Protesters rally outside of the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building headquarters of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on Feb. 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House passed a bill Thursday that would overturn an executive order from President Donald Trump that strips collective bargaining rights for roughly 1 million federal employees. 

The 231-195 vote was a rare bipartisan pushback against the president. The bill was sponsored by Maine’s Jared Golden, a Democrat, and Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican. Twenty Republicans joined all Democrats in supporting the bill.

It’s now referred to the Senate, but it’s unclear if it will garner enough support to reach the chamber’s 60-vote threshold — or even be brought to the floor for a vote.

The move also bucked House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, who did not bring the bill to the floor for Wednesday’s vote. Instead, lawmakers were able to vote on it through a legislative maneuver known as a discharge petition. 

The procedure allows rank-and-file members to compel the lower chamber to vote on measures that are not brought up by the leadership of the majority party, which is how bills typically reach the floor.

On Wednesday’s vote to advance the discharge petition, 13 Republicans joined all Democrats.

Following Wednesday’s procedural vote, Golden said in a statement that the bill would restore the rights of federal employees.

“President Trump said ending collective bargaining was about protecting our national defense,” he said. “But in my District, many affected workers build our warships and care for our veterans. If the majority we built over the past few months sticks together, we can overturn this union-busting executive order, and we can show America that this body will protect workers’ rights.”  

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, argued against the bill on the floor Thursday, saying lax accountability among the federal workforce harmed taxpayers.

“Accountability problems in the federal workforce are legendary,” he said. “It takes a Herculean effort to fire a poorly performing federal worker or one who is engaged in misconduct.”

Trump signed an executive order in March that banned collective bargaining agreements for federal agencies dealing with national security.

Those agencies include the departments of Defense, Veteran Affairs, Homeland Security, State and Energy, along with the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Coast Guard, most entities within the Department of Justice and several pandemic response and refugee resettlement agencies within the Health and Human Services Department, among others. 

Federal police and firefighters are exempt from the order.

Federal employees have limited bargaining agreements, compared to the private sector. Workers cannot strike or bargain for higher wages or benefits, but they can push for better working conditions, such as protection from retaliation, discrimination, and illegal firings. 

Construction on a new city hall in Raleigh, N.C., was at a standstill Nov. 18 as word of immigration raids kept away most workers. Industries with large immigrant workforces, such as construction, are asking for federal relief as they combat labor shortages and raids. (Photo by Clayton Henkel/NC Newsline)

As food prices remain high, the Trump administration has made it easier for farmers to hire foreign guest workers and to pay them less. Now, other industries with large immigrant workforces also are asking for relief as they combat labor shortages and raids.

Visas for temporary foreign workers are a quick fix with bipartisan support in Congress. And Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ office told Stateline that “streamlining” visas for both agricultural and other jobs is a priority for the Trump administration.

But some experts warn that such visas can be harmful if they postpone immigration overhauls that would give immigrant workers a path to green cards and citizenship.

“Lack of permanent status is costly to migrants, employers, and the broader economy,” wrote Pia Orrenius, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, in a report published in June. Workers are “vulnerable to policy changes triggered by a change in administration, most recently the threat of mass deportations.”

In a Nov. 25 interview with Stateline, Orrenius said the crackdown on illegal immigration could be a good thing if it leads to permanent solutions.

“If you can stop undocumented immigration, then great. This is a great time to work on comprehensive immigration reform,” Orrenius said. “Where is there a scarcity of workers and how do we address those legally instead of illegally?”

Restaurants, construction and landscaping businesses have lost a combined 315,000 immigrant workers through August this year, more than any other industries, according to a Stateline analysis of Current Population Survey data provided by the University of Minnesota at ipums.org.

The construction industry needs more foreign worker visas like those already being provided for agriculture to prevent more delays in building everything from homes to highways, business owners say.

The industry needs help to “provide lawful workers while working to prepare more Americans for permanent careers in construction,” said Jaime Andress, testifying at a congressional hearing last month on behalf of the Associated General Contractors of America trade group. About 92% of contractors with open positions are having trouble finding enough skilled labor, whether it’s for construction of buildings, highways or utility infrastructure, she testified.

There are about 145,000 fewer immigrants working in restaurants, on average, through August of this year compared with the same period in 2024, the Stateline analysis found. There are about 127,000 fewer in construction and 43,000 fewer in landscaping.

One landscaping firm, which did not agree to an interview, lost $50,000 in contracts this year when workers stopped showing up because of rumored immigration raids, said Rebecca Shi, chief executive officer of the Chicago-based American Business Immigration Coalition, which advocates for employers seeking immigration changes.

“He had 75 workers and 50 of them didn’t show up one day because there were rumors ICE was going to be in the area,” Shi said. “Many of them were citizens and legal workers, but they were worried about family members and neighbors, so they didn’t show up either. It’s bad for the economy when you lose a worker, but it’s also the fear and uncertainty. We know restaurants that have lost 50% of staff and are at risk of closing because people just aren’t showing up.”

The coalition organized a “fly-in” in October to Washington, D.C., to ask members of Congress for more help to legalize immigrant workers through work permits in hospitality, agriculture, construction, elder care, health care and manufacturing.

In a letter dated Dec. 2, thousands of businesses in all 50 states asked the administration for an additional 64,716 H-2B visas, saying they rely on them for seasonal surges in hospitality, tourism, landscaping, forestry, seafood production and other industries.

And a bipartisan group of 33 U.S. senators from 22 states signed a letter Nov. 13 by Maine Independent Sen. Angus King and South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds asking for more H-2B seasonal employment visas.

“Employers’ workforce needs cannot be met with American workers alone,” the letter said.

Construction contractors say they need visas that are similar to the H-2A visas for agriculture that the Trump administration streamlined in October to make them easier and cheaper for farmers to hire temporary foreign workers.

The Associated General Contractors of America wants visas like the proposed new H-2C visas floated by Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker. Those would allow up to 85,000 less-skilled temporary workers in construction, hospitality and other fields to stay in this country up to nine years. The bill, introduced in September, has not advanced.

The association also supports a pathway to legal status for some workers already in the country, as proposed by Florida Republican U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar and Texas Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar. The bill, introduced in July, also has not advanced.

“Workforce shortages are the leading cause of construction project delays,” said Brian Turmail, a vice president at the association. “Nearly 1 out of 3 contractors have been impacted in one way or another by enhanced ICE enforcement activities. That number is almost certain to increase now that ICE has received significant boosts to its budget as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

Those industries are asking for more help as the latest federal immigration raids further affect workforces in Illinois, Maryland and North Carolina, with more raids planned in Louisiana. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organization at Syracuse University, reported a “massive redeployment of government military and civilian personnel to immigration enforcement” in recent months, with total detentions reaching more than 65,000, according to a Nov. 24 report. Nearly three-quarters of those arrested have no criminal convictions.

Construction, landscaping and other industries are already heavy users of H-2B visas for temporary non-agricultural foreign workers, according to government figures reviewed by Stateline.

In fiscal year 2025, which ended in September, there were about 209,000 H-2B visas, with Texas (20,051), Florida (18,515), North Carolina (8,634), Colorado (7,723) and Louisiana (7,234) getting the most. The most common occupations were building and grounds (94,152); food service (31,403); construction (16,729); farming, fishing and forestry (15,665); and personal care (12,170).

Some of the largest users of the visas last year were Core Tech Construction of New York City, a concrete coring and cutting firm (2,619 visas); ABC Professional Tree Services of Texas, which provides land clearance services (1,913); and Progressive Solutions LLC of Arkansas, which provides herbicide application to utilities (1,882).

The H-2B visa program needs to be streamlined and expanded to be useful for employers and workers, said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian CATO Institute, who has written about the visas.

Employers don’t always get the workers they want because the United States limits H-2B visas to 33,000 twice a year. Requests for the visas have already surpassed the 33,000 cap for the first half of fiscal 2026.

“The paperwork is a nightmare for employers and there are a lot of steps for workers also,” said Bier. “And there are so few visas available that your chance of getting all you need is almost nil.”

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Boxes of the diabetes drug Ozempic rest on a pharmacy counter in Los Angeles. Drugs like Ozempic have grown in popularity to treat obesity, prompting more than a dozen states to pay for them. But with major budget pressures, several state Medicaid agencies are either stopping coverage altogether or restricting who can get access to the therapy. (Photo illustration by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Some states are rethinking their coverage of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss as budgets tighten and Medicaid programs brace for the cuts included in President Donald Trump’s broad tax and spending law.

As of Oct. 1, 16 state Medicaid programs covered GLP-1s for obesity treatment, up from 13 last year, according to a survey of Medicaid directors by KFF, a health policy research group. But some states have announced they will discontinue coverage or restrict who can qualify for it.

Many doctors and patient advocates say the drugs will save money in the long run by reducing obesity-related diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Many states, however, have concluded they just can’t afford them.

North Carolina Medicaid ended coverage of GLP-1s for obesity last month, citing shortfalls in state funding. California, New Hampshire and South Carolina have said they will end coverage on Jan. 1. Starting next year, Michigan Medicaid will limit coverage to people who are “morbidly obese.” Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin also are considering new restrictions.

In last year’s KFF survey, about half the states said they were interested in covering GLP-1s for weight loss, according to Elizabeth Williams, a senior policy manager at KFF who focuses on Medicaid. This year, most states are moving in the opposite direction.

“This likely reflects recent state budget challenges and the significant, significant costs associated with coverage,” Williams said. “After a number of years of robust revenue growth right after the pandemic, states are starting to see slowing revenues, increasing spending demands and a lot of fiscal uncertainty due in part to recent federal actions.”

In April, the Trump administration scrapped a Biden-era proposal that would have required state Medicaid programs to pay for some GLP-1s for obesity treatment. Earlier this month, Trump announced that his administration had reached agreements with the manufacturers of Wegovy and Zepbound to reduce the prices of the drugs for Medicaid, Medicare and consumers buying the drugs directly, But it’s unclear whether the deals will reduce costs for states.

