Congress

How Trump is protecting his priorities from a government shutdown

Published

7 months ago

October 1, 2025

As Washington enters a government shutdown, the Trump administration has erected safeguards to ensure President Donald Trump’s most hardline priorities continue unscathed.

Agencies central to Trump’s agenda are shielding certain programs by declaring the federal employees who work on them essential or sheltering them under already approved funding streams — designations that will allow them to keep running through the funding lapse.

That means offices tasked with immigration enforcement and tariff negotiations, two hallmarks of Trump’s presidency, will retain significantly more staff than they have in prior shutdowns, according to a Blue Light News analysis of agency documents submitted to the White House in recent days and interviews with current and former administration officials. That’s even as hundreds of thousands of federal workers are sent home, hampering a variety of government functions including some routine food safety inspections, Social Security benefit verifications and the publication of employment numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The split underscores how Trump hopes to punish Democrats by pinning the fallout on them while ensuring his own priorities continue unimpeded. It’s also the latest example of how his administration uses the levers of federal power in unprecedented ways to enact the president’s expansive policy agenda.

“Remember Rahm Emanuel’s great quote: ‘You should never waste a crisis,’” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “Rahm Emanuel should be proud of the Trump team because they’re prepared to say, ‘Every day this is shut, we will find ways to pay for everything we want. We’ll find ways to eliminate everything you want. And we’ll do it legally.’”

Some of Trump’s pet projects, like NASA’s Artemis moonshot program, will continue during the shutdown. So will some major GOP policy priorities, such as processing Interior Department applications for permits to drill or conduct fossil fuel projects.

One first-term Trump official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the administration will be “strategic” in its approach on what to fund.

“If something is going to put a kink in Trump’s agenda even for a couple of days, they will find a creative way to make that work,” the official said.

Trump and his budget director, Russ Vought, have made preparations to use the shutdown to conduct yet another mass culling of the federal workforce. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, tried to use the shutdown threat to force talks on extending soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies.

“The last person that wants to shut down is us,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “Now, with that being said, we can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible — that are bad for them and irreversible by them. Like cutting vast numbers of people out. Cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

While the party controlling Washington typically suffers politically during a shutdown, polling shows significant peril for Democrats: A new New York Times-Siena College poll found that 65 percent of respondents, including 43 percent of Democrats, think Democrats shouldn’t allow a government shutdown, even if their demands aren’t met.

White House aides are confident that their preparations will help them weather the shutdown storm while Democrats bear the brunt of the fallout from angry federal workers and constituents.

“There are already approved appropriations, some part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, that will not lapse as part of a government shutdown the way that other funding will. It’s less so that the administration is trying to somehow manipulate this,” said a White House official granted anonymity to speak candidly about the administration’s strategy. “We want everything to continue, but ultimately when there is a shutdown, some funding will lapse. And there is nothing we can do about that. That is 100 percent on the Democrats.”

All core immigration enforcement operations — from Border Patrol to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — will continue without interruption, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss agency planning. Law enforcement personnel in past shutdowns have been considered essential, but ICE, for example, is further buffered by mandatory funding included in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

New agents hired under Republicans’ tax and domestic policy law will continue to be paid. But the agency is also working to ensure other law enforcement officials — who would otherwise not be paid until Congress passes a new funding bill — can get paid via OBBB funding, one of the officials said. The agency is also prepared to furlough less staff than in years past to ensure the administration’s work to implement the bill isn’t delayed.

“ICE will be fine during a shutdown,” said one of the administration officials. “Most of what ICE does will continue.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 shutdown plan calls for a higher percentage of its total employees to be retained during a shutdown than its 2023 plan — 95 percent now compared to 88 percent two years ago. DHS in its 2025 plan also expanded the number of employees it can retain by law during a shutdown by roughly 2,300.

Trump’s signature tariff agenda also stands to continue uninterrupted as his administration pushes forward high-stakes trade talks with China and India and hashes out a host of other deals, like those with Japan and South Korea. Both the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office make clear in their shutdown plans that they will continue advancing the president’s trade agenda, a departure from previous years when trade was largely deemed a non-essential function that could be put on the backburner during a shutdown.

