President Donald Trump is keeping his favorite areas of government—immigration enforcement and trade talks—fully operational as all else grinds to a shutdown.
Agencies have labeled the work as “essential” or tucked it under already-approved pots of money, so the president’s signature priorities continue, even while routine services stall, according to planning documents and official briefings reported by Politico.
The outlet reports that the Department of Homeland Security expects to keep the vast majority of its workforce on the job, meaning Border Patrol and ICE operations will grind on with limited interruption.
DHS’s own lapse plan shows more than 250,000 employees retained across components, with fee-funded operations—like many at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services—and revenue collection deemed exempt or excepted.
Trade won’t sleep, either. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department will keep advancing tariff programs and sector probes under national-security authorities, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The government is also moving to preserve staff to keep talks with China, India, Japan, and South Korea on track, according to Politico.
Other Trump priorities are similarly insulated. Interior will keep processing oil-and-gas permits, and NASA’s Artemis moon program is set to proceed—protections that weren’t as explicitly carved out in earlier shutdowns, the outlet reported.
The intent, allies say, is to be “strategic” about what suffers while ensuring nothing central to Trump’s agenda stalls. Elsewhere, however, the pain will be visible.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is suspending operations—with no monthly jobs report—weeks after Trump fired BLS chief Erika McEntarfer, and the White House then on Tuesday yanked his controversial replacement.
Aviation, transportation security, and other frontline staff continue to work without pay as thousands of colleagues are furloughed.
The showdown doubles as leverage, says Politico. Unions have sued over what they call unlawful threats of mass layoffs, arguing the administration is trying to turn a funding crisis into a purge of the civil service.
Homeland Security’s plan shows cyber and other non-frontline functions— notably at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—will take heavier hits even as border and trade work continue.
The shutdown is happening because Congress and the president failed to pass a spending bill—or even a stopgap measure—meaning the government’s funding stops.
While “excepted” work continues, much else freezes.
This is the first federal shutdown since the 35-day shutdown in 2018-19. The Trump administration has tried to pin the blame on Democrats.
White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson told the Daily Beast that the Democrats’ “radical agenda was rejected by the American people less than a year ago at the ballot box, now they’re trying to shut down the government and hold the American people hostage over it.”
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