WASHINGTON — The federal government has shut down after Republicans and Democrats in Congress failed to reach a compromise and pass a funding bill, requiring agencies to furlough their “non-excepted” employees.
Excepted employees, which include those who work to protect life and property, stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.
All administrations get some leeway to choose which services to freeze and which to maintain in a shutdown. And each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan. The plans outline which workers would stay on the job during a shutdown and which would be furloughed.
The first Trump administration worked to blunt the impact of what became the country’s longest partial shutdown in 2018 and 2019. But on Tuesday, Trump threatened the po