Policy primer: The 2025 government shutdown

When fiscal year 2026 began on October 1, most activities at federal agencies temporarily ceased because their appropriated funding expired. These activities will not resume until Congress passes and the president signs what is known as a “continuing resolution” (CR) that will provide stopgap funding while Congress continues negotiating appropriations for the new fiscal year.

For the scientific community, the shutdown raises a series of important questions:

• How long will the government shutdown last?
• How will the Trump administration use the shutdown to advance its agenda for federal agencies, potentially including widespread dismissals of federal employees and grant cancellations? Which agencies will be most affected?
• When will the shutdown begin to affect work done on grants and at contractor-operated facilities such as national laboratories?

Why do shutdowns happen?

• Following the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 , the law has required that agencies can only undertake their most essential functions without appropriated funds.
• It has been decades since Congress last passed all its appropriations legislation in time for the new fiscal year. Typically, when funding expires, Congress passes CRs to maintain funding at or near previous levels for a set period, giving lawmakers time to complete the appropriations process. In this case, though, Congress failed to pass a CR.
• As in past shutdowns, this failure to pass a CR is the result of a partisan standoff. The Senate requires 60 votes to pass appropriations legislation and CRs, and, given the current 53–47 split between Republicans and Democrats/Independents, any CR needs at least some support from Democrats. While standoffs over appropriations are common, often leading to the use of multiple CRs—or even a full-year CR, as in fiscal year 2025—only the most severe disputes lead to shutdowns.
• For more on the issues bearing on how the current standoff might play out, see “What is the endgame?” below.

What is typical about this shutdown?

• Furloughs: All non-essential federal personnel have been furloughed until funding is restored. Each agency determines based on its own needs which of its employees are essential and must work without pay. This hardship increases pressure on lawmakers to end the shutdown. The Trump administration is seeking to shield active-duty military personnel from this consequence by repurposing about $8 billion in multiyear Defense Department research, development, test, and evaluation funding to pay them. However, the Anti-Deficiency Act would in principle bar using funding for purposes other than the ones for which Congress has appropriated that funding.
• Essential activities: Some federal activities that continue during a shutdown are those where there is deemed to be a danger to life or property. For instance, NASA will continue to conduct essential functions related to operating missions, and it is also allowing work to continue on future crewed Artemis missions. Similarly, NSF’s activities in support of operations in Antarctica and the Arctic are excepted from the shutdown in order to respond to emergencies. These exceptions are detailed in operational plans that agencies posted before the shutdown.
• Grant activity: Federal agencies such as NSF , NASA , NIH , and the Department of Education have also posted guidance for grant applicants and awardees. Many are continuing to accept grant proposals and permit grantees to spend funds from existing awards that were distributed prior to the shutdown. Grant reviews and awards and new distributions of funds are halted.
• Contractor-operated labs: Most Department of Energy national labs and other Federally Funded Research and Development Centers are run by contractors and receive funding from the government in large disbursements, allowing the labs and centers to spend it over a certain period. It is not clear how much time each lab has before a cutoff in funding will affect operations, nor which activities will be at risk once funding is depleted. During the last shutdown, in 2019, many facilities anticipated impacts would manifest after the one-month mark.
• Immigration and STEM exchange: The immigration system, including the US Citizenship and Immigration Service and the State Department’s Office of Consular Affairs, will continue functioning normally. These activities are largely funded by user fees and do not receive much money from appropriations. The exception to this is the Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC), which is currently closed and is not processing any applications for labor certifications, an important part of the process for hiring an international worker.

What is abnormal about this shutdown?

• Dismissals: The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is urging agencies to consider firing furloughed employees if their programs’ funding lapsed with the shutdown and do not have another source of funding, and if the programs are not consistent with the president’s priorities.
  
  • OMB argues that programs with lapsed funding are “no longer statutorily required to be carried out.” Democrats on the House Budget Committee vigorously assert this is false.
  • A lawsuit filed against OMB by labor unions representing federal employees countered that “a lapse in funding does not repeal, vacate, or otherwise have any effect on statutory provisions requiring or authorizing agencies to perform specified functions.” Moreover, it asserts that agencies rather than OMB have statutory authority over employment decisions, and that taking personnel actions during a shutdown itself is not allowed under a shutdown.
  • OMB stated on October 10 that reductions in force (RIFs) had begun and reports subsequently indicated several different agencies were affected, including DOE, the Department of Education, and the Department of Commerce.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were reported to have an especially large number of dismissals, though some were later rolled back.
• Threat to withhold backpay: Following the last shutdown in 2019, Congress passed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act , which stipulated that government employees would receive backpay following a shutdown—something that had previously not been guaranteed. However, on October 7, President Trump sought to increase pressure on Democrats by threatening in a memo to make furloughed employees ineligible for backpay. This memo contradicts guidance issued by the Office of Personnel Management just last month, which states furloughed employees will be paid once the government reopens. However, once the contradiction was pointed out, the guidance was changed to specify only essential employees forced to work during the shutdown would be guaranteed backpay. Some agencies, such as NASA and the Department of the Interior, which oversees the US Geological Survey, have stated in their own guidance documents that backpay would be provided in line with the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act.
• Award cancellations: While not a direct result of the shutdown, DOE announced on October 2 that it cancelled 321 awards worth over $7.5 billion because they “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.” The awards came from Offices of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Grid Deployment (GDO), Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC), Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and Fossil Energy (FE). No Office of Science grants have been cancelled, as of October 14.

What is the endgame?

• Reorienting the federal government: Trump administration officials have openly discussed their interest in leveraging the shutdown and declining morale among federal employees to accelerate their reformation of the government. New reductions in force and voluntary departures would further undermine the functioning of programs that the administration disfavors. President Trump remarked on October 9, “We will be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly… They wanted to do this so we will give them a little taste of their own medicine.”
• Tension over appropriated funds: The Trump administration’s expressed interest in rescinding or otherwise not spending previously appropriated funding has stoked conflict between Republicans and Democrats over the past several months. This past summer, Republicans pushed a rescission through Congress using the budget reconciliation process to circumvent the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Now, lead Democratic appropriators Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Patty Murray have introduced a measure that would prevent “pocket rescissions,” which involve withholding funds in the hope Congress does not reject it before the funding expires at the end of the fiscal year. This proposal may be in play in negotiations to end the shutdown standoff.
• Healthcare subsidies: A definite point of contention is the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. These subsidies , more formally called enhanced premium tax credits, were introduced in 2021 and extended until December 31, 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act. They reduce the amount that certain enrollees are required to pay each month for health insurance. The Democrats demanded the credits be extended as part of the annual appropriations process. Republicans argued Congress should pass a CR and debate subsidy extensions later in the year. On October 7, Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) proposed a bill to extend the subsidies until the end of 2026, but the proposal was rejected by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who argues that any extension should be permanent.