Agencies are girding for a potential government shutdown that could lock thousands of federal employees out of work, close national parks and logjam any rules Biden officials hoped to push out in the last hours of their administration.
Exactly how much of a threat a federal shutdown, particularly an extended one, could prove to be for the presidential handover of power — potentially holding up “landing teams” for President-elect Donald Trump that have been arriving at federal agencies — remains an open question.
If Congress can’t barter a stopgap deal to fund the government by the end of Friday, agencies will be forced to shutter, with all but a small cadre of essential personnel on hand for a period of at least a few days to potentially weeks.
But even as the Biden administration will be forced to halt its work, the Trump transition teams will be free to press on since it opted out of federal funding for that process — instead relying on the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned nonprofit.
Landing teams assigned to agencies typically draw information from publicly available records — collecting details about existing programs, budgets or the status of regulations — then utilize that material to develop proposals for the incoming administration, which will take over after Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20.
For domestic agencies like EPA or the Interior and Agriculture departments, that means a significant portion of work can be done without needing to be on-site or even daily interactions with current officials or senior staff, said a former senior government official.
“The true issue in the transition is about the continuity of government and being prepared,” said the official, who has participated in multiple White House transitions and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “For these domestic agencies, a transition can be very prepared without a lot of personal interaction.”
Moreover, a shutdown over the holiday season — when many federal officials are short on personnel — could also prove less difficult. A closure of longer duration, however, could create complications, potentially eclipsing any chance for exchanges of in-person information.
The Office of Management and Budget told POLITICO on Thursday that closing the federal government “would disrupt a wide range of activities associated with the orderly transition of power.”
The agency, however, declined to specify what programs and personnel would be impacted.
Press officials for the Trump transition team did not respond to requests before publication time.
In the meantime, the Biden administration will be saddled with the responsibility of shuttering national parks during the Christmas holiday season and making preparations for a multiweek shutdown, which could eventually flow into problems for agencies like the Transportation Security Administration, which provides security at airports and requires most employees to keep working during shutdowns. All employees required to work during a shutdown do so without pay.
“A shutdown now could affect the public in particularly acute ways as the holidays approach. Food safety inspections could be slowed or halted,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit. “National parks, federal lands and museums would be closed. A protracted shutdown could lead to long lines at airport security checkpoints and flight delays. And for the families of federal workers and military personnel, they would face going without a paycheck for the duration of the shutdown.”
Here’s a look at how a shutdown could affect individual departments:
Interior
The majority of the department’s staff are expected to be furloughed if a funding deal is not reached by midnight, according to Interior’s contingency plans, the publicly available blueprints for how to respond to a lapse in federal funding. Interior spokesperson Giovanni Rocco directed questions about shutdown plans to those documents.
That means D.C.-area officials who work on Interior policies — such as at the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and Fish and Wildlife Service — will stop working, delaying action on upcoming rules and regulations that are being pushed through as final actions from the Biden administration.
FWS has several pending actions that may be affected by a shutdown, such as a decision on whether to delist the grizzly bear that’s due by late January.
Other actions in limbo are a BOEM rule, planned to be proposed next month, that could bar oil and gas companies from buying new federal leases offshore if they have a history of breaking environmental rules. Additionally, a consequential oil and gas auction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge scheduled for early January could be delayed by a shutdown. If that sale doesn’t take place, an auction is likely to move forward under the Trump administration, but potentially with fewer restrictions on potential oil developers than the Biden administration’s plan.
The BLM’s contingency plan orders the furlough of roughly 4,900 of its approximately 10,700 workforce. Those that remain are tasked with critical duties like fire suppression and safe operations of the oil and gas industry on federal land. Actions like approving drilling permits or leasing lands for energy development will cease, per the bureau’s plan from 2023.
The FWS expects 6,099 employees to be furloughed compared to 9,018 working before shutdown, according to its most recent contingency plan, from 2023.
Many of the roughly 20,000 employees of the National Park Service would also be furloughed, with fewer than 25 people exempted at headquarters in Washington and between five and 10 people left on call or full time in regional offices, according to the service’s March contingency plan.
National park sites would have skeleton crews at most. Facilities at park sites that would normally be locked up overnight, such as restrooms, would generally be locked down for the duration of a government-funding lapse, according to the service’s March contingency plan.
However, given the NPS’s role in hosting part of the inauguration — handling crowds, restrooms and security — the agency could designate additional employees to work during the lapse in funding to handle that event.
Though a shutdown directly affects people who work for agencies like the NPS, its impact varies across the country depending on the time of year, said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association.
“You always have to ask yourself when there’s a shutdown what time of year it is, and what are Americans doing at that time of year, and that will tell you how catastrophic the shutdown might be for local communities that depend on tourism,” she said.
“Luckily, this is a time of year where people are spending more time with family and not as much in national parks. But for those parks that do have robust visitorship in the wintertime, they will feel an impact,” she said.
EPA
If the government shuts down, EPA will remain open for most of next week.
Acting Deputy Administrator Jane Nishida told agency employees in an internal email obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News that the agency is preparing for “all contingencies,” including a possible funding lapse.
“At this time, I wanted to share that EPA has sufficient carryover payroll to remain open through Dec. 26,” Nishida said in the email sent Friday.
She continued, “That means that you will report to work as usual on your regular schedule during this time.”
If EPA doesn’t have new funding from Congress past that date, the agency will provide further updates, but it’s likely most staff will then be furloughed, Nishida said. She also reassured employees that under legislation passed in 2019, they will have guaranteed back pay from a shutdown.
EPA’s latest shutdown plan is dated September earlier this year. It lays out a number of operations the agency must halt during a lapse in appropriations.
EPA would not be able to approve pending state requests related to air pollution and water quality. Further, “activities” at Superfund sites would have to stop, as long as life and property aren’t in immediate danger at those sites.
In addition, the agency would cease civil enforcement inspections, publishing of their results from scientific research and updating its own website.
EPA estimates it would take four hours, or a half-day, to complete its “shutdown activities.”
Approximately 1,700 staff would be exempt from the shutdown and still have to work without pay, according to the plan. In turn, that would leave roughly 15,000 EPA employees out on furlough.
DOE
The Department of Energy is poised to at stay open should a shutdown take place, but for how long remains unclear.
An employee granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly said leadership indicated in an email to some staff that the agency will continue to operate.
While DOE declined to comment when asked for details, a spokesperson pointed to the agency’s contingency plan, hammered out in 2023 and posted online, which lays out plans for operations and more than 13,800 full-time employees.
More than 1,404 full-time employees, according to the document, are “necessary to protect life and property,” and would stay on to fulfill the agency’s functions at various posts.
Sensitive operations, including those tied to the oversight and transportation of the nation’s nuclear stockpile, would be handled carefully.
The Office of Secure Transportation, for example, would ensure all stockpile material is in secure locations, and the agency would physically protect sites — with guns, guards and gates — and maintain government equipment and property, from caring for lab animals to ensuring scientific equipment and nuclear reactors are safely maintained.
“There are some DOE programs, for example, the medical isotope program, where DOE may need to produce additional isotopes in order to protect human life. The need to do this will depend on the length of the lapse and the stockpile of individual isotopes,” according to the document.
Reporter Michael Doyle contributed.