Commerce, for instance, is allowing import licensing for steel and aluminium products, investigations around sector-based tariffs and export control activities to continue without exception, none of which were explicitly protected activities in its 2023 shutdown plan.

USTR, meanwhile, plans to continue administering tariff programs established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, according to a draft plan posted and removed from its website in recent days. While those tariffs are being challenged in court, the Trump administration has declared trade deficits with other countries a threat to national security, a rationale USTR is also using in its decision to continue trade talks.

USTR is also retaining 60 percent of its workforce during a shutdown, compared to just 40 percent in its 2024 plan. Last year, the agency said that only four full-time employees were required to carry out necessary duties during a shutdown compared to 118 employees that received such a designation this year, nearly half of USTR’s staff.

While Trump has indicated that his administration intends to inflict pain on Democrats, there are limits to how much it can do without hurting GOP voters.

“To hit blue states specifically, you’d want to target the federal bureaucracy — which is primarily represented by Dems. That’s what I think the mass firings are all about — max pain on Dems,” the first-term Trump official said. “Otherwise, I don’t see a lot that can be done to Dems that wouldn’t hurt [Republican] states.”

And despite instructions from Vought, the White House budget director, that agencies prepare reduction-in-force plans for a shutdown, most plans continue to detail only the number of workers it plans to furlough, not specifics for permanent firings.

While the administration worked to safeguard its favored programs, plenty of other functions across the government are frozen.The Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, is suspending all operations — including the release of the monthly jobs report that often serves as a key indicator of the economy’s health. While such a provision has been included in previous shutdown plans, it is noteworthy in the current climate after Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer following a disappointing jobs report — and as economic anxiety remains high.

The Food and Drug Administration’s Animal Drugs and Foods Program is halting pre-market safety reviews of novel animal food ingredients for livestock, and “thus be unable to ensure that the meat, milk, and eggs of livestock are safe for people to eat.”

Congress

The House Ethics Committee wants to do better

Published

12 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Three lawmakers accused of serious ethical lapses have been forced to resign in just over a week, prompting even members of the House Ethics Committee to question whether the panel is up to the task of policing its own.

The committee is at a moment of reckoning as it seeks to prove itself ready, willing and able to root out bad behavior in its ranks. It’s spent the past year and a half rebuilding its reputation after internal disagreements about how to handle an ethics report over ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz spilled into the public and threatened the bipartisan panel’s credibility.

Now, amid the high-profile resignations of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), members who sit on the highly secretive committee are opening up — eager to share their perspectives, acknowledge their limitations and defend their work.

“The reality is we are still too slow, and I believe that we should be moving faster. I’ve expressed some of my recommendations on how we can do that to staff,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), who joined the Ethics Committee this Congress, in an interview. “I want people to take the Ethics Committee more seriously.”

In extended interviews Monday and Tuesday, Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) said his panel is hamstrung by the House’s institutional bureaucracy.

“I’ve been asked, you know, could the Ethics Committee, if there were additional resources provided to the committee, would that help us move cases through quickly? And of course, the answer to that is yes,” Guest said. “But you know, it has to be up to leadership. It has to be up to the Speaker and the Minority Leader as to the size of the staff that they would like to see the Ethics Committee command.”

Their comments come amid questions around how Gonzales and Swalwell were able to serve in office for so long unchecked: Both were accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with former staffers, with Swalwell accused of rape. Each stepped down before the Ethics Committee ever had a chance to render findings of fault and enact punishments.

Cherfilus-McCormick also resigned moments before the Ethics Committee was due to meet Tuesday afternoon to consider a punishment for a determination that she illicitly funneled millions to support her campaign, which could have culminated in a recommendation of expulsion.

Now attention is turning to Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who stands accused of numerous violations, including illicitly engaging in government contracts while in federal office and threatening to release a former girlfriend’s nude videos. He has maintained he has no plans to resign as his case before the Ethics Committee has languished without resolution.

In November, the House Ethics panel quietly requested the Office of Congressional Conduct — the quasi-independent office that fields and investigates complaints against members and staff from the public — to drop its probe into Mills, according to a person with knowledge of the ethics process who was granted anonymity to describe the confidential process. That message was transmitted to the OCC the same day the House voted to effectively table a resolution offered by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to censure Mills for various alleged improprieties.

