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The first government shutdown in nearly seven years left federal agencies in flux and many of their employees in a state of confusion on Wednesday, as they received last-minute and conflicting instructions from managers.
Even though the likelihood of a shutdown has been high for months, agencies were late to post their contingency plans compared with previous years, leaving employees and the public in the dark about what to expect. And internal guidance to work forces in some cases was not consistent with the official plans. Some employees who expected to be furloughed learned on Wednesday that they had to report to work.
But despite the uncertainty inside the government, the initial ripple effects across the country were scattered and limited.
There was no major disruption to air travel. The Internal Revenue Service answered calls from taxpayers. And federal agents arrested immigrants who showed up for routine court appearances in Lower Manhattan.
But the impact was felt elsewhere. The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta was closed, and visitors got a quick civic lesson: Presidential libraries are operated by the federal National Archives and Records Administration, which furloughed more than half of its staff.
“We thought it was privately funded, or we would have come yesterday,” said Cindy Mobley, 64, of Baltimore. Ms. Mobley and her husband were in town visiting their son, a freshman at nearby Emory University.
Not being able to visit the museum, Ms. Mobley said, “is a small price to pay if it leads to something better for all of our citizens.” She said she supported congressional Democrats who are refusing to agree to a spending plan that does not restore funding for Medicaid and extend health insurance subsidies.
For Chris Hill, of New York, the first day of the shutdown brought an unprompted message from the Department of Veterans Affairs. He said he had been working with the agency to resolve a benefits issue regarding his late father and was surprised to see the message informing him that the government was shut down, noting that some agency services would not be available.
The message also blamed Democrats for the shutdown, which Mr. Hill said also caught him by surprise.
“It was such a political and one-sided message sent out by a department that is supposed to deal equally with veterans, regardless of their political opinions,” he said in an interview.
Similar political responses have come from other agencies, marking what many believe to be the first time an administration has used the bureaucracy to deliver blatantly partisan messaging during a shutdown.
Legal experts say doing so violates a federal law, the Hatch Act, designed to ensure that the federal work force operates free of political influence or coercion. And many federal workers expressed discomfort about being drawn into the political morass.
More federal employees are working in the opening hours of this shutdown than in those of previous years, in part because of pockets of available funding for certain agencies that do not come from annual congressional appropriations. For the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, some of the extra money is coming from President Trump’s signature domestic policy law, often called the One Big Beautiful Bill. That law prioritized spending for homeland defense and immigration enforcement.
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The government shutdown has affected visits to some sites, like Everglades National Park and the Liberty Bell, and left some infrastructure projects in limbo. Credit…Alex Kent for The New York Times
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Oct 03, 2025 @ 09:19:44
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Oct 03, 2025 @ 17:24:47
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