The federal government shutdown only partly curbs operations. But the longer the shutdown continues, the more likely its impact will be felt. 

U.S. troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered, but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday.

Here’s how key parts of the federal government will be affected by a shutdown:

Internal Revenue Service

A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Department’s website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS’s 80,565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during the shutdown. That would mean nearly 45,500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law.

The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month, with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes. The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers.

But Marcus Owens, who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations, said it’s a “virtual certainty” that the larger paychecks will be delayed if there’s a lengthy government shutdown.

Health and Human Services Department

Half of the more than 80,000 employees will be sent home. Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesn’t depend on annual approval by Congress. But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs — including the seasonal flu program.

Medicare, which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people, will keep going. And so will Medicaid, which covers more than 74 million low-income and disabled people, including most nursing home residents.

States will continue to receive payments for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers about 9 million kids. However, long-term funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it.

Deep into a tough flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the government’s annual seasonal flu program. And CDC’s ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced.

​Justice Department

Many of the nearly 115,000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election will also continue working. His office is paid for indefinitely.

The more than 95,000 employees who are “exempted” include most of the members of the national security division, U.S. attorneys, and most of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Marshals Service and federal prison employees. Criminal cases will continue, but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesn’t compromise public safety. Most law enforcement training will be canceled, per the department’s contingency plan.

State Department

Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown. Passport and visa processing, which are largely self-funded by consumer fees, will not shut down. The agency’s main headquarters in Washington, in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world, will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed.

Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed.

​Defense Department

The U.S. military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world, including in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. And members of the military will report to work, though they won’t get paid until Congress approves funding.

But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown would have far-reaching effects.

“Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down,” he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world, and they cost money. Those, obviously, would stop. And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop.”

And, while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue, any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home.

U.S. intelligence agencies

The workforce at the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly, according to a person familiar with contingency procedures.

The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck.

While they can be kept on the job, federal workers can’t be paid for days worked during a shutdown. In the past, however, they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home.

​Homeland Security Department

A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown.

That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job, according to the department’s shutdown plan, dated Friday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent, meaning more than 15,000 of the agency’s employees will keep working. The Secret Service, also part of Homeland Security, will retain more than 5,700 employees during the shutdown. 

Interior Department

The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible. That position is a change from previous shutdowns, when most parks were closed and became high-profile symbols of dysfunction.

Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public — especially veterans who come to the nation’s capital — should find war memorials and open-air parks available to visitors. Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible.

She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open, though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds, full-service restrooms and concessions won’t be operating. Back-country lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed, she said.

Transportation Department

More than half — 34,600 — of the Department of Transportation’s 55,100 employees will continue working during a shutdown. The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the nation’s air traffic control system.

Controllers and aviation, pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work.

But certification of new aircraft will be limited, and processing of airport construction grants, training of new controllers, registration of planes, air traffic control modernization research and development, and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop.

At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, investigations of auto safety defects will be suspended, incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers won’t be reviewed, and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed.

The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, will continue most of their functions. The fund’s revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes, which will continue to be collected. But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies.

​National Institutes of Health

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the agency’s infectious-disease chief, said a government shutdown would be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but would not adversely affect patients already in medical studies.

“We still take care of them,” he said of current NIH patients. But other types of research would be seriously harmed, Fauci said.

A shutdown could mean interrupting research that’s been going on for years, Fauci said. The NIH is the government’s primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers. Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines.

“You can’t push the pause button on an experiment,” he said.

Environmental Protection Agency

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown. Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had “sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time.” He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasted for more than a week.

The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPA’s website. A spokesman for the agency said earlier Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid.
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A partial shutdown of the U.S. government commenced early Saturday after a funding bill was blocked in the Senate. Spending authority expired at midnight Washington time, triggering a halt of non-essential functions.

A handful of Republicans joined all but a handful of Democrats in opposing the funding bill, which needed 60 votes to advance in the 100-member chamber.

The Senate later adjourned until noon Washington time Saturday, when Senators are expected to continue efforts to pass a bill funding the government.

The outcome of the funding bill set off furious discussions among senators on and off the chamber floor, seeking a last-gasp bipartisan deal to restart the flow of federal funding.

Blame game

The White House responded immediately to failure to reach a funding agreement, blaming Senate Democrats for what it called the “Schumer Shutdown,” accusing legislators of valuing illegal immigrants ahead of lawful Americans.

“When Democrats start paying our armed forces and first responders we will reopen negotiations on immigration reform,” the statement said.

Members of the House Republican leadership echoed the White House statement.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer responded to the Republican criticism: “Knowing full well that they would need our help, Republicans insisted on a partisan process. Now, having failed to fulfill their most basic responsibility as the governing party, they are seeking to blame Democrats for refusing to be blackmailed into giving them yet another short-term extension.”

Earlier, lawmakers of both parties pointed fingers, as did as President Donald Trump, who warned of repercussions from a shutdown and argued Democrats voted against funding the government as a political stunt to distract attention from the president’s economic accomplishments.