The OCC was established in 2008 by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and proponents say it provides a necessary, largely independent set of eyes — including on ongoing investigations. Critics view the OCC as an untrustworthy political group; it sat defanged for months this Congress before Speaker Mike Johnson brought a perfunctory measure to the House floor that set up its ability to launch investigations by appointing its board.

Guest declined to discuss details of the Mills case but did not deny that such a request had been made, saying it was standard practice for Ethics to take the reins on a probe from OCC “once an investigative subcommittee is established.”

He conceded the Ethics Committee at times may operate slower than some would like, but its process was deliberate and thorough. “If members want this to be a rush committee where we have two weeks to come up with a report and return that report back to the body, then I’m not the right person to be serving in that room.”

He did say he hoped to discuss with Johnson how to improve the panel’s operations. One continued challenge for members is the loss of jurisdiction once a lawmaker resigns from Congress, which has historically meant the committee stops its investigation and does not release a report of its findings. Guest proposed a new policy where a report could be made public upon a lawmaker’s resignation, meaning bad actors could not always leave office in order to hide from revelations about their misdeeds.

Rep. Mark DeSaulnier of California, the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee, said the committee could better handle cases of sexual misconduct and has spoken to Democratic leadership about modernizing the panel.

“I think on sexual harassment, [the] thing that occurs to me is that there should be one place to go that’s clear to report, that has enough staff, and they’re been very well trained in the subject area, so that people feel like there’s a place they can go and be safe, protected,” he said. “And then there’s a due process that responds in a way that is deliberative, but under the urgency of circumstances.”

This is an area where the Ethics Committee has, in recent weeks, found itself struggling to respond to public pressure. When the House was poised in March to vote on a measure brought by Mace that would have compelled the committee to make information on sexual harassment claims public, Guest and DeSaulnier said in a statement it would have a chilling effect for victims. The resolution was ultimately tabled.

On Monday, the panel released a statement reaffirming its commitment to taking allegations of sexual misconduct seriously — and a list of publicly disclosed sexual misconduct investigations dating back to 1976. Many of those cases were closed without resolution because the member under scrutiny resigned from office before the committee could conclude the case.

One lawmaker who has served on the Ethics Committee, who requested anonymity to describe the panel’s private operations, argued that disclosure of sexual misconduct cases can harm potential victims who may not want their cases brought before the panel in the first place.

This explanation is largely falling on deaf ears from members who want more transparency and accountability, though, with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) calling the Monday release of previously disclosed sexual misconduct allegations against House members an inadequate “cleanup job.”

Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), a member of the Ethics Committee and a former federal prosecutor, suggested that improving the panel’s internal systems for handling sexual harassment claims might be a lost cause.

“I think the ugly truth is there’s no process that handles this well that I’ve seen, whether it’s state courts, federal courts, internal corporate investigations, Congress or the Senate,” he said.

Congress

Senate launches budget debate

Published

14 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans opened debate Tuesday on a fiscal blueprint meant to pave the way for passage of a party-line immigration enforcement funding bill later this year.

The Senate voted 52-46 to advance the budget resolution, which Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) unveiled earlier Tuesday. It instructs House and Senate committees to write legislation expected to deliver about $70 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies.

The Senate is expected to give the measure final approval this week before leaving town. The chamber could move to a marathon voting session, known as a vote-a-rama, as soon as Wednesday, though plenty of Republicans are betting that it won’t start until Thursday.

Congress

Cherfilus-McCormick resigns amid ethics investigation

Published

17 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) has resigned in the face of corruption charges at home and calls for her ouster in Washington, she announced in a statement on Tuesday.

News broke minutes before the House Ethics Committee was about to meet for a public hearing Tuesday afternoon to determine a punishment for the third-term Democrat, who was charged with stealing $5 million in Covid relief funds.

Cherfilus-McCormick said in a statement the Ethics proceedings did not constitute a “fair process” and that she was “choos[ing] to step aside” rather than “play these political games.”