Health plans for state workers also are reassessing their coverage of the drugs for obesity. North Carolina, for example, ended GLP-1 obesity coverage for state workers last year, and West Virginia canceled a 1,000-person pilot program.

GLP-1 medications, which balance blood sugar levels, have long been prescribed to patients with Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular conditions. All state Medicaid programs, which are funded jointly by the states and the federal government, cover GLP-1s for those uses.

But the drugs also curb hunger signals and can help people lose significant amounts of weight. Medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound have become wildly popular for that purpose.

Between 2019 and 2023, the number of outpatient Medicaid prescriptions for select GLP-1s to treat diabetes and obesity grew from 755,300 to 3.8 million, according to KFF. During the same period, Medicaid spending on those drugs increased from $597.3 million to $3.9 billion.

A study published last year in The BMJ, the journal of the British Medical Association, found that the number of patients without diabetes who started GLP-1 treatment in the United States increased from roughly 21,000 in 2019 to 174,000 in 2023, or more than 700%.

More than 2 in 5 U.S. adults have obesity, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC defines obesity as having a body mass index — a calculated measure of body weight relative to height — of 30 or higher. Obesity costs the U.S. health care system almost $173 billion per year, according to the agency.

Recently, the manufacturers of some GLP-1s have lowered their prices, selling them directly to consumers for $500 or less per month. But many patients cannot afford to pay that much out of pocket.

States in a tough financial position

In North Carolina, Dr. Jennifer McCauley, a weight management physician at UNC Health, said Medicaid coverage of GLP-1s was “incredibly helpful for our patients.”

“Now they’ve stopped coverage, so those people are now going back, regaining some of the weight, because they’re unable to obtain these medications, and also are suffering the health consequences of obesity,” McCauley told Stateline.

Some critics of expansive GLP-1 coverage say it isn’t cost effective, because many patients gain back the weight they lost when they stop treatment. But McCauley said the “downstream effects of obesity are even higher.”

“There are definitely vulnerable populations that probably would not be able to obtain weight loss without these medications.”

James Werner, a spokesperson at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, blamed the coverage change on the state legislature’s failure to budget enough money for Medicaid.

In an email to Stateline, Werner said coverage of GLP1s for weight loss “would be reconsidered if Medicaid is fully funded.”

Some states are trying to maintain at least some coverage of the expensive drugs by tightening the eligibility requirements for a prescription, according to Colleen Becker, a project manager at the National Conference of State Legislatures, a policy research group.

“States are really looking at how to balance access and provide that access to patients, but they’re stewards of their budgets, and they need to be good stewards of it,” Becker said.

Michigan and Pennsylvania are among the states considering such options. Meanwhile, Connecticut has decided to maintain coverage of weight-loss drugs for state employees, but to require beneficiaries to try online weight-loss counseling before they can get a prescription.

Some future possibilities

One state, North Dakota, has taken a different approach to GLP-1 coverage after legislation that would have required the state’s Medicaid program to cover the drug failed. Instead, North Dakota this year became the first state to mandate that insurers on the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace cover the drugs for weight loss.

North Dakota Deputy Insurance Commissioner John Arnold said the insurance department calculated that the mandate wouldn’t cause insurance premiums to rise significantly.

“It’s not that anybody can walk into the doctor’s office and say, ‘Hey, I want to have this covered,’” Arnold said. “It is really for those who have a medical need for the drugs, then it would be covered.”

The insurance department had to ask the legislature for permission to make the change, according to North Dakota Republican House Speaker Robin Weisz. He said insurance carriers were concerned that it was going to be “open season for everybody who could lose 20 or 30 pounds.”

He said it will take time to see whether the policy raises insurance premiums.

“If the carriers can come in a couple years and say, ‘Wow, here’s what we’ve spent on these … we’ll take a hard look at it,” Weisz said. “But, it’s way too early to tell at this point.”

Arnold says other states may have the flexibility to consider mandating ACA insurers to cover the drugs.

“Our biggest concern was reducing those comorbidities and the long-term impact that that has on the cost of insurance in general, because more comorbidities means more claims,” Arnold said, referring to diseases and conditions associated with obesity.

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

A farm employee works near Coachella, Calif., in 2024. A California union has sued to stop new, lower-wage guidelines for foreign worker visas. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A California union and a group of farmworkers from around the country are suing to stop new, lower-wage federal guidelines that save money for farmers but cut pay for temporary foreign agriculture workers — hurting local laborers as a result, the suit alleges. 

In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court, the United Farm Workers and 18 individual workers sued the U.S. Department of Labor over the October guidelines for laborers who are in the United States under temporary, H-2A visas. The new guidelines set lower wages — differentiating them by state — including pay cuts to account for the value of free housing provided by law to foreign workers. 

“Farm workers, and the rural communities across America they sustain, need and deserve fair wages and job security, not a race to the bottom with an endless supply of cheap foreign labor,” Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. 

The new Trump administration rules are “drastically cutting the minimum wage that U.S. employers must pay foreign farmworkers, all while costs and wages in other sectors have sharply increased,” the lawsuit states, adding that the lower pay for foreign workers will also force cuts for American workers. The lawsuit asks a federal judge in California to halt implementation of the guidelines and recalculate wages. 

The lawsuit also objects to first-time pay differentials based on the value of employer-provided housing. It alleges violations of laws requiring that foreign visas not affect wages of U.S. workers with similar jobs. 

The cuts “will severely impact farmworkers — some of the most vulnerable members of our society and many of whom already live in poverty,” according to the lawsuit. 

One worker, not identified by name, works in Missouri with an H-2A foreign worker visa was formerly paid $17.83 an hour and will suffer a $4.08 pay cut, leaving him unable to afford food and essential protective clothing for his job helping with squash, eggplant and other vegetables, according to the lawsuit. 

One worker, Irene Mendoza, a U.S. citizen, said in the lawsuit that her wages could be cut by $3.22 an hour, to $13.78, because of the guidelines, even though she doesn’t need a foreign worker visa, forcing her to get a second job to pay for food, housing and transportation between jobs in some of the states where she works. Mendoza said in the lawsuit that she works picking and packing green beans and potatoes in Michigan, Minnesota, Texas and Wisconsin.

The lower wage guidelines vary by state and are subject to state minimum wage laws that could make them higher in some states. In North Carolina, for instance, the new hourly wage is $11.09 for less-skilled workers, compared with $16.16 last year, and $12.27 for local workers who don’t need housing, according to a Cornell University analysis.

The Department of Labor referred a Stateline request for comment to the Department of Justice, which declined comment. 

Some farmers and experts have hailed the new guidelines as lifesavers that will stave off bankruptcy as costs rise and some prices for their farm goods stay low. 

Almost half the H-2A visas in the 2025 fiscal year were in a small group of states including Florida (60,000), Georgia (44,000), California (37,000), Washington state (36,000) and North Carolina (28,000). The government expects an additional 119,000 visas to be issued under the new rule, on top of the nearly 420,000 a year issued in recent years. 

Public comments on the rule are open until Dec. 1.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Farmworkers gather produce near Hemet, Calif. The Trump administration is making it easier for farmers to employ guest workers from other countries. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

In a tacit admission that U.S. food production requires foreign labor, the Trump administration is making it easier for farmers to employ guest workers from other countries.

At the same time, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in recent months appears to be refraining from conducting agricultural workplace raids, even as it scours Democratic-led cities for immigrants who are in the country illegally.

“We really haven’t seen agriculture targeted with worksite enforcement efforts, and early this year we did,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of U.S. immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

The shifts come as many Americans are concerned about the rising cost of food, creating political problems for a president who campaigned on lowering them. Last week, the administration also announced it would lift tariffs on some foreign food products, including bananas, beef, coffee and tomatoes.

To ease labor shortages on farms and ranches, the administration last month made changes to the federal H-2A visa program, which allows employers to hire foreign workers for temporary agricultural jobs when there aren’t enough U.S.-born workers available. Under the new rule, the Department of Homeland Security will approve H-2A visas more quickly.

“Our immigration system has been broken for decades, and we finally have a President who is enforcing the law and prioritizing fixing programs farmers and ranchers rely on to produce the safest and most productive food supply in the world,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in an email to Stateline.

But the move to increase the supply of foreign agricultural workers conflicts with a July statement by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that “the promise to America, to ensure that we have a 100% American workforce, stands.”

Rollins also said the administration was committed to the mass deportation of immigrants who are here illegally, but that it would be “strategic so as not to compromise our food supply.” Ultimately, she said, the solution would be increased automation of agricultural jobs.

The government has issued about 420,000 H-2A visas for agricultural workers every year since 2023, which amounts to about half of the 812,000 agricultural worker jobs. They are concentrated in states that grow fruits and vegetables as opposed to grains, which are increasingly planted and harvested using machines. The government expects an additional 119,000 visas to be issued under the new rule.

Almost half the H-2A visas in the 2025 fiscal year were in Florida (60,000), Georgia (44,000), California (37,000), Washington state (36,000) and North Carolina (28,000).

Lower wages

The new H-2A rule also includes new hourly wage guidelines that vary by state but are lower than previous wages, and allows employers to charge workers for housing that used to be free. In North Carolina, for instance, the new rate is $11.09 for unskilled workers compared with $16.16 last year. In California, the rate is $13.45 for unskilled workers compared with $19.97 last year, though minimum wage laws in California and some other states would apply to those jobs, according to a Cornell University analysis.

In North Carolina, farmers are looking forward to lower labor costs, said Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association, a trade association that brought 11,000 guest workers to the state through the H-2A guest worker program last year.

“If you think farmers are making more money in these conditions, you’re wrong. They’re going broke,” Wicker said. Workers will take a pay cut under new guidelines and will have to pay for housing, but that may help farmers stave off bankruptcy, he said.

“I’m not saying the workers are going to be happy about this, but I think they’ll come back. Wages have gone down before and they kept coming,” he added.