Democrat Tim Kaine countered that no one in his caucus “wants the government to shut down,” then quoted from a Trump tweet last year in which the president said America “needs a good shutdown.”

“There’s only one person that has talked about a shutdown with glee and with interest that it happen, and that’s the president,” Kaine said.

Employees idled, talks continue

Federal agencies, meanwhile, prepared to idle employees and halt major portions of their operations.

Negotiations to solve the impasse were expected to continue Saturday involving Republican and Democratic congressional leaders as well as the White House.

A meeting earlier Friday between Trump and the Senate’s top Democrat, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, failed to yield a breakthrough.

Democrats then followed through on pledges to vote down a Republican-crafted bill that would have funded the federal government through mid-February. The House of Representatives approved the bill Thursday with Republican-only votes.

Senate Democrats withheld support to press demands for congressional action on immigration and spending priorities, while insisting on an end to month-to-month government funding.

Republicans accused their Democratic colleagues of misplaced priorities.

“Millions of people, including our military, law enforcement and emergency personnel could lose their paycheck if Democrats follow through on their threat,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas said. “The time to stop playing games is now. We urge them [Democrats], we implore them: Do not shut down the government.”

Trump and congressional Republicans repeatedly asserted that Democrats will be to blame if non-essential government operations come to a halt, a charge Democrats rejected.

“When you look across the spectrum of the three branches of government, the Republicans are in control,” Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said.

​Immigration

Democrats backed three previous short-term spending extensions late last year while bipartisan negotiations went forward on immigration and spending priorities. Last week, Trump rejected a bipartisan Senate immigration proposal, throwing congressional negotiations into disarray.

Democrats are demanding prompt congressional votes on an immigration reform package that would shield from deportation hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to America as children. Republicans note that young immigrants would not face possible deportation until March, when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, DACA, expires.

The U.S. government has shut down before, including in 2013, in a partisan deadlock over health care policy and funding. The shutdown lasted 16 days and furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

What stops and what continues during a federal shutdown varies, but federal research projects could be stalled, tax refunds delayed, processing of veterans’ disability applications delayed, and federal nutrition programs suspended, as was the case in 2013.
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The Hawaii National Guard’s top commander said Friday he told Gov. David Ige that a missile alert was a false alarm two minutes after it went out statewide. But the governor didn’t tell the public until 15 minutes later. 

Maj. Gen. Arthur “Joe” Logan told state lawmakers at a hearing that he called the governor at 8:09 a.m. Saturday after speaking to a supervisor at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, whose employee accidentally sent the alert. 

Ige spokeswoman Cindy McMillan said the governor had to track her down to prepare a message for the public. She said the governor’s communications team handles his social media. 

Ige’s office relayed an emergency management agency tweet about the false alarm at 8:24 a.m. Six minutes later, a notice went up on his Facebook page. 

Rep. Kaniela Ing, who questioned Logan about the alert mishap, said he wanted to ask the governor himself about the events. But Ige had left the hearing by the time it was Ing’s turn to ask questions.

McMillan said Ige departed the hearing early because he had “various things to do.” In response to criticism from Ing and other lawmakers that Ige left prematurely, McMillan said: “He is the governor. He has other duties to attend to today.”

Lawmakers held their hearing nearly a week after a state employee caused widespread panic and confusion by mistakenly sending an emergency alert to mobile devices and TV and radio stations warning of an incoming missile strike.

A corrected alert was not sent to mobile devices for nearly 40 minutes because state workers had no prepared message for a false alarm. 

Hawaii emergency workers immediately started calling city and county officials to tell them there was no threat. They posted social media messages about 13 minutes after the erroneous warning. 

A Federal Communications Commission official told the hearing not all cellphones in Hawaii received the alert in part because cellphone carriers may choose not to participate in the nation’s Wireless Emergency Alert system.

FCC attorney and adviser James Wiley said some carriers may also offer the service only to some geographic areas and only to some mobile devices. Individuals may also opt out of receiving alerts. 

Wiley was visiting Hawaii to investigate why the mistaken alert was sent. 

On Thursday, the Hawaii state Department of Defense said it took about 10 minutes for an employee to think of sending a new alert canceling the alert. 

Lt. Col. Charles Anthony said that amid the chaos, a telecommunications staffer presented his idea to create a new alert on the same platform that sent out the mistake. The agency checked with federal officials, composed and uploaded the alert to their online system and eventually issued the retraction. 

The initial warning was sent at 8:07 a.m. and the correction reached cellphones at 8:45.

It is estimated that a missile would take about 20 minutes to reach Hawaii from North Korea. Officials say it would take about five minutes for the military to analyze the launch trajectory and notify the state, leaving only 12 to 15 minutes of warning time before impact.
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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence leaves Friday on a trip to the Middle East. 

He is the first senior administration official to visit the region since U.S. President Donald Trump announced his decision to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move widely condemned by world leaders. 

