The United States is 30 days into a shutdown of the federal government, and yet the prevailing feeling is not one of panic but a kind of resignation.
Today, 1.4 million federal workers are going without pay. Half are being forced to work without pay, including hundreds of thousands of US military service members, and the other half aren’t allowed to work, hampering critical operations in government. Most national parks are shuttered, and funding for school lunches has lapsed, leaving kids without meals in many places.
Airport security agent Sashene McLean holds her one-year-old daughter as she collects a donated food package in Florida at a centre organised to assist federal employees missing paycheques during the government shutdown.Credit: AP
Starting on November 1, more than 40 million Americans – that’s nearly one in eight people – will lose their critical food assistance unless states tap into their emergency reserves, which many Republican-led states have said they will not do. This will leave millions who live below the poverty line in the wealthiest country in the world without food on the table.
A friend, a schoolteacher back in our hometown in South Carolina, is preparing for next week, when more than half her students will either have lost their food assistance, or have parents in the military who will have gone without a pay cheque for three weeks. She got into this work to help young people – now instead of teaching them how to read and write, she’s thinking about how much of her own meagre savings she can tap into to keep her students fed.
Food assistance had not been affected in any of the US’s shutdowns over the past decade. But starting later this week, communities around the country will be in the same situation as my friend in her classroom, wondering how to help the people who are having suffering inflicted upon them because it suits Donald Trump and the Republican government not to properly govern the country.
Meanwhile, about 1400 workers who oversee the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile have been furloughed, though Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations remain essentially unchanged. In 2018, the first shutdown on Trump’s watch ended at least in part because air traffic controllers forced to work without pay started taking leave, and airports had to change their operations. That could happen again, with more than 20 airports having to delay more than 8000 flights this week due to a shortage of controllers.
St Mary’s Food Bank of Arizona employee Josh Torres and volunteer Kayli Iverson deliver food to a car at the main facility in Phoenix on Tuesday.Credit: AP
The 2013 shutdown lasted 16 days and was a scandal that dogged US politics for years. We passed that shutdown mark nearly two weeks ago, and it’s just become background noise. In the intervening years, Americans have become so accustomed to the dysfunction of Washington that we’ve adapted to it like you adjust your morning commute because of bad traffic.
As soon as this shutdown began, Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025 and director of the Office of Management and Budget, got to work, firing thousands of federal workers from offices he deemed opponents to Trump’s agenda (despite being congressionally authorised and funded). Trump and Vought have made it clear that they have no intention of bringing back many of the 750,000 furloughed workers whose role they see as superfluous.
