The government shutdown is wreaking havoc on many Americans: Hundreds of thousands of federal employees don’t know when they’ll see their next paycheck, and low-income people who rely on the federal safety net worry about whether they’ll make ends meet should the stalemate in Washington carry on another month.

But if you’re a sportsman looking to hunt game, a gas company planning to drill offshore or a taxpayer awaiting your refund, you’re in luck: This shutdown won’t affect your plans.

All administrations get some leeway to choose which services to freeze and which to maintain when a budget standoff in Washington forces some agencies to shutter. But in the selective reopening of offices, experts say they see a willingness to cut corners, scrap prior plans and wade into legally dubious territory to mitigate the pain. Some noted the choices seem targeted at shielding the Republican-leaning voters whom Trump and his party need to stick with them.

The cumulative effect is a government shutdown — now officially the longest in U.S. history — that some Americans may find financially destabilizing and others may hardly notice.

Russell T. Vought, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the overarching message from Trump has been “to make this shutdown as painless as possible, consistent with the law.”

“We have built on past efforts within this administration not to have the shutdown be used to be weaponized against the American people,” he said.

Others say such a strategy suggests a lack of urgency and a willingness to let the political impasse in Washington drag on indefinitely.

“The strategy seems to be to keep the shutdown in place, not worry about the effect on employees and furloughed people and contractors, but where the public might be annoyed, give a little,” said Alice Rivlin, who led OMB during the 21-day shutdown in 1996, the previous recordholder for the longest in history.

That’s a clear difference between then and now, Rivlin said.

“We weren’t trying to make it better. We were trying to emphasize the pain so it would be over,” she said. “We wanted it to end. I’m not convinced the Trump administration does.”

The Trump administration earlier this week announced that the IRS will issue tax refunds during the shutdown, circumventing a 2011 decision barring the agency from distributing refunds until the Treasury Department is funded. The National Treasury Employees Union filed a lawsuit, arguing its workers are being unconstitutionally forced to return to work without pay.

Some agencies are finding creative ways to fund services they want to restore.

The administration has emphasized continued use of public lands in general, and particularly for hunters and oil and gas developers, angering environmental groups. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, using funds leftover from 2018, this week announced it will direct dozens of wildlife refuges to return staffers to work, ensuring planned activities on those lands, including organized hunts, continue.

Barbara Wainman, a spokeswoman for the agency, said most refuges have remained accessible to hunters throughout the shutdown, and the decision to staff them was made based on three criteria: resource management, high visitation and previously scheduled programming, which includes organized hunts and school field trips. Wainman said 17 of the 38 refuges have scheduled hunts that would have been canceled without the restaffing effort.

The IRS is using user fees to restore the income verification program, used by mortgage lenders to confirm the income of a borrower and considered a critical tool for the banking industry. After national parks were left open but unstaffed, causing damage to delicate ecosystems, the National Park Service announced it would take “an extraordinary step” and use visitation fees to staff some of the major parks. And despite the shutdown, the Bureau of Land Management is continuing work related to drilling efforts in Alaska.

Trump has refused to sign spending bills for nine of the 15 Cabinet-level departments until Congress approves his request for $5.7 billion in funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats have refused. The president initially said he would be “proud” to own the partial shutdown, but he quickly shifted blame onto Democratic leaders and has flirted with taking some extraordinary measures to find money for the wall. Although most Republicans have stood by the president, others have expressed discomfort with the strategy.

The focus on services that reach rural voters, influential industries and voters’ pocketbooks is intended to protect Republicans from blowback, said Barry Anderson, who served as assistant director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1988 to 1998.

During the 1996 shutdown, Anderson said, he and others met each day to review which offices and services should be deemed essential. He said tax refunds never made the cut.

“A government agency may employ services in advance of appropriations only when there’s a reasonable connection between the functions being performed and the safety of human life or protection of property,” he said. “How does issuing tax refunds fall under either of those categories? It’s not a human life or property issue. I don’t know the proper word: surprised, aghast, flabbergasted.

“This,” he said, “is to keep Republican senators’ phones silent.”

