states and communities.
The Indian Health Service is one of the federal agencies that continue to operate during a lapse in funding, but some federal employees who support its programs are not working. In California, that has interfered with the ability of caregivers to submit reports and get approval for reimbursements, said Nanette Star, the director of policy and planning for the California Consortium for Urban Indian Health. This has already had an impact on diabetic American Indians and Alaska Natives in California who rely on the program for health monitoring, she said.
“Indian Country is the canary in the coal mine,” said Larry Wright Jr., the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. Federal funds often make up a greater share of revenue for Native American tribes than for state governments, because of a longstanding federal trust role for Native lands, he noted, adding, “When the government shuts down, tribes feel it first.”
The shutdown has also scrambled planning for American farmers, many of whom were beginning to make decisions about next year’s crops. Those plans depend on information only the federal government can provide, such as what loans, farm and conservation payments will be available and specific market data to help make decisions about what to plant.
Stu Swanson, who grows corn and soybeans in north-central Iowa, said that because the federal employees who work at the local Agriculture Department office are furloughed, he was not able to get a low-interest loan he counts on when planning for the coming year. As a result, he said he recently had to go to a bank and borrow money at a higher rate.
“As we end one season, we have to already be planning the next one,” said Joe Maxwell, a Missouri-based farmer who raises sheep and grows grains. “We’re under a heck of a lot of financial stress, and now we don’t have information or the tools or programs we need to even know if there’s going to be a next year on our farm.”
It has been a particularly difficult year for farmers already because of the president’s trade war, said Mr. Maxwell, who serves as the president of the Farm Action Fund, a group that fights agriculture monopolies. In addition, about 25 percent of the nation’s farmers rely on the Affordable Care Act for insurance, he said, and they cannot afford for their health care costs to triple at the end of the year if Congress does not extend the tax breaks that help pay for the coverage.
The cost of health care is at the center of the congressional impasse that led to the shutdown. As of Friday, there was still no sign of a path to a compromise.
Officials are keeping a close eye on flight delays to see if more air traffic controllers are calling out sick than usual and causing lags. The controllers are forced to work during a shutdown without pay.
While there have been some scattered reports of staffing problems at air traffic control towers, the cause and severity are unclear. Union officials have said that there is no organized effort among the country’s nearly 11,000 certified controllers to protest the shutdown by not showing up to work and noted that there was already a national shortage of controllers.
In some cases, federal offices that continued to operate during the first week of the shutdown have started to furlough employees as carry-over funds from the last fiscal year dried up.
Some employees at the Environmental Protection Agency’s air and water offices, who oversee the safety of drinking water, were told late Wednesday that they could not work until the government reopened, according to an email to staff members shared with The New York Times.
After operating during the first week of the shutdown by tapping into a separate pot of funding, the I.R.S. laid off about half of its staff on Wednesday. Nearly 40,000 employees will continue to work to prepare for next year’s tax season, but they will not be paid.
Federal workers who issue permits for a range of projects, such as building a bridge or other construction that affects natural resources like wetlands, are also furloughed. If the shutdown lasts weeks or months, that will cause considerable delays in projects across the country.
“The longer the government is shut, the more likely construction employment around the country could be impacted negatively,” Jeffrey D. Shoaf, the chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of America, said in a recent statement.
Money for grocery vouchers for millions of low-income mothers and children also hangs in the balance, and the Trump administration is considering novel solutions to fill that funding gap until the government reopens.
Renee Willis, the president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said the shutdown was a spectacle “at the expense of the most vulnerable people in our nation.”
