A partial government shutdown took effect on Jan. 31, as civil rights groups continue to condemn the “dangerous escalation” of what the Trump administration says is an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
The prospect of one had been intensifying in recent days, as Senate Democrats said that they wouldn’t back legislation funding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security following the killing of another U.S. citizen by federal agents.
But just hours before the Jan. 30 funding deadline, the Senate approved a five-bill spending package keeping most agencies and programs funded through September. This also included an agreement to fund the Homeland Security Department at current levels for two weeks while negotiations over immigration policies press on.
The House returned Monday to consider the measure.
A coalition of some of the country’s leading civil rights organizations released a statement on Jan. 26 demanding that lawmakers say no to additional funding for the Homeland Security Department.
“Let us be clear: The violence federal immigration agents are bringing into Minneapolis sits within a long American tradition of state power used to surveil, control, and punish Black and Brown communities,” the statement read in part. “The Senate must act now. Further funding without accountability is further abdication of your responsibility.”
The previous government shutdown ended in November and lasted a record-breaking 43 days. Americans are unlikely to feel the effects of the current partial shutdown, since most agencies that manage key services have received funding.
Black Americans, who make up approximately one-fifth of the federal workforce despite representing just 13% of the U.S. population, bore a disproportionate share of the previous shutdown’s impact. Furloughs and delayed paychecks pushed thousands to seek help from food banks.
Read on to learn more about the partial shutdown.
Why are the parties in disagreement?
On Jan. 24, U.S. Border Patrol agents fatally shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, during a protest. About two weeks prior, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good, a poet and mother of three. Both killings occurred in Minneapolis.
In the wake of the deaths of Pretti and Good, Senate Democrats said that they wouldn’t vote for the measure if it includes Homeland Security Department funding. There are 53 Republicans in the Senate, so they need Democratic support to reach the 60-vote threshold and advance any measure.
Lawmakers had been racing against the funding deadline for weeks to pass a series of 12 appropriations bills.
Six of those bills were already signed into law. The remaining six cleared the House in January and were consolidated into a single measure to speed consideration in the Senate. They provided funding to, among other agencies, the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the Border Patrol and ICE.
The standoff marks a shift from the dynamics of the last shutdown, when the core dispute centered on health care policy changes.
Which services were impacted last time?
Essential employees, such as enforcement officers and air traffic controllers, stayed on the job. Most federal workers, however, were furloughed until the impasse ended. And federal employees were not paid during the shutdown. This situation strained the finances of people who live paycheck to paycheck.
An estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that as many as 750,000 workers a day had been furloughed.
Notably, senior citizens continued to receive their Social Security payments, since the program is considered mandatory spending and isn’t funded via short-term appropriations bills, as economists told CNN in 2023.
Medicare benefits also were not disrupted. The U.S. Postal Service is self-funded and continued without interruption. National parks remained partially open.
Core safety net programs — including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) — continued “subject to the availability of funding,” according to a contingency plan released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
There was much back-and-forth over SNAP, with administration officials insisting that they would not pay these benefits during the shutdown. Then the government pledged to pay partial benefits and federal courts ordered the White House to fully fund the program. A U.S. Supreme Court order allowed the administration to pause sending payments until the cases were heard on appeal. In the meantime, many families went without these benefits.
When does a shutdown happen?
Before a fiscal year begins, Congress is required to pass a bill to fund ongoing federal government programs and operations. That process, however, often crumbles. When it does, Congress passes a shorter-term bill — or a “continuing resolution” — to keep the government funded. Congress then negotiates a bill to keep the government funded and open beyond Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
A shutdown occurs when these negotiations fail.
How do shutdowns impact Black federal workers?
Black workers are disproportionately impacted by shutdowns because they make up a large portion of the federal workforce.
In the short term, the effects of a shutdown on government services might not be noticeable to the wider public, explained Michael Neal, a senior fellow in the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, earlier this year. But if the government closes for several weeks or more, Americans might really start to see the impact.
When the government shutters, Black federal employees struggle more than their white peers to replace their missing income.
“In my experience, there are far fewer African Americans in the higher grades,” Cheryl Monroe, who launched her federal employment career at the Internal Revenue Service in 1987, told The Associated Press in 2019.
“White people have the more lucrative jobs in the government,” she added. “They are able to save, able to put money away for six months or a year’s worth of salary. It’s harder for Black people. We’re always starting at the bottom.”
Not only are Black workers hit the hardest, but they also don’t have “as much savings, on average, to replace their lost income,” Neal said, referring to the fact that Black households have less emergency savings than their white counterparts.
On average, white households have $8,100 in liquid assets, while Black households have $1,500, according to 2019 data. Further, fewer Black households say that they can get money from family or friends during a crisis.
Why are Black Americans overrepresented among federal workers?
Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, nearly every president has issued executive orders or enacted laws that have together expanded federal worker and contractor protections against discrimination and created affirmative action programs to boost diversity in the federal workforce and confront the country’s legacy of anti-Black racism.
Because of these efforts, Black Americans have seen “public service employment [open] up economic opportunities for good, well-paid jobs,” wrote Farah Z. Ahmad, a former senior policy analyst at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, in a 2013 report. “The competitive pay scales of government employment have lifted generations of Black people into the middle class.”
Have shutdowns happened before?
The federal government has shut down 22 times over the course of the past half a century, and according to a USA Today review, the threat of them has become more regular over the past decade.
This greater frequency stems in part from the fact that lawmakers — especially Republican lawmakers — have embraced shutdowns as a tool for political obstruction and campaigning, as Vox’s Li Zhou explained in 2021.
Before 2013, she said, a shutdown hadn’t occurred in more than 10 years. But following the rise of the Tea Party movement during former President Barack Obama’s first term, Republican legislators used the tactic to rail against the Affordable Care Act.
“In the process, GOP lawmakers successfully made their opposition to the law clear, though they eventually caved and funding for the ACA passed. That opposition became an important part of the party’s midterm messaging in 2014, however, a year in which they successfully regained control of the Senate and kept the House,” she wrote.
Neal told Capital B that he wonders how ballooning unpredictability might affect Black workers, who’ve long seen federal employment as something of a haven from the hiring discrimination that can plague the private sector.
It used to be that a federal government job was a safe job, he explained. People gave up the really high levels of income that they could get in the private sector in exchange for the stability and better quality of life that federal employment offered.
“But if you’re starting to see greater volatility — one moment you’re working, the next you’re furloughed and not sure when your next paycheck is coming — that might make people pause,” Neal said. “They might ask if a federal government job is actually going to give them the lifestyle they’re looking for.”
This story has been updated.