OMB has held regular conference calls with agencies and is fielding a high volume of requests for services they’d like to resume. In addition, OMB officials are intentionally working to legally reopen as much of the government as possible, according to a senior administration official, adding that agencies are permitted to update their lapse plans as the shutdown progresses. The official was not authorized to discuss the internal discussions publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Across the government, agencies are scrambling. The Food and Drug Administration has scaled back on food inspections. The Department of Agriculture recently announced that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food aid to nearly 40 million low-income Americans, will continue to operate through February because of a loophole in the short-term spending bill, which expired Dec. 22. But should the shutdown stretch into March, the department’s reserves for the program, $3 billion, won’t cover a month of benefits for all who need them. Other feeding programs, such as school lunch, food distribution and WIC, which provides nutrition aid to pregnant women, mothers and babies, are also in jeopardy should the shutdown last until March.

Hundreds of federal contracts for low-income Americans receiving housing assistance are expiring. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is unable to renew them and has instead directed private owners to dip into their reserves to cover shortfalls.

As time goes on, more and more programs will become vital, said Linda Bilmes, a public policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the meaning of what’s essential will shift.

“Even apart from the fact that there may be particular instances of things that are being manipulated for political purposes,” she said, “there are also realities that government agencies are facing as they reassess what is absolutely essential to do now that we’re here, with no immediate end in sight.”
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Despite Turkey’s vows to the contrary, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday he was confident the two nations can agree on a way to protect U.S.-allied Kurdish rebels in Syria after American troops withdraw from the country.

After speaking to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Pompeo said an agreement was a work in progress but can be achieved in a way that allows the Turks to defend their country while leaving alone Kurds who do not pose a threat.

The top U.S. diplomat said he was “optimistic” that Kurds who fought alongside U.S. forces against the Islamic State group in Syria are not threatened by pledges from Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to launch military operations against what he terms Kurdish “terrorists.”

“We recognize the Turkish people’s right and President Erdogan’s right to defend their country from terrorists and we also know that those who aren’t terrorists, those who were fighting alongside us all this time, deserve to be protected and we are confident that we can achieve an outcome that achieves both of those: protect the Turks from legitimate terror threats and prevent any substantial risks to folks who don’t present terror risks to Turkey,” Pompeo told reporters.

“We had this conversation, many details still to be worked out but I am optimistic we can achieve a good outcome,” Pompeo said of his call with Cavusoglu from Abu Dhabi, where he was on the fourth leg of a nine-nation Mideast trip.

He offered no details, but said the U.S. special envoy for Syria and the anti-IS coalition, Jim Jeffrey, had traveled to northern Syria earlier this past week to work on the matter and would be returning to Turkey to continue the discussions.

Turkey considers many of Syria’s Kurdish groups to be terrorists and has pledged to attack them. The threats have intensified in recent days as the U.S. begins the withdrawal process from Syria on President Donald Trump’s orders.

On a visit Friday to Turkish troops stationed near the Syrian border, Turkey’s defense minister, Hulusi Akar, said his country was “determined” to fight Kurdish militias it considers terrorists. He said military preparations were ongoing.

Pompeo and U.S. national security adviser John Bolton have made similar assurances to the Kurds, which have been denounced by Erdogan and other Turkish officials.

Comments by Bolton on the matter drew a quick rejection this past week from Erdogan, who said they were a “serious mistake” and that Turkey “cannot make any concessions in this regard.”

Turkey insists its military actions are aimed at Kurdish fighters in Syria — the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, or YPG — whom it regards as terrorists, and not against the Kurdish people. That has been Turkey’s longtime position. Turkey has rejected any role for Kurdish fighters in restoring peace to the war-torn region.

 
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New Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel on Friday over his handling of February’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The Republican governor flew to Fort Lauderdale three days after taking office to remove the Democratic sheriff, appointing a former police sergeant to serve as acting sheriff. Gregory Tony, 40, worked for Coral Springs police for 12 years before leaving in 2016 to start a company specializing in active-shooter training. He is the first African-American to serve as Broward’s sheriff.

DeSantis’ office issued a statement saying, “Sheriff Israel has repeatedly failed and has demonstrated a pattern of poor leadership. He failed to protect Floridians and visitors during the tragic Fort Lauderdale International Airport shooting in 2017. He failed in his duties to keep our families and children safe during the devastating shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018. These incidents demonstrate Sheriff’s Israel’s repeated incompetence and neglect of duty.”

