At a church on Sunday in a suburb of Washington, D.C., where the pews are filled each week with dozens of active and retired federal workers, the weight of the government shutdown hung in the air. The Rev. Krishnan Natesan, pastor of Hemingway Memorial A.M.E. Church in District Heights, Md., delivered a sermon about holding on to faith and hope amid uncertain futures. “People are under high stress,” he said in an interview after services.
The day before, while traveling through Dallas Love Field Airport, Mike Talbert, 66, an industrial supplies buyer visiting from Wisconsin, did not notice any effects on his travel and shrugged off potential consequences of the shutdown. “It’ll get figured out,” he said.
As the first full week of the shutdown began, a split screen of reactions played out across the country. Many people said that they had yet to feel a significant impact aside from the closing of some tourist sites. Air travel has been largely uninterrupted so far. And many Americans have not experienced a change in their everyday lives.
Others, especially those in the federal work force, were bracing for layoffs or firings, seeing initial signs of economic fallout or anxiously wondering what was in store the longer this lasted.
And for still others, the shutdown felt like the latest twist of turbulence in a vortex of change as President Trump has dramatically reordered many aspects of American life. Collectively, the reactions offered one more reflection of a divided America.
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