Jeffrey Dorfman, an agricultural and resource economics professor at North Carolina State University, said the changes will be a boon to the state’s farmers.

“The move to lower the H-2A wages by the Trump administration will be very well received by growers in North Carolina and will save farmers tens of millions of dollars statewide,” Dorfman said. “For many farmers, it will turn money-losing crops into money-making crops, if prices stay about where they are now.”

Unionized California farmworkers are opposed to the pay cuts and loss of free housing in the new guest worker visa plan, said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers, which represents about 10,000 workers in California.

The union sued the administration over ICE raids in the fields earlier this year, but recently “it’s been pretty quiet,” he said.

“For us it’s been really a one-two punch,” De Loera-Brust said. “First came the raids, which hurt workers, and now in order to appease business interests, they make all these concessions on wages and the guest workers program.”

Fewer raids

The administration quickly walked back a June directive to avoid raids on the agriculture and hospitality industries. Nevertheless, ICE raids on those employers have been more infrequent in the months since.

In June, ICE raided a dairy farm in New Mexico and a meatpacking plant in Nebraska. Since then, the agency has raided only a handful of food and agriculture employers, such as a July raid on a California marijuana grower and an Arizona restaurant chain, and a September raid to arrest Wisconsin dairy workers.

Earlier this month, ICE agents descended on an onion farm in Northern California, arresting four immigrants on charges of illegally selling farmworker visas.

Even as ICE ramps up its activity in North Carolina cities such as Charlotte and Raleigh, Wicker, of the growers trade group, said farms in the state have not been targeted.

Gelatt, of the Migration Policy Institute, said that’s been true of farms and ranches in many states since June.

“In past administrations we’ve seen a very quiet de-emphasis of immigration enforcement at farms. You don’t need to make an announcement. You don’t need to fight in the courts,” Gelatt said. “It is possible just to direct enforcement activities away from farms. It’ll be hard to know if that’s happened now, but I would not be surprised.”

While farmworkers in California are seeing some relief from raids, life is still uneasy for them, De Loera-Brust said.

“Overall, they have clearly slowed down [raids] in ag areas, but that’s not policy. They could resume at any time. People are living with uncertainty,” he said.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Planes line up on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport on Nov. 10, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The record 43-day government shutdown that ended Wednesday night scrambled air travel, interrupted food assistance and forced federal workers to go without a paycheck for weeks.

It also cost the U.S. economy about $15 billion per week, White House Council of Economic Advisers Director Kevin Hassett told reporters Thursday.  

As the government began to reopen Thursday, officials were working to untangle those issues and others.

But in some areas, the processes for getting things back to normal after such a lengthy shutdown will also take time. 

President Donald Trump on Wednesday night signed a package passed by Congress reopening the government, which closed on Oct. 1 after lawmakers failed to pass a stopgap spending bill.

Flights back on schedule by Thanksgiving?

The Federal Aviation Administration’s shutdown plan, announced last week by Administrator Bryan Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, was to reduce flights to 40 major airports by 10%. 

As of Thursday afternoon, the FAA had not lifted the order restricting flights. But the agency did stop ramping up the percentage of those affected. 

The FAA started by asking airlines to cancel 4% of flights Nov. 7. A Wednesday order halted the rate at 6%.

That was enough to cause major disruptions to travel, and it remained unclear Thursday how long it would take to resume normal operations. 

In a statement, Airlines for America, the trade group representing the nation’s commercial air carriers, welcomed the end of the shutdown but was vague about how much longer air travelers would see disruptions. The statement noted the upcoming holiday as a possible milestone. 

“When the FAA gives airlines clearance to return to full capacity, our crews will work quickly to ramp up operations especially with Thanksgiving holiday travel beginning next week,” the group’s statement said. 

The FAA and Transportation Department did not return messages seeking updates Thursday.

The reduction in flights was meant to ease pressure on air traffic controllers, who worked through the shutdown without pay. 

Many missed work as they pursued short-term jobs in other industries. Duffy said that left the controllers on the job overstressed and possibly prone to costly mistakes.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought to reward other federal workers at airports, those employed by her department’s Transportation Security Administration, with $10,000 bonuses if they maintained high attendance records during the shutdown.

Noem handed out checks to TSA workers in Houston on Thursday and said more could come. 

Federal workers return, with back pay on the way

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers who had been furloughed returned to the office Thursday and those who had been working without pay will continue their duties knowing their next paycheck should be on time. 

All workers will receive back pay for the shutdown, in accordance with a 2019 law that states employees “shall be paid for such work, at the employee’s standard rate of pay, at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”

A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said the White House has urged agencies to get back pay to employees “expeditiously and accurately.”

Agencies will need to submit time and attendance files, and payroll processors can then issue checks. According to the spokesperson, agencies have different pay schedules and payroll processors, and “discrepancies in timing and pay periods are a result of that.”

The office estimates that workers will receive a “supercheck” for the pay period from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1 on the following dates:

Nov. 15

• General Services Administration
• Office of Personnel Management

Nov. 16

• Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and Defense

Nov. 17

• Departments of Education, State, Interior and Transportation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• NASA
• National Science Foundation
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Social Security Administration

Nov. 19

• Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor and Treasury
• Small Business Administration

Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement Wednesday that federal workers across all agencies “should not have to wait another minute longer for the paychecks they lost during the longest government shutdown in history.” 

“The anxiety has been devastating as they cut back on spending, ran up credit card debt, took out emergency loans, filed for unemployment, found temporary side jobs, stood in line for food assistance, skipped filling prescriptions and worried about the future. Federal employees should receive the six weeks of back pay they are owed immediately upon the reopening of the federal government,” said Greenwald. 

The union represents workers at 38 federal agencies and offices.

States Newsroom spoke to several furloughed federal workers who attended a special food distribution event during the shutdown.

The American Federation of Government Employees, one of multiple unions that sued the Trump administration over layoffs during the shutdown, said its members were used “as leverage to advance political priorities,” according to a statement issued Tuesday by the union’s national president, Everett Kelley.

The AFGE, which according to the union represents roughly 820,000 federal workers, did not immediately respond for comment Thursday.

The shutdown-ending deal reinstated jobs for fired federal employees and prohibits any reductions in force by the administration until Jan. 30.

Federal workers speak out

A statement released Thursday by a group of federal workers across agencies struck a different tone on the shutdown and praised the 40 senators and 209 representatives who voted against the temporary spending bill deal.

“The fight mattered. It changed the conversation. More members of the American public now understand that Trump is shredding the Constitution,” according to the statement issued by the Civil Servants Coalition.

The coalition also noted, “Even though the government is reopening, none of us will be able to fully deliver our agency’s missions. Our work has been exploited and dismantled since January through harmful policies and illegal purges of critical staff.”

The group emailed the statement as a PDF document to an unknown number of government workers and urged them to “channel that frustration toward action” by contacting their representatives.

SNAP saga concludes

The government reopening ended a drawn-out saga over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps 42 million people afford groceries. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture told states in a Thursday memo they “must take immediate steps to ensure households receive their full November allotments promptly.”

The guidance also noted that states should prepare for another shutdown as soon as next October by upgrading systems so that they could allow for partial payments. 

A key point of dispute between the administration and those seeking SNAP benefits was the lengthy time the administration said it would take to fund partial benefits. 

A Wednesday evening statement from a department spokesperson said full benefits would be disbursed in most states by Thursday night. 

Lauren Kallins, a senior legislative director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said Thursday “states are all working hard to resume full benefits.”

 “But there will likely be logistical challenges, depending on a state’s system’s capabilities and whether the state had already issued partial benefits, that may impact how quickly a state is able to push out” benefits, she wrote. 

The program, which is funded by the federal government and administered by states, sends monthly payments on a rolling basis. 

That means that the day of the month each household receives its allotment varies. Households that usually receive benefits mid-month or later should see no interruption. 

But many of the program’s beneficiaries receive their payments earlier in the month, meaning that, depending on their state, they may have missed their November payments. 

Some states, including Democrat-run Wisconsin, Oregon and Michigan, began paying full benefits last week after a Rhode Island federal judge ordered the administration to release full November payments and the department issued guidance to states to do so.

The administration then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause enforcement of the Rhode Island judge’s order and reversed its guidance to states, telling them to “immediately undo” efforts to pay out full November benefits.

The Department of Justice dropped its Supreme Court case Thursday. 

“Because the underlying dispute here is now moot, the government withdraws its November 7 stay application in this Court,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote to the high court.

In the trial court, the administration cited the USDA guidance and said it would discuss the future of the litigation with the coalition of cities and nonprofit groups that brought the suit. 

Capital area tourist attractions reopen

Tourists in the nation’s capital have been shut out of the Smithsonian Institution’s 17 free museums and zoo for most of the federal shutdown.

The institution on Friday will open the National Museum of American History, the National Air and Space Museum and the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Air and Space Museum located at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, according to a message posted on the Smithsonian’s website.

All other museums and the National Zoo will open on a “rolling basis” by Nov. 17.

Multiple public-facing agencies, including the National Park Service and Internal Revenue Service, did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for reopening information.

National parks were closed or partially closed during the shutdown.

Several IRS services were reduced or altogether cut as the funding lapse dragged on. Those disruptions included limited IRS telephone customer service operations and the closure of in-person Taxpayer Assistance Centers.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters while walking to his office on Nov. 10, 2025 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate approved a stopgap spending bill Monday that will end the longest government shutdown in American history once the measure becomes law later this week.

The 60-40 vote sends the updated funding package back to the House, where lawmakers in that chamber are expected sometime during the next few days to clear the legislation for President Donald Trump’s signature. 

Shortly before the vote, Trump said he plans to follow the agreements included in the revised measure, including the reinstatement of thousands of federal workers who received layoff notices during the shutdown. 

“I’ll abide by the deal,” Trump said. “The deal is very good.”  

Republicans, he added, will soon begin work on legislation to provide direct payments to Americans to help them afford the rising cost of health insurance, one of the core disagreements between the political parties that led to the shutdown. 