Trump also announced that the U.S. would move its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. 

The announcement was followed by a so-called Day of Rage, with demonstrations against Trump decision spanning the globe.

Pence’s four-day trip begins with stops in Egypt and Jordan before continuing to Israel.

Pence is an evangelical Christian.The vice president’s tour of the region is expected to go over well with Evangelicals who hold Israel dear. 

Pence is not expected to meet with Palestinian leaders. 

He was originally scheduled to go to the region in December, but decided not to after the pushback from Trump’s Jerusalem recognition decision. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump will address the 45th annual March for Life, a pro-life, anti-abortion event in Washington. 

He will speak Friday via satellite from the White House, becoming the third president to speak at the annual event. 

Ronald Reagan spoke in 1987 and George W. Bush did so in 2003 and 2004. 

Anti-abortion activists hope the Trump administration will support their efforts to outlaw the procedure.

Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee said, “We are trying to protect babies in any way we can through legislation now.” 

Friday also marks the 45th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe versus Wade decision that legalized abortion in the U.S. 

EleanorSmeal, the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, supports the ruling.”When you are forcing people against their will to reproduce in times that are very difficult for them, you are actually having a negative impact on their health and well being and their families,” she said. 

Trump, at one time, supported a woman’s right to have an abortion. During his campaign, however, he said there has to be “some form of punishment’ for people who have abortions. 

Both Tobias and Smeal feel that is a bad idea. 
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Winter is off to a late start in parts of the nation’s largest, and usually coldest, state.

Months of higher-than-normal temperatures in parts of rural Alaska have opened dangerous gaps in frozen rivers that residents use to travel from village to village and to hunting grounds because there are no roads.

One troublesome ice highway is the half-mile-wide (0.8-kilometer-wide) Kuskokwim River, where a man died New Year’s Eve after he and five family members, traveling on a snowmobile and sled, fell into a gaping hole. The others survived.

Search and rescue teams in the southwest Alaska commercial hub of Bethel have been marking holes on the Kuskokwim, but there were so many, they ran out of the $300-a-roll reflective tape. While they wait for more supplies to be shipped, residents in villages along the river and its tributaries have been marking the openings with tree branches.

​Rest of nation shivers

It’s a role switch of sorts with much of the lower 48, where dangerously cold temperatures have been blamed for dozens of deaths.

The unseasonable warmth in parts of Alaska is a factor in making last month the warmest December on record for the entire state, experts say. The statewide average temperature for the month was 19.4 degrees, far higher than the historical average of 3.7 degrees, according to Rick Thoman, climatologist for the National Weather Service’s Alaska region.

Boris Epchook, who has lived most of his 54 years in the Yup’ik Eskimo village of Kwethluk, east of Bethel, said he has seen dramatic environmental changes in the past two decades, but never to this degree.

“These are a lot more holes (in the ice) on the river (than) I’ve seen and heard of over the years,” he said. “The weather patterns have definitely changed this year.”

Weather Service data bears that out. Bethel, representative of the region, had the warmest fall and early winter on record. The average temperature for the period between Oct. 1 and the first week of January was 28.6 degrees, far above the 30-year average of 18.3 degrees, according to Thoman.

“That would be 10.3 degrees warmer than normal,” he said. “That’s really quite remarkable.”

​Climate change

The sustained warmth speaks to the continuing effects of climate change, which have escalated in a region many consider a harbinger of global warming. Erosion and flooding are nothing new for many remote Alaska communities, which are increasingly vulnerable to melting permafrost and shorter periods of coastal ice that historically protected them from powerful storms.

Farther north, warm weather slowed the formation of sea ice above the Arctic Circle, including the Chukchi Sea, which didn’t freeze over until Dec. 31, Thoman said.

“This is part of this ongoing arctic amplification, where things are changing much more rapidly in high latitude than farther south,” he said. “And sea ice, of course, is a real poster child for this.”

As in the Bethel area, the changes are disrupting life and hunting patterns in northern communities such as Point Hope, an Inupiat whaling village built on a triangular spit surrounded by the Chukchi, Arctic Ocean and a large inlet.

Lifelong Point Hope resident and former Mayor Steve Oomittuk said the changes have been significant over the past decade, most dramatically in the last five years. The sea ice used as platforms by prey animals like walrus and seals is slower to form, making it more dangerous for hunters to venture out, Oomittuk said.

The warming also affects ancient traditions. For example, people bring out fermented bowhead-whale tails to feast and celebrate the first forming of slushy ice along the coast.

It’s a tradition historically observed in late September or early October in the community of 700. But the past couple of years, the whale tails have come out much later, in November. This season, they stayed in villagers’ ice cellars until three days before Thanksgiving, Oomittuk said.

Residents worry about all the changes.

“The cold, the ice, the animals is everything to us,” Oomittuk said. “We’ve always lived in the cold.”

The state is shifting to a cooler trend this week.
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