{"id":13933,"date":"2025-10-01T09:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T09:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/how-trump-is-protecting-his-priorities-from-a-government-shutdown\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T09:02:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T09:02:12","slug":"how-trump-is-protecting-his-priorities-from-a-government-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/how-trump-is-protecting-his-priorities-from-a-government-shutdown\/","title":{"rendered":"How Trump is protecting his priorities from a government shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As Washington enters a government shutdown, the Trump administration has erected safeguards to ensure President Donald Trump\u2019s most hardline priorities continue unscathed.<\/p>\n

Agencies central to Trump\u2019s agenda are shielding certain programs by declaring the federal employees who work on them essential or sheltering them under already approved funding streams \u2014 designations that will allow them to keep running through the funding lapse.<\/p>\n

That means offices tasked with immigration enforcement and tariff negotiations, two hallmarks of Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The split underscores how Trump hopes to punish Democrats by pinning the fallout on them while ensuring his own priorities continue unimpeded. It\u2019s also the latest example of how his administration uses the levers of federal power in unprecedented ways to enact the president\u2019s expansive policy agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember Rahm Emanuel\u2019s great quote: \u2018You should never waste a crisis,\u2019\u201d said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. \u201cRahm Emanuel should be proud of the Trump team because they\u2019re prepared to say, \u2018Every day this is shut, we will find ways to pay for everything we want. We\u2019ll find ways to eliminate everything you want. And we\u2019ll do it legally.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of Trump\u2019s pet projects, like NASA\u2019s Artemis moonshot program<\/a>, 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<\/a>. <\/p>\n

One first-term Trump official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the administration will be \u201cstrategic\u201d in its approach on what to fund.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf something is going to put a kink in Trump\u2019s agenda even for a couple of days, they will find a creative way to make that work,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cThe last person that wants to shut down is us,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. \u201cNow, with that being said, we can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a> found that 65 percent of respondents, including 43 percent of Democrats, think Democrats shouldn\u2019t allow a government shutdown, even if their demands aren\u2019t met.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere 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\u2019s less so that the administration is trying to somehow manipulate this,\u201d said a White House official granted anonymity to speak candidly about the administration\u2019s strategy. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

All core immigration enforcement operations \u2014 from Border Patrol to Immigration and Customs Enforcement \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

New agents hired under Republicans\u2019 tax and domestic policy law will continue to be paid. But the agency is also working to ensure other law enforcement officials \u2014 who would otherwise not be paid until Congress passes a new funding bill \u2014 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\u2019s work to implement the bill isn\u2019t delayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cICE will be fine during a shutdown,\u201d said one of the administration officials. \u201cMost of what ICE does will continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Homeland Security\u2019s 2025 shutdown<\/a> plan calls for a higher percentage of its total employees to be retained during a shutdown than its 2023 plan<\/a> \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s Office make clear in their shutdown plans that they will continue advancing the president\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

USTR, meanwhile, plans to continue administering tariff programs established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, according to a draft plan<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

USTR is also retaining 60 percent of its workforce during a shutdown, compared to just 40 percent in its 2024 plan<\/a>. 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\u2019s staff.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo hit blue states specifically, you\u2019d want to target the federal bureaucracy \u2014 which is primarily represented by Dems. That\u2019s what I think the mass firings are all about \u2014 max pain on Dems,\u201d the first-term Trump official said. \u201cOtherwise, I don\u2019t see a lot that can be done to Dems that wouldn\u2019t hurt [Republican] states.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 including the release of the monthly jobs report that often serves as a key indicator of the economy\u2019s 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 \u2014 and as economic anxiety remains high.<\/p>\n

The Food and Drug Administration\u2019s Animal Drugs and Foods Program is halting<\/a> pre-market safety reviews of novel animal food ingredients for livestock, and \u201cthus be unable to ensure that the meat, milk, and eggs of livestock are safe for people to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Washington enters a government shutdown, the Trump administration has erected safeguards to ensure President Donald Trump\u2019s most hardline priorities continue unscathed. Agencies central to Trump\u2019s agenda are shielding certain programs by declaring the federal employees who work on them essential or sheltering them under already approved funding streams \u2014 designations that will allow them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}