“We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “And I tell you, we are going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time.”

House members told to head to D.C.

Earlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson urged representatives to begin traveling back to Capitol Hill as soon as possible to ensure they arrive in time to vote on the bill to reopen the government, after the measure arrives from the Senate. 

The Louisiana Republican’s request came as airlines were forced to delay or cancel thousands of flights on the 41st day of the shutdown, a situation that could potentially impact a House vote on the stopgap spending bill if members don’t follow his advice. 

“The problem we have with air travel is that our air traffic controllers are overworked and unpaid. And many of them have called in sick,” Johnson said. “That’s a very stressful job and even more stressful, exponentially, when they’re having trouble providing for their families. And so air travel has been grinding to a halt in many places.”

Johnson then told his colleagues in the House, which hasn’t been in session since mid-September, that lawmakers from both political parties “need to begin right now returning to the Hill.”

Trump threatens air traffic controllers

Trump took a markedly different tone over the challenges air traffic controllers have faced during the shutdown in a social media post that he published several hours before he spoke to reporters about the deal to reopen government. 

“All Air Traffic Controllers must get back to work, NOW!!! Anyone who doesn’t will be substantially ‘docked,’” Trump wrote, without explaining what that would mean for workers who had to take time off since the shutdown began Oct. 1. 

Trump added that he would like to find a way to provide $10,000 bonuses to air traffic controllers who didn’t require any time off during the past six weeks.

“For those that did nothing but complain, and took time off, even though everyone knew they would be paid, IN FULL, shortly into the future, I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country,” Trump wrote. “You will have a negative mark, at least in my mind, against your record. If you want to leave service in the near future, please do not hesitate to do so, with NO payment or severance of any kind!” 

An end in sight

The Senate-passed package will provide stopgap funding for much of the federal government through January 30, giving lawmakers a couple more months to work out agreement on nine of the dozen full-year spending bills.  

The package holds several other provisions, including the full-year appropriations bills for the Agriculture Department, the Legislative Branch, military construction projects and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. 

Seven Democrats and one independent broke ranks Sunday on a procedural vote that advanced the package, drawing condemnation from some House members and outside advocacy groups unhappy that no solution was arrived at to counter skyrocketing health insurance premium increases for people in the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, where bipartisanship is required for major bills to move forward under the 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a floor speech Monday he was “grateful that the end” of the stalemate was in sight. 

“We’re on the 41st day of this shutdown — nutrition benefits are in jeopardy; air travel is in an extremely precarious situation; our staffs and many, many other government workers have been working for nearly six weeks without pay,” Thune said. “I could spend an hour talking about all of the problems we’ve seen, which have snowballed the longer the shutdown has gone on. But all of us, Democrat and Republican, who voted for last night’s bill are well aware of the facts.”

Schumer bid for deal on health care costs fails

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was far less celebratory after his bid to get Republicans to negotiate a deal on health care costs by forcing a shutdown failed. 

“The past few weeks have exposed with shocking clarity how warped Republican priorities truly are. While people’s health care costs have gone up, Republicans have come across as a party preoccupied with ballrooms, Argentina bailouts and private jets,” Schumer said. “Republicans’ breach of trust with the American people is deep and perhaps irreversible.” 

“And now that they have failed to do anything to prevent premiums from going up, the anger that Americans feel against Donald Trump and the Republicans is going to get worse,” Schumer added. “Republicans had their chance to fix this and they blew it. Americans will remember Republican intransigence every time they make a sky-high payment on health insurance.” 

Schumer was insistent throughout the shutdown that Democrats would only vote to advance a funding bill after lawmakers brokered a bipartisan deal to extend tax credits that are set to expire at the end of December for people who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

That all changed on Sunday when Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada voted to move the bill toward a final passage vote.

Maine independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, also voted to advance the legislation.  

Jeffries still supports Schumer

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during a press conference Monday afternoon that he still believes Schumer is effective and should keep his role in leadership, despite the outcome. 

“Leader Schumer and Senate Democrats over the last seven weeks have waged a valiant fight on behalf of the American people. And I’m not going to explain what a handful of Senate Democrats have decided to do. That’s their explanation to offer to the American people,” Jeffries said. 

“What we’re going to continue to do as House Democrats, partnered with our allies throughout America, is to wage the fight, to stay in the coliseum, to win victories in the arena on behalf of the American people notwithstanding whatever disappointments may arise,” he said. “That’s the reality of life, that’s certainly the reality of this place. But we’re in this fight for all the right reasons.” 

Speaker Johnson said earlier in the day that the “people’s government cannot be held hostage to further anyone’s political agenda. That was never right. And shutting down the government never produces anything.”

Johnson reiterated that GOP lawmakers are “open to finding solutions to reduce the oppressive costs of health care,” though he didn’t outline any plans to do that in the weeks and months ahead. 

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks at a campaign event in Norfolk earlier this month. Kaine was one of seven Senate Democrats to join Republicans in advancing a bipartisan deal to reopen the federal government, a move he said was aimed at protecting federal workers and ensuring a future Senate vote on Affordable Care Act tax credits. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/ Virginia Mercury)

This story has been updated.

In a rare public split from his party, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., broke ranks with most Senate Democrats on Sunday to help advance a bipartisan deal to reopen the federal government — a package that restores pay and protections for federal workers but doesn’t deliver on the extension of the health care tax credits Democrats had been holding out for. The latter immediately prompted criticism from some within his party’s progressive wing.

Kaine, one of seven Democrats and one independent to join Republicans in moving the measure forward, framed his decision as a pragmatic step to end the record-long shutdown and secure key concessions for federal employees. 

“After the elections in Virginia last Tuesday, I kind of assessed on Wednesday, ‘Where are we?’ (on the shutdown). And so I decided to then join the discussions to try to find the path out, and brought to the table an issue that wasn’t subject to the negotiation really before I got there … which was how to treat federal workers,” Kaine said Monday in a Zoom call with reporters.

“And I asked my progressive colleagues in the caucus, do you think another week of punishing SNAP recipients is going to make the Republicans cave, and will another month make them cave? I don’t need to court anybody’s approval and I don’t need to fear anybody’s judgment,” Kaine said.

The Democrat isn’t up for reelection until 2030.

Vote signals a pivot — and a compromise

The procedural vote moving the stop-gap funding measure forward cleared the Senate late Sunday by a 60-40 vote. The legislation aims to reopen the federal government and fund key programs through the next several months, while laying out commitments to debate health-care subsidies and other policy priorities.

For Kaine, the deal included specific safeguards he said he insisted upon. 

The legislation would rehire federal employees who were terminated during the shutdown, provide back pay for all federal employees regardless of status, and include a pledge to prevent future reductions in force for the federal workforce. Those terms, Kaine said, constituted the threshold enabling his support.

He said that after weekend negotiations he locked in the agreement at “4:45 p.m. yesterday afternoon, and I feel very, very good about it.”

Kaine also said his action received support from Virginia Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, who said on the CBS program Face the Nation Sunday that “Virginians need to and Virginians want to see the government reopen.”

“Controversial, tough call, some of my colleagues don’t like it,” Kaine said. “But my governor-elect is very happy with it, and I’m hearing from Virginians this morning. … ‘Thank God you did this.’”

Following up in an email Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for Spanberger emphasized that she supports Kaine’s effort.

“Governor-elect Spanberger has been consistent: Democrats and Republicans in Congress must bring an end to this government shutdown,” the spokesperson said. “Hundreds of thousands of Virginians are feeling the devastating impacts — lost paychecks, work disruptions, and lost SNAP benefits. Governor-elect Spanberger appreciates Senator Kaine fighting for protections for Virginia’s workforce and securing them as part of the negotiations.”

Virginia is disproportionately affected by the ongoing federal work stoppage. With more than 850,000 residents relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and one of the nation’s largest federal workforces, the ripple effects of the funding freeze have already hit home. 

The shutdown — triggered by a stalemate over annual appropriations bills and a tied debate over extending subsidies under the Affordable Care Act — began in early October and has since grown into the longest in modern U.S. history. 

In Virginia, the freeze of SNAP payments spurred state action. In late October, Gov. Glenn Youngkin declared a state of emergency and launched the Virginia Emergency Nutrition Assistance program to bridge benefit gaps. The crunch on federal workers and beneficiaries of food assistance added urgency to the political and policy equation.

Implications and dissent

Kaine presented the vote as a tactical win that would help reopen the government, secure worker protections, and then debate the more contentious health-care issues openly rather than under a shadow of shutdown chaos. 

“We don’t have a guarantee, but we have a guarantee of a very high-stakes debate and vote on the Senate floor in the full view of the American public, without the background noise of shutdown consequences drowning out the critical nature of the healthcare debate,” he said.

Still, not everyone agrees with his decision. Some progressive Democrats decried the move as ceding too much to Republicans and weakening leverage in negotiations. 

Political commentator Keith Olbermann, on X, demanded Kaine resign: “Don’t vote and then resign — RESIGN NOW. You are no longer a Democrat.” 

Others, such as retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the brother of U.S. Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Woodbridge, criticized the broader Senate Democratic caucus for collapsing before the public’s appetite for a fight.

“It’s striking and inexplicable that Senate Dems crumbled following decisive signals from the American electorate,” Vindman said on X. “Americans expect the Democrats to fight Trump and Republicans.”

In Virginia’s congressional delegation, responses further reflected the divide. 

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun, said he would vote “no” on the Senate proposal once it reached the House, faulting it for failing to fully address health-care costs or federal worker firings. 

“A promise not to fire federal workers in the future is no comfort … to federal workers already fired or contractors who lost their job or aren’t receiving back pay,” he said.

In contrast, Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Fairfax, applauded Kaine’s move as protecting federal workers and ending “attack after attack” under the Trump administration.

On the Republican side, Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt, said, “After 40 days of unnecessary hardship, Democrats have finally recognized that their government shutdown strategy was a failure. … Sadly, it came at the expense of our troops, SNAP recipients, and federal employees who bore the brunt of their political brinkmanship.” 

A calculated risk

Political scientist Stephen J. Farnsworth of the University of Mary Washington said Kaine’s calculation reflects the kind of decision lawmakers make when they’re freed from the immediate pressures of reelection.

“The farther an elected official is from their next election, the more likely they are to make the decision about how to proceed based on sound public policy evaluation,” he said, noting that Kaine’s next reelection campaign is five years off.

“The fact that the Democratic senators who are part of this negotiation are some distance from their next election, or have announced their retirement, suggests that this is more about their evaluation of how the government should proceed rather than reelection considerations,” he said.

On the intra-party split between Kaine and fellow Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, Farnsworth added: 

“It seems to me that reasonable people could disagree on what the party’s best step forward would be. And it’s certainly unusual when there is a difference of opinion between the two Democratic senators, but even people who agree most of the time don’t agree all the time.”

Warner, who voted against the compromise, said in a statement that while he appreciated that the Senate proposal includes “important language preventing further mass layoffs of federal employees,” he could not support an agreement that “still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they are going to pay for their health care or whether they will be able to afford to get sick.”

Whether Kaine’s move proves bold or miscalculated remains to be seen. 

“Only time will tell,” Farnsworth cautioned. “The reality is that an awful lot of people are suffering from the economic consequences of the shutdown. It’s better for the government to be open than not.”

 

People wait in line at a security checkpoint at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport  on Nov. 9, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The FAA has targeted 40 "high-volume" airports, including Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, for flight cuts amid the government shutdown. (Photo by Grant Baldwin/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — Seven U.S. Senate Democrats and one independent joined Republicans on Sunday night in advancing legislation to reopen the government and temporarily keep it afloat until the end of January, after a record-breaking shutdown that began Oct. 1.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada voted with most of the GOP to advance the stopgap measure through a 60-40 procedural vote. 

Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, also voted in support.  

Fetterman, King and Cortez Masto had already voted with Republicans on the previous 14 votes to reopen the government. Until Sunday, Republicans who control the chamber did not have the 60 votes needed to clear the filibuster threshold.

GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has consistently voted against the temporary funding measure, again cast a “no” vote.

The deal would also unlock full-year funding for a vital food aid program that serves 42 million Americans and bring back federal workers fired by President Donald Trump when the government was closed.

It does not include language addressing skyrocketing premiums for those enrolled in individual health insurance plans in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, a major sticking point for Democrats. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said late Sunday on the Senate floor that he commits to holding a separate vote on health insurance subsidies no later than the second week of December.

In a press conference following the vote, Rosen said Democrats have “an opportunity also to put Republicans on the record on the ACA.”

“Are they committed to doing this? Are they committed leaders who said, ‘You can come to the table on health care once the government was open’? And now he must follow through. If Republicans want to join us in lowering costs for working families, they have the perfect opportunity to show the American public,” Rosen said.

New text of a temporary stopgap funding deal released Sunday night proposes to keep the government open until Jan. 30. The bill would also reinstate all federal employees who were fired after the shutdown began, restoring their jobs with back pay, and prohibit any further layoffs until the temporary funding expires.

As part of the agreement, three fiscal year 2026 funding bills will ride along with the package, including the appropriations bills for agriculture programs, veterans benefits, military construction and Congress.

Divided Democrats

Several Senate Democrats left a lengthy closed-door meeting earlier Sunday night upset that the deal does not include anything to address rising health care premiums, on which the party has staked the 40-day shutdown. 

Subsidies for those who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace expire at the end of this year.

“So far as I’m concerned, health care isn’t included, so I’ll be a no,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin also issued statements following the caucus meeting declaring they would vote no. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also told reporters on his way out of the meeting that he’s opposed to the deal.

Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said on social media he would oppose it. ”I’ve been clear that we need real action to stop the devastating health care cost increases that are hurting millions of families,” he said.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., issued a statement expressing support for the agreement, highlighting that Senate Republicans have promised a vote on extending the health care subsidies.

“This deal guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do. Lawmakers know their constituents expect them to vote for it, and if they don’t, they could very well be replaced at the ballot box by someone who will,” Kaine said.

Government reopening will take time

The Sunday night vote does not mean the government will reopen right away.

The legislation must make its way through Senate procedural steps and then gain approval from the U.S. House, which hasn’t been in session since Sept. 19. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, attended the Washington Commanders football game with Trump Sunday night in Landover, Maryland.

Trump briefly spoke to reporters upon news of the deal after leaving the NFL game, telling them, “It looks like we’re getting very close to the shutdown ending.”

Nearly a million federal workers have missed paychecks during the shutdown, and food benefits for the poorest Americans stopped flowing at the beginning of November. 

Air travel has also become snarled as the shutdown has dragged on, and air traffic controllers are under pressure without pay. The Federal Aviation Administration began cutting flights Friday at 40 major airports across the U.S. The cuts are set to ramp up to a 10% decrease in air traffic.

SNAP funding

The deal includes provisions that Democrats say the Trump administration sought to shrink or cut altogether, including fresh fruit and vegetable subsidies for mothers with children and monthly food boxes for low-income seniors.

The legislation would direct $8.2 billion to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, otherwise known as WIC, a roughly $600 million increase over last year’s program amount.

During the shutdown, the administration used $150 million from a U.S. Department of Agriculture rainy day fund to keep the program going. The bill would replenish the contingency money.

The bill also fully funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and children’s nutrition programs, including subsidized school breakfast and lunch, and the availability of food during summer school breaks.

Democrats on the Senate Committee on Appropriations say it included “key funding for SNAP and other critical nutrition programs as President Trump fights in court during the government shutdown to cut off benefits for 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP to feed their families,” according to a bill summary. 

The USDA directed states to begin releasing the November SNAP benefits onto recipients’ benefits debit cards after a Rhode Island federal district judge and circuit court ordered the Trump administration to do so last week. 

Trump appealed the order to the Supreme Court, which stayed the decision. A department memo Saturday told states that released the full benefits to take back a portion of them.

The bill would also direct money to the SNAP emergency contingency fund.

Hemp ban

Hemp farmers are sounding the alarm about a provision in the bill that they say would “effectively eliminate the legal hemp industry built under the 2018 farm bill,” according to a Sunday statement from the Hemp Industry and Farmers of America.

Lawmakers are “slamming the door on 325,000 American jobs and forcing consumers back to dangerous black markets,” the industry group’s executive director Brian Swensen said. 

Swensen also added: “The hemp industry has been ready and willing to work on responsible regulations – age restrictions, testing requirements, proper labeling — but instead of collaboration, the industry is getting a misguided prohibition through backdoor appropriations deals.” 

House trepidation

Several House Democrats, including a top appropriator, criticized the deal.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans for the proposal Sunday night in a statement, saying House and Senate Democrats have “waged a valiant fight” for the last seven weeks.

“It now appears that Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. As a result of the Republicans refusal to address the healthcare crisis that they have created, tens of millions of everyday Americans are going to see their costs skyrocket,” Jeffries said.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top House Democratic appropriator, said she did not agree to the release of the veterans and military construction bill as an attachment to the deal.

“Congress must invest in veterans, address the health care crisis that is raising costs on more than 20 million Americans, and prevent President Trump from not spending appropriated dollars in our communities,” DeLauro, D-Conn., said in a statement.

Rep. Angie Craig joined other House Democrats in slamming the Senate negotiations on social media.

“If people believe this is a ‘deal,’ I have a bridge to sell you. I’m not going to put 24 million Americans at risk of losing their health care. I’m a no,” said Craig, of Minnesota.

Deysi Camacho shops at the Feeding South Florida food pantry on Oct. 27, 2025 in Pembroke Park, Florida. Feeding South Florida was preparing for a possible surge in demand as SNAP benefits were delayed and reduced due to the government shutdown. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  Senate Democrats left their Thursday caucus lunch tight-lipped as an agreement to end the government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history at 37 days, remained elusive.

Republicans have floated a deal that includes the reinstatement of federal workers laid off by President Donald Trump, but no votes were scheduled on a spending bill as of late Thursday afternoon. There was some speculation senators could work through the weekend.

The chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, said negotiations are still underway. But she said as part of a deal, she supported the rehiring of the thousands of federal workers the Trump administration fired in its Reductions in Force, or RIFs, during the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.

“Those who were RIF’d during the shutdown should be recalled,” she said. “We’re still negotiating that language.”

Emboldened by this week’s Election Day victories, where Democrats swept major local and state races, Senate Democrats are seeking to use that momentum as leverage to get Republicans to also agree to a health care deal to end the government shutdown.

While Democrats have pushed to extend tax credits for health care, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Thursday that the best he can offer is a vote on extending those subsidies, which expire this year. 

The coming expiration has resulted in millions of people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace receiving notices of a drastic spike in premium costs.

“I can’t speak for the House, and obviously I can’t guarantee an outcome here, and they know that,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said. “I think the clear path forward here, with regard to the ACA issue, is they get a vote, and we open up the government, and we head down to the White House and sit down with the president and talk about it.”

Democrats that represent states with a high population of federal employees, such as Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, are also seeking to strike a deal on RIFs. A federal judge blocked those Reductions in Force last month.

Kaine told reporters Wednesday that those negotiations are occurring with the White House.

“It is an item that is being discussed with the president, with the White House,” Kaine said.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has stressed that unless there is a commitment from House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump to extend health care tax credits, Democrats should not agree to pass a stopgap spending bill to reopen the government. 

In session next week?

Senators are still scheduled to leave Capitol Hill late Thursday and be out next week on recess for the Veterans Day holiday.

But a couple Senate Republicans said late Thursday afternoon that lawmakers might stay in Washington, D.C. into Friday or later.

“I think they’re trying to work towards a vote tomorrow, maybe through the weekend. I’m pro-through the weekend,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said in an interview following a GOP lunch meeting.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., likened the situation to a “goat rodeo,” which is a hyperbolic phrase to refer to a disaster.

“We’re probably going to have a vote tomorrow, and then we will get on, and then we will know where we are, and we’ll know whether the Democrats are serious or not,” Kennedy said, adding that he was unsure exactly what they were voting on.

Democrats quiet about any deal

Following their Thursday caucus lunch, Democrats did not seem closer to an internal agreement on how to move forward with resolving the government shutdown as they left their huddle. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats had a “very good, productive meeting.”

One of the top negotiators for Democrats on finding a deal, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, declined to comment.

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman threw his hands up as he left the room.

“I don’t know how productive it was,” Fetterman, who has voted with Republicans to move legislation to reopen the government, said. 

Some Democrats said they were unified, such as New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, Michigan’s Gary Peters and Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, a top appropriator. 

Peters did not specify what issue Democrats were unified on. 

“I don’t want to get into that, but it was an encouraging caucus (meeting) because there’s a great deal of unity as we came out,” he said.

Revised stopgap?

Additionally, a new continuing resolution, or CR, is needed, as the stopgap funding measure would have funded the government until Nov. 21, now just two weeks away. 

The House, which Johnson has kept in recess since September, would also need to be called back to pass a new version of a CR.

As the government shutdown continues, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned this week that if funding is not restored, flights will need to be reduced by 10% in some air spaces due to a shortage of air traffic controllers, who have worked without pay for weeks.

The government shutdown has led to millions of federal workers furloughed or required to work without pay and has created uncertainty for vulnerable people who rely on food assistance and  heating services, as well as stoppages in vital child development and nutrition programs. 

In an effort to force Democrats to vote to reopen the government, the Trump administration has tried to withhold Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits for 42 million people, until a court ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release those benefits. 

Frustrated with the government shutdown, Trump has also tried to pressure Republicans into doing away with the Senate’s filibuster, which requires a 60-vote threshold, but Thune has resisted those calls. 

Progressives: ‘Do not cave’

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said during a Thursday press conference that he’s “not promising anyone anything” when it comes to a House vote on extending health care tax subsidies.  

Johnson criticized Senate Democrats for wanting a guarantee that the House would also take a vote on extending the ACA taxes.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. 

House progressives said they have one message for Senate Democrats: “Do not cave,” as Rep. Pramila Jayapal put it during a Thursday morning press conference outside the U.S. House.

“Any deal must secure the extension of the ACA tax credits and ensure health care for the American people with agreement from the House, the Senate and the White House, full stop. We have the momentum,” the Washington state Democrat said.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., who publicly confronted Johnson during a press conference Wednesday, said, “We require a deal that actually addresses the health care crisis, not that promises to think about addressing it down the road in two weeks, with concepts of a plan.”

“Sadly, at this point in time, even I say it’s impossible to trust our Republican colleagues to honor their promises and their obligations,” Houlahan said.

April Verette, president of the labor union SEIU, which represents roughly 2 million members, spoke alongside Jayapal and Houlahan and praised Democrats as “courageous.”

“We are determined to say ‘Stick with this fight’ because righteousness, morality is on our side,” Verette said.

People sit in front of windows looking out on the tarmac at Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City on April 3, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps/Utah News Dispatch)

The 40 airports set to see a 10% reduction in flights during the government shutdown nearly matched the list of the nation’s busiest airports, according to a preliminary list seen by States Newsroom, potentially leading to thousands of flight cancellations across the country.

A 10% reduction at the listed airports would mean 3,300 canceled flights per day, according to Airports Council International-North America, the trade group for airports.

The Federal Aviation Administration had not released an official list of airports by early Thursday afternoon, but three sources familiar with the matter provided tables listing the proposed airports.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday that the FAA would cut air traffic at 40 major airports starting Friday to help alleviate stress for air traffic controllers who have been working without pay since the federal government shut down on Oct 1.

The airports on the preliminary list are: 

• Anchorage, Alaska
• Atlanta
• Baltimore
• Boston
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Chicago Midway
• Chicago O’Hare
• Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky
• Dallas/Forth Worth International
• Dallas Love Field
• Denver
• Detroit
• Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood, Florida
• Honolulu
• Houston George Bush Intercontinental
• Houston W.P. Hobby
• Indianapolis
• Las Vegas
• Louisville, Kentucky
• Los Angeles
• Miami
• Minneapolis/St. Paul
• Memphis, Tennessee
• Newark, New Jersey
• New York LaGuardia International
• New York John F. Kennedy International
• Orlando, Florida
• Oakland, California
• Ontario, California
• Portland, Oregon
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• Salt Lake City
• Seattle/Tacoma
• Teterboro, New Jersey
• Tampa, Florida
• Washington, D.C. Reagan National and Dulles International, both in Northern Virginia

Busy Nashville, Raleigh-Durham not on list

While there is significant overlap of the list with the nation’s busiest airports, there are some exceptions. 

The busiest passenger airport not included was in Nashville, Tennessee, the 28th-busiest airport in the country in 2024, according to Airports Council International-North America.

Austin, Texas; St. Louis; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Sacramento, California; New Orleans; Kansas City; and San Jose, California, were also among the 40 busiest airports that will not see reductions Friday.

Memphis, Anchorage and Louisville rank outside the top 40 for passenger traffic, but are the top three for cargo movement.

Oakland and Indianapolis ranked just outside the top 40 for passenger travel. Teterboro’s airport did not rank in the group’s top 50 busiest.

$327 million in daily economic output lost 

A 10% reduction at the listed airports would decrease economic output at airports by about $327 million daily, according to the council.

Because the reductions are to the nation’s busiest airports that serve as hubs for the major airlines, they will also affect airports that aren’t on the list but depend on flights to and from those hubs.

The group’s president and CEO, Kevin M. Burke, said in a statement that the group and its members had adapted to quickly changing conditions during the shutdown, but that they were “reaching a breaking point.”

“The current trajectory is unsustainable,” Burke said. “With the busy holiday season on the horizon, Congress and the administration must come together now to reopen the federal government with a clean, bipartisan continuing resolution, pay federal employees, and restore operational certainty for the millions of air travelers who take to the skies every day.”

Prioritizing safety

At a press conference Wednesday, Duffy said the decision was made to keep flying safe. He urged overworked air traffic controllers not to work second jobs, but was “not naive” that many would have to in order to pay their bills.

He said the agency’s decision was made to prevent any accidents that could result from overworked controllers, while assuring the flying public that commercial air travel remained extremely safe.

President Donald Trump was less explicit during an Oval Office appearance Thursday. 

“Fair question,” he said when asked by a reporter if flying remained safe. “Sean Duffy announced they’re cutting in certain areas 10%, and they want to make sure it’s 100% safe. That’s why they’re doing it.”

Dems call for shutdown end

Some Democratic lawmakers, who have blocked a bill to temporarily reopen the government at fiscal 2025 levels in an effort to force Republicans to negotiate an extension to tax credits for insurance purchased on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, renewed those calls in light of the FAA’s decision.

Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport sees a daily average of 60,000 passengers on 750 flights.

She called on Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to negotiate with her party on the expiring health insurance tax credits to reopen the government “so we don’t see the impacts like the ones at MSP.”

“The only path forward is through negotiating, so air traffic in the skies above Minnesota and the country can keep operating safely and at full capacity and our government can finally open up again,” she said.

House Transportation and Infrastructure ranking Democrat Rick Larsen of Washington state called the Duffy move “drastic and unprecedented” and requested the FAA share data that went into the decision. 

He also called for an end to the shutdown to allow air traffic controllers to be paid.

“Shutting down parts of our National Airspace System is a dramatic and unprecedented step that demands more transparency,” he said. “The FAA must immediately share any safety risk assessment and related data that this decision is predicated on with Congress. If we want to resolve issues in the NAS, let us fix health care, open government and pay transportation and aviation safety workers.”

Advocates who urged the Oregon legislature to increase child care funding in January 2024 hung onesies and other children’s clothes on a tent outside the Capitol in Salem. Officials in Oregon and other states are relying on their own funds to keep Head Start programs afloat during the federal government shutdown. (Photo by Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

With some early childhood education centers already closing their doors because of the federal government shutdown, local leaders are scrambling to find money to keep Head Start programs available to some of the country’s most vulnerable children.

Head Start programs, which serve more than 700,000 low-income children across the country, are almost entirely federally funded. In addition to free preschool, centers provide health screenings, parent resources and meals for children up to 5 years old. But the record-long government shutdown has forced child care centers across the country to close as funding is exhausted.

The closures are creating stark choices for some of the most vulnerable families in society. Migrant farmworkers, for example, who are more likely to be without health insurance and tend not to have any vacation time, are faced with the prospect of missing work, and a paycheck, to care for their children. A network of Head Start programs for migrant farmworkers’ children that operates in states across the South closed its sites on Friday.

To keep Head Start programs operating in her state, Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey announced plans to advance $20 million in additional funding for the program. Those grant funds were previously approved to improve and expand the Massachusetts program, which gets about 80% of its funding from the federal government.

In a statement last week, Healey said the state was doing everything it could to support those programs, “but we don’t have the resources to make up for what the federal government owes.”

In Atlanta, private funders made an $8 million loan to keep Georgia’s largest Head Start providers afloat for the coming weeks.

Frank Fernandez, the president and CEO of Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, told CBS News that the measure was only a temporary solution: “Our elected officials must take action to end this shutdown and ensure the long-term sustainability of this critical program,” Fernandez said.

In Washington state, some school systems that operate Head Start programs are using their own funds to keep kids in classrooms, the Seattle Times reported. Still, other operations are cutting back staff and services to make do.

In neighboring Oregon, state officials are working out details of a 60-day deal to use existing funds to keep Head Start going, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported. State officials said Head Start providers must have experienced a delay in federal funds and the state assistance will not exceed the total amount of money awarded to a program by Oregon annually.

“It’s important to note that this is not a loan to Head Start programs and is not ‘backfilling,’” Kate Gonsalves, a spokesperson for the state’s early learning department said in a statement. “These are dual-funded programs so the state dollars are not replacing federal funds but can be drawn down earlier in the cycle.”

Some sites already shuttered

Head Start sites in 18 states have already closed their doors, according to the First Five Years Fund, a nonprofit advocating for quality child care and early childhood education.

The National Head Start Association, a nonprofit representing Head Start programs, said full or partial closures have affected 8,000 children. Nationwide, programs serving 65,000 children hadn’t received their federal funds as of Saturday, according to the group.

In Ohio, seven Head Start programs have exhausted their federal funds. Two have already closed, affecting 600 children and 150 employees. In the coming weeks, the Ohio Head Start Association says the other five will be forced to close their doors, affecting nearly 3,700 Ohio kids.

“Every day the shutdown continues, Ohio children and families are paying the price,” Julie Stone, Executive Director of the association said in a statement. “Head Start isn’t a political issue — it’s a lifeline for working families.”

Farmworkers’ children

Agricultural farmworkers, many of whom travel for seasonal work, have been hit particularly hard.

East Coast Migrant Head Start Project, which runs 43 Head Start centers in multiple states, suspended services on Friday. Around 1,200 children of agricultural farmworkers are without services now, but the number of children served fluctuates by season. The network is funded to serve 3,000 children of farmworkers across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Virginia, and partners with other groups in a few other states.

In Florida, that means more than 800 children of agricultural workers are going without care due to the lapse in federal funding, said John Menditto, chief legal officer of East Coast Migrant Head Start Project. The group has also had to furlough its staff.

About 60% of farmworkers are American citizens or are in the country legally. Head Start is open to all children, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

In rural North Florida, roughly 80 children have been without early education, language and disability therapies, said Leannys Mendoza Gutierrez, the campus director for the migrant Head Start program in rural Jennings, Florida, which cares for babies 6 weeks old to kids up to 5 years old.

“[Farmworkers] are putting food on our tables, for all of us,” she said. “However, they are not so far receiving services due to this situation that we don’t know when it’s going to end.”

Migrant farmworker families in Gutierrez’s program work in North Florida and South Georgia on watermelon, cucumber, cabbage, pepper, tomato, strawberry and pine straw farms.

Many parents have been forced to skip work and lose pay because they have been unable to find child care alternatives, Gutierrez said. She added that her program steps in to cover pediatrician bills for families that don’t have health insurance. The shutdown has prevented her program from offering such assistance, too, she said.

Many farmworkers don’t have health insurance and already struggle with poverty, making staying home from work difficult. Many also receive food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which has also been affected by the shutdown.

“The shutdown just accentuates everything,” said Amy Liebman of the Migrant Clinicians Network, which works with clinics across the nation that serve migrant workers and their families. “Everyone’s concerned, they’re worried about the families they serve.”

Two other programs, one serving kids in the capital area of Tallahassee and another, Redlands Christian Migrant Association, which serves about 1,700 kids of agricultural workers in Florida, have also suspended services, according to the National Head Start Association.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org

Furloughed federal workers stand in line for hours ahead of a special food distribution by the Capital Area Food Bank and No Limits Outreach Ministries on Barlowe Road in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

HYATTSVILLE, Maryland — Ginette Young lined up with hundreds of furloughed federal workers ahead of a special food bank distribution on Tuesday in a suburb just outside the District of Columbia.

“I’m here because I’ve had no paycheck for the last two weeks, and a short paycheck for the two weeks prior. I’ve had to cover bills, and my credit cards have been paying my medical and doctor’s appointments. So I just need to restock the pantry a little bit, just to help get us over the hump,” said Young, a 61-year-old auditor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Young, a District resident, was among hundreds of furloughed federal workers hoping to get pantry staples and fresh produce at the event sponsored by the Capital Area Food Bank and No Limits Outreach Ministries in Hyattsville.

Food security took center stage in the shutdown debate this week as hundreds of thousands of furloughed government workers faced another missed paycheck and 42 million recipients of federal food assistance were told they will stop receiving benefits Saturday.

The Trump administration has said it will not tap emergency funds at the USDA to extend the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, despite loud cries from advocates and Democrats who say it’s perfectly legal for officials to use the rainy day money.

“The longer the shutdown continues, distributions like this will end up being truly a lifeline for so many,” said Radha Muthiah, president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank. 

“And I worry that we’re just going to see double, triple the numbers of people, both federal government furloughed workers, as well as those who are expecting SNAP benefits and being surprised Saturday morning when they don’t have it,” Muthiah said.

Food bank staff anticipated about 150 households would show up at its first distribution event for federal workers earlier in October. The organization had to quickly double its figures, Muthiah said. 

At Tuesday’s event, the food bank and No Limits Outreach Ministries brought enough to serve 400 households. Add a complete stop to food assistance to low-income families, and the region’s hunger needs will skyrocket, Muthiah said.

“In our entire region, there are about 400,000 SNAP recipients, and on average, they receive about $330 in SNAP benefits for a family of two people a month. And so if that were to be disrupted at the cost of a meal in our region, that’s about 80 meals vanishing from the tables of SNAP recipients across our region,” Muthiah said. 

“So we are ramping up, purchasing more food to be able to distribute through our partners into the community.” 

Kale, collard greens handed out

Tracy Bryce, 59, of District Heights, Maryland, unloaded kale and collard greens from the back of a U-Haul truck as hundreds of federal workers, with employment IDs in hand, waited for the noon distribution to open.

Bryce, a retired U.S. Marshal of 34 years, now volunteers with No Limits Outreach Ministries.

“I’ve been where they are,” Bryce said.

Byron Ford, 34, of Hyattsville, sat for hours in a chair he brought that morning, as temperatures hovered in the high 40s. 

“I’m just here today trying to get some food, just trying to provide healthy food for the family,” said Ford, who has two children ages 4 and 7.

“We’re fortunate that we have things like this to provide for people who aren’t receiving a paycheck. So we’re fortunate, we’re still blessed.”

A civilian employee who works in finance for the Department of the Navy, Ford is also worried about family members who receive SNAP benefits.

“We’re just spending our savings and trying to help,” he said.

Young said she remembers what it was like to need SNAP several decades ago.

“I was, you know, trying to work and go to college at the same time, and I had my kid, so yeah, I had SNAP for a little while. It’s meant to help people until they get on their feet,” she said.

A furloughed government project manager who did not want to provide her full name for fear of losing her job, said “being a political pawn is hard.”

“They (lawmakers) get the chance to go home in the middle of all this and not finish with the appropriations, not continue to walk through conversations, because they are choosing to dishonor the position that the people put them in and still get paid while their people suffer,” she said.

Grocers, retailers worry over SNAP cutoff

Retailers and grocers, already bracing for losses when Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” SNAP cuts take effect, are also urging lawmakers to reopen the government.

“We urge Congress to move forward now on a path that reopens the government and ensures families relying on SNAP can access their November benefits without interruption or delay,” Jennifer Hatcher, The Food Industry Association’s chief public policy officer, said in a statement Oct. 21.

The already planned SNAP cuts are slated to cost food retailers hundreds of millions of dollars, industry groups warned. 

Food retailers estimate up-front costs of forthcoming new SNAP requirements signed into law by President Donald Trump in July will cost convenience stores roughly $1 billion, supermarkets just over $305 million, supercenters such as Walmart an estimated $215.5 million and small-format stores about $11.8 million, according to an impact analysis last month by The Food Industry Association, the National Association of Convenience Stores and the National Grocers Association.

Ed Bolen, director of SNAP State Strategies at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said retailers could face “very drastic” losses if SNAP is also completely stopped Nov. 1.

“Just imagine a 100% cut for a month or so,” said Bolen, of the left-leaning think tank.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union sent a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins Monday requesting the agency spend contingency funding to extend SNAP benefits beyond next week.

“Rising costs at the grocery store already threaten household budgets, especially for low-income families. An interruption in food assistance will only make matters worse, and workers in meatpacking, food processing, and grocery could see a reduction in hours and wages if SNAP dollars aren’t available to be spent in their stores or on their products,” wrote Milton Jones, president of the union that, according to the organization, represents roughly 1.2 million workers.

A sign with a notice of closure is seen pinned on the fence to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 12, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) 

WASHINGTON —  The Trump administration cannot carry out layoffs that it announced after the government shutdown began Oct. 1 and is barred from issuing any new layoff notices under a court order issued Tuesday. 

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said at the end of an hour-long hearing in the Northern District of California she granted the preliminary injunction because the reductions in force are unlawful and “intended for the purpose of political retribution.”

Illston referenced a social media post by President Donald Trump that said, “I can’t believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”

Michael Velchik, a Justice Department attorney representing the government, argued against the judge issuing a preliminary injunction. 

Velchik said statements from Trump and other administration officials were an expression of policy differences with Democrats and were not evidence of attempted political retribution. 

The hearing was the latest step in a lawsuit filed in late September. In the month since, attorneys for labor unions have contended the Trump administration’s actions violate federal law, while lawyers for the government have said it’s well within the scope of their authority. 

Illston, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton, granted a temporary restraining order in mid-October that she clarified and expanded days later amid a misunderstanding within the administration about its impact.

Some layoffs planned pre-shutdown, government says

Illston said during Tuesday’s hearing that she’s likely to schedule an evidentiary hearing over claims that some layoff notices that have gone out during the shutdown were planned before it began, and shouldn’t be subject to any court orders in this lawsuit. 

Danielle Leonard, an attorney representing the labor unions that brought the case, said she believed that type of hearing could help all involved “get to the heart of” the disagreement. 

Leonard requested the preliminary injunction cover employees at the Interior Department, Commerce Department’s patent office and the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights from layoffs until after the judge scheduled that evidentiary hearing. 

Illston didn’t respond directly to that proposal, but said she planned to release a written version of the preliminary injunction she issued from the bench as soon as Tuesday. 

Illston said the injunction didn’t apply to employees at the Small Business Administration who received layoff notices in late September, before the shutdown began. 

