What Kind of Shut Down is This?

What kind of a shutdown is this, anyway?

Congress has deadlocked over the terms of funding the government, so (in theory, at least) there is a government shutdown in which all federal operations are supposed to be shuttered.  But Trump ordered staff to continue processing oil and gas leases and permits to drill on public lands.

The USDA just rolled out a policy that gives ranchers outsized control of lands managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. At the same time, government services that actually benefit the general public are grinding to a halt. So is this really a government shutdown, or merely an opportunity for Donald Trump to raid America’s public lands while sabotaging government operations he finds objectionable?

Let’s start with the National Parks. In the past, locked gates at the entrances of National Parks triggered a firestorm of public controversy. The current administration is playing this politically, by keeping most gates open at National Parks through the shutdown, while sending home two-thirds of the workers responsible for managing and overseeing park protections and visitor services. The inadequate staffing means that services are strained and the agency cannot adequately protect park resources, which led to vandalism at many units during the last Trump administration shutdown, according to former Park Service senior staff.

There’s been a swirl of controversy over the Trump decision to ramp up beef imports from Argentina, giving them special protections from tariffs. So, in the middle of the government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to throw ranchers a bone by rolling out a new policy to open up currently-protected public lands to leasing for beef production, and give private ranchers a special sense of entitlement to interfere in public land management. Somehow, that happened while the U.S. Department of Agriculture was closed. Did Trump’s tariff policies trigger a National Beef Emergency that could somehow be invoked to fast-track the livestock lobby’s priorities for controlling public lands?

Meanwhile the administration is plowing ahead with its ‘Energy Dominance’ agenda to maximize fossil fuel production, by keeping federal at work rubber-stamping oil and gas leases and drilling permits. This allows fast-tracking of the oil industry’s spread across public lands. At the same time, federal wildlife biologists, botanists, archaeologists, and other environmental compliance experts have been sent home. You can draw your own conclusions.

Last week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed permits authorizing the construction of the Ambler Road, a gravel highway slated to penetrate the Alaska wilderness and open up pristine lands to mining, to the detriment of caribou migrations and salmon runs. The next day, the Department of Interior announced that it was opening up the Arctic Coastal Plain to drilling, sweeping aside longstanding protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Trump administration is also using the shutdown as an excuse to advance its DOGE agenda to permanently fire federal workers and dismantle federal agencies through a process known as Reductions in Force. Unions have filed suit to stop this, and the courts (which themselves are now beginning to shut down) have issued a Preliminary Injunction to block this end-run around federal law.

Members of Congress are starting to notice that the Trump administration is cheating by keeping federal bureaucrats hard at work on its pet projects, while complying with the congressional direction to halt federal spending for programs it sees as less important. Several lawmakers have alleged that these examples of selective compliance are violations of the Antideficiency Act. The decisions by the Executive Branch to ignore the legal mandates of the Legislative Branch is one more example of how the constitutional balance of power that undergirds American democracy is actively being undermined.

Certainly, the American public is feeling the effects of the shutdown, as the Trump administration furloughs staff dedicated to administration priorities. Commercial air travel is facing mounting problems due to staffing shortages, even though air traffic controllers are being required to come to work without pay. Federal loans to small businesses, federally-backed mortgage applications, and federal revenue streams for states are being interrupted. Tribal governments have declared states of emergency. There are long-term losses in government efficiency. And if you’re one of the 750,000 federal employees put on unpaid leave, the impacts to your life will be direct and personal.

Environmental compliance is certainly getting shut down on federal lands. But if you’re an extraction-based industry that exploits public lands for private profit, it’s an opportunity to pillage the public lands while nobody is looking. And the Trump administration is actively enabling these corporate raiders, to the detriment of public lands and wildlife.

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