The statement added, “The families of the victims deserve accountability.”

Israel was expected to issue a statement later in the day.

Under Florida law, the governor can suspend elected officials for criminal activity, misfeasance, incompetence or neglect of duty. Israel intends to challenge the suspension to the state Senate, which will conduct a trial and then remove or reinstate him. Israel’s lawyer, Stuart Kaplan, said this week the sheriff did nothing warranting removal and his future should be left to Broward voters in the 2020 election. Israel had been sheriff six years.

Last April, DeSantis said he would have suspended Israel if he were governor but he backed off later in the campaign, saying only that he would hold officeholders accountable. DeSantis’ Republican predecessor, now-U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, refused to suspend Israel, saying he wanted to wait until investigations into the Feb. 14 shooting that left 17 dead were complete before deciding.

Inaction by deputies

Some parents of Stoneman Douglas victims and conservative state lawmakers began pushing for Israel’s ouster shortly after the shooting when it was revealed that the Broward deputy assigned to guard the school, Scot Peterson, had not gone into the building to confront the shooter and his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, but took cover outside.

Other Broward deputies who arrived during the shooting also didn’t enter, even while officers from neighboring Coral Springs — Tony’s former department — charged inside. Parents also bashed Israel for saying during a nationally broadcast interview he had provided “amazing leadership” in the shooting’s aftermath.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing will bring my kid or 16 others back, but there was failure everywhere you turned,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime died in the shooting. “And after that failure, there was just a refusal to take accountability and responsibility. I wish him well but it was time for a change.”

Warning calls

The heat increased after it was learned the sheriff’s office received a call in 2016 and another in 2017 warning that suspect Nikolas Cruz, now 20, was a potential school shooter but deputies disregarded them. Deputies also had about 20 contacts with Cruz as a juvenile — mostly over arguments with his now-deceased mother. Israel has said none of those contacts warranted an arrest — a conclusion law enforcement members of the state commission investigating the shooting have agreed with.

But commissioners in their report finalized last week criticized Israel for earlier changing his office’s policy to say deputies “may” confront active shooters instead of “shall,” giving deputies an excuse for not charging the school. Israel told them he didn’t want deputies to think they had to conduct suicide missions.

Commissioners also concluded that the department’s active shooter training had not been effective. Still, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the commission’s chairman, and other law enforcement officials on the panel have said they didn’t think Israel should be suspended.

Earlier praise, criticism

Israel, 62, was elected sheriff in 2012 after a long career in law enforcement, ousting the Republican incumbent on his second attempt in the overwhelmingly Democratic county. After taking office, Israel, a Republican until changing parties shortly before running in 2008, received criticism over his friendship with notorious GOP operative Roger Stone, for promoting Stone’s inexperienced stepson to detective and for accepting gifts from a wealthy benefactor.

However, community leaders praised his work with the homeless, minority and gay communities. Violent crime went down, and he easily won re-election in 2016 to oversee the county’s 2,800 deputies.

Israel for years has called for tougher gun laws in Florida, a stance that created critics long before the school shooting.

Shortly after Israel’s second term began, a man retrieved a handgun from his luggage at Fort Lauderdale’s airport and opened fire, killing five. While Israel’s deputies apprehended him within 72 seconds, the draft of a county report said Israel and others didn’t control the chaos, leaving passengers huddled in fear for hours. He criticized the draft, and the final version was less harsh — but many of the same communications problems that plagued the airport response were repeated at Stoneman Douglas.
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Despite the U.S. stock market recovery, Macy’s and American Airlines’ revised revenue forecasts for 2018 have sent their stock prices spiraling. Other retail stocks fell, too, including J.C. Penney, Nordstrom and Kohl’s. The reports come amid news of another iconic department store, Sears, fighting for survival. But U.S. trade and financial officials say the U.S. economy is on solid ground and will continue to grow for years to come. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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The death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed just moments after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, sparked widespread condemnation of Saudi Arabia and renewed fears for the safety of journalists worldwide. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports on how U.S. lawmakers are keeping the focus on press freedom 100 days after Khashoggi’s death.
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