Velchik contended that layoff notices issued since the shutdown began were well within the administration’s authority, saying the country does not “have a fossilized executive branch where we cannot reduce the size.”

Velchik also told the judge that efforts to lay off federal employees during the shutdown were “the right thing to do, morally. And it’s the democratic thing to do.” 

The U.S. Capitol building and Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., at sunset on Oct. 14, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Some members of Congress are asking for their salaries to be withheld during the government shutdown, while federal workers on Friday missed their first full paycheck since many operations closed on Oct. 1.

With no movement toward a deal to end the shutdown, the House remained on a prolonged break from Capitol Hill, the Senate left for its usual long weekend and President Donald Trump prepared to depart for a trip to China, where he will likely focus much more on foreign policy and tariffs than the funding lapse. 

The president, lawmakers and federal judges all receive their regular paychecks during government shutdowns, unlike the 2 million civilian federal employees and thousands of staffers who work in the legislative branch. Members of Congress are paid $174,000 a year and leaders are paid more.

Active duty military members would also normally miss their paychecks, but the Defense Department reprogrammed $8 billion earlier this month to avoid a missed payday for U.S. troops. It’s unclear if the Pentagon can do that again ahead of the Oct. 31 pay date or if there was enough money left to cover those salaries. 

Pay for Congress

Unlike most federal workers, members of Congress have the option to receive their pay as normal, donate their salaries to charity, give the money back to the Treasury, or have their checks withheld during this shutdown.  

Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Gabe Amo posted a letter Thursday evening from House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine L. Szpindor confirming that House members’ salaries can be held back until after the funding lapse ends. 

Szpindor wrote that legal requirements, including the 27th Amendment, entitle members of Congress to their pay and that any lawmaker who has their check withheld during a shutdown can request it be distributed at any time. Szpindor did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted said the Senate Financial Clerk told their office that while senators are required to be paid, officials can withhold his check until after the shutdown ends, at his request. 

The Senate disbursing office will continue to cut the check, but Husted will not pick it up until after Congress funds the government, the spokesperson said. 

Husted doesn’t believe members of Congress should receive their salaries on time when other federal workers cannot, the spokesperson said. 

A different Senate staffer, speaking on background about the issue, told States Newsroom the salary for another senator was transitioned from direct deposit to a physical paycheck so it could be held by the disbursing office for the duration of the shutdown, at that senator’s request. 

Members of Congress who have asked for their salaries to be withheld include Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim, Oklahoma Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice and Oregon Democratic Rep. Janelle Bynum, among others.  

Spokespeople for Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., did not respond to a request for comment about whether they are having their salaries withheld during the shutdown. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he is having his paycheck held back.

Can lawmakers’ salaries legally be withheld?

Congress has voted several times over the years to officially withhold members’ salaries during a shutdown, but none of the bills have ever become law. There have been questions during past funding lapses about whether members’ paychecks could legally be withheld.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office wrote in a letter to Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst just before the shutdown began that member pay “is required by the Constitution and is considered mandatory spending.” 

“Thus, Members of Congress would continue to be paid during a lapse in discretionary appropriations,” CBO Director Phillip L. Swagel wrote. 

That assessment lines up with a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, updated in August, that says “Members of Congress continue to receive their pay during a lapse in appropriations for a number of reasons.”

Lawmaker salaries “have been provided by a permanent, mandatory, appropriation since” 1981, the report says.

The U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 6, Clause 1, says: “Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”

And the 27th Amendment to the Constitution says: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”

The CRS report quotes the Government Accountability Office’s principles of federal appropriations law as saying, “The salary of a Member of Congress is fixed by statute and therefore cannot be waived without specific statutory authority.”

But the report also points out nothing prevents a member of Congress from accepting the salary and then donating all or part of it back to the Treasury.

No options and no paychecks for feds

That same choice isn’t available for the people who work for members of Congress or those at departments and agencies throughout the executive branch. 

They must go without their paychecks until after Congress and the president broker a deal to fund the government and end the shutdown. 

Any worker who manages national security issues, or the protection of life or property, is considered exempt and continues working until the shutdown ends. Any federal employee not in that category is placed on furlough. 

The Senate was unable to advance multiple bills Thursday that would have provided salaries to some federal employees and contractors during the shutdown. 

Absent new congressional action, both exempt and non-exempt federal workers are supposed to receive back pay under a 2019 law once government reopens, though Trump and administration officials have cast doubt on whether they will do that for employees in the executive branch. 

Guidance from the House Committee on Administration says that all employees who work within the legislative branch will receive back pay once a funding bill becomes law. 

“Neither essential nor furloughed employees are authorized to receive compensation during a lapse in government funding,” the report says. “Federal law statutorily requires retroactive pay for furloughed and essential employees following the end of a lapse in government funding.”

 

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., talks to a reporter in the basement of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The Senate Thursday failed to advance a Republican measure and rejected unanimous agreements on two related bills from Democrats that would have paid federal employees and contractors who have continued to work amid the government shutdown, which entered day 23. 

The stalemate constituted the latest example of how dug in to their arguments both parties are as the shutdown that began Oct. 1 drags out, as well as the heightened political tensions in the upper chamber when it comes to striking a deal to resume government funding.  

Most federal employees will miss their first full paycheck on Friday or early next week. More than 42 million Americans, some 40% under the age of 17, are also at risk of delayed food assistance if Congress doesn’t address a funding shortfall expected by Nov. 1 in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. 

Senate Democrats Wednesday sent a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins over concerns that the agency has warned states to hold off on processing SNAP benefits. They contended the agency has the resources to keep payments flowing.

“We were deeply disturbed to hear that the USDA has instructed states to stop processing SNAP benefits for November and were surprised by your recent comments that the program will ‘run out of money in two weeks,’” according to the letter. “In fact, the USDA has several tools available which would enable SNAP benefits to be paid through or close to the end of November.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced a bill Wednesday to continue SNAP funding through the shutdown. During Thursday’s briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration would “absolutely support” the legislation.

Deadlock on federal worker pay

In the Senate, a measure from Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson on a 54-45 vote did not reach the 60-vote threshold needed to advance in the chamber. Its failure means that federal employees who have continued to work will not be paid until the shutdown ends.

Democratic senators who agreed to the measure included Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota changed his vote in order to reconsider the measure. 

“I don’t think it makes sense to hold these federal workers hostage,” Warnock told States Newsroom in an interview on his vote Thursday. “If I could have a path to give some of these folks relief while fighting for health care, that’s what I decided to do.”

A separate measure from Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen also failed to move forward after Johnson objected. Van Hollen requested unanimous consent to approve his bill that would have also protected federal workers from mass Reductions in Force, or RIFs, that President Donald Trump has attempted during the shutdown. 

A second Democratic bill, from Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., was narrower, only including pay for federal workers. But when he requested unanimous approval for his measure, it was also blocked by Johnson.

Senators then left Capitol Hill for the weekend. On Wednesday, the Senate took a failed 12th vote to provide the federal government and its services with flat funding through Nov. 21.

Senate Republicans have pressed Senate Democrats to approve the GOP-written stopgap measure. But Democrats have maintained that they will not support the House measure because it does not extend tax credits that will expire at the end of the year for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.

Layoffs cited by Van Hollen

Van Hollen argued his bill would protect workers from the president’s targeting of certain federal agencies and programs.

“We certainly shouldn’t set up a system where the president of the United States gets to decide what agencies to shut down, what they can open, who to pay and who not to pay, who to punish and who not to punish,” Van Hollen said on the Senate floor before asking for unanimous consent to move the bill forward.

Johnson objected to including Van Hollen’s provision to ban federal worker layoffs during a shutdown. President Donald Trump’s efforts to lay off thousands of federal workers during the shutdown have been on hold since last week, after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that was later expanded.  

However, Johnson said he was willing to add into his own bill the provision from Van Hollen to pay furloughed workers.

“I’m more than happy to sit down with you. Maybe we should do that later today,” Van Hollen told Johnson during their debate on the floor.

Shortly after, Peters introduced a near-mirror version of Van Hollen’s bill, except that his measure would not prohibit layoffs — essentially what Johnson told Van Hollen he would agree to.

“We all say we agree on this, so let’s just pass this bill now,” the Michigan Democrat said before asking for unanimous consent to advance the legislation.

Johnson also objected to that proposal.

“It only solves a problem temporarily. We’re going to be right back in the same position,” Johnson said in an interview with States Newsroom about why he rejected Peters’ proposal.  

Johnson said he talked with Peters and Van Hollen after the vote and “we’ll be talking beyond this.”

‘Waste of time’ for House to meet

Even if the Senate passed the bill sponsored by Johnson or Van Hollen, it’s unlikely the House, which has been in recess since last month, would return to vote on either measure.

At a Thursday morning press conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson argued that Republicans already passed a stopgap measure to pay federal workers and that Senate Democrats should support that legislation. 

Johnson said bringing back the House would be a “waste of time,” noting that Democrats would not vote on the Republican proposal. 

“If I brought everybody back right now and we voted on a measure to do this, to pay essential workers, it would be spiked in the Senate,” said the Louisiana Republican. “So it would be a waste of our time.”

Duffy warns of flight delays due to shutdown

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy joined Johnson and House Republicans during their press conference. 

He said that flight delays have increased due to staffing shortages.

More than 50,000 TSA agents and more than 13,000 air traffic controllers have continued to work without pay during the government shutdown. 

“They’re angry,” Duffy said of air traffic controllers. “I’ve gone to a number of different towers over the course of the last week to 10 days. They’re frustrated.”

Next Tuesday, air traffic controllers will not receive their full paycheck for their work in October, Duffy said.

He added that the agency is already short-staffed — by up to 3,000 air traffic controllers.

“When we have lower staffing, what happens is, you’ll see delays or cancellations,” Duffy said. 

The FlightAware tracker said there were 2,132 delays within, into or out of the United States of unspecified length reported by Thursday afternoon, compared to 4,175 on Wednesday, 3,846 on Tuesday and 