The Interior Department on Tuesday broke its near total silence on the looming federal government shutdown, offering an email blast to employees that largely focused on congressional Democrats and offered nearly no details about potential furloughs or mass firings.
The unsigned email missive, provided by multiple people at the department and reviewed by POLITICO’s E&E News, said that Interior “has contingency plans in place for executing an orderly shutdown of activities that would be affected by any lapse in appropriations forced by Congressional Democrats.”
But less than 12 hours before the midnight deadline that marks the end of fiscal 2025 — and without agreement in Congress on a continuing resolution — only one of Interior’s 16 divisions — the Bureau of Reclamation — had published its shutdown plans publicly.
An Interior spokesperson declined to share when Interior planned to share its contingency plans — which typically detail how many staff will be furloughed in the event of both short- and long-term funding lapses — or how much funding the agency expects to have on hand from non-annual appropriations sources.
The message Interior employees received from an account identified as “Announcement, DOI,” did, however, repeatedly take aim at congressional Democrats for the potential shutdown.
“Unfortunately, Democrats are blocking this Continuing Resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands,” the email said, following the subject line, “Plan for Potential Lapse in Funding.”
It continued: “If Congressional Democrats maintain their current posture and refuse to pass a clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded before midnight on September 30, 2025, federal appropriated funding will lapse.”
But the Bureau of Reclamation’s shutdown plan could provide insight into how other divisions could be preparing.
Although similar to past shutdown plans — showing totals for employees, how many should expect to be furloughed and how many can remain active because of alternate funding or life and safety provisions — the new document also added new information on how to categorize employees.
The Reclamation plan includes six designations: “Exempt (access to non-lapsing funds)”; “Excepted-Authorized by Law”; “Excepted-Implied by Law; Excepted-Presidential Support”; “Excepted-Life and Property”; and “Furloughed (may not incur obligation of funds).”
President Donald Trump and his Office of Management and Budget have leveled threats of mass firings to federal employees if Democratic lawmakers do not support the GOP-authored continuing resolution.
On Tuesday morning, Trump responded to a question about how many workers he plans to lay off if the government shuts down by stating: “We may do a lot.”
The Reclamation shutdown plan also gave a glimpse into how many federal workers the Trump administration has already shed via buyout offers and early retirement, as well as scrapping employees in probationary roles. The shutdown plan shows there are more than 4,100 employees at the agency, a drop from more than 5,770 the Office of Personnel Management reported at Reclamation in March 2025, the most recent data available.
A 2023 shutdown plan showed nearly 5,500 employees at Reclamation.
According to the newest contingency plan, during both short- or long-term funding lapses, only 241 of Reclamation’s employees would be furloughed, with the majority funded by a resource other than annual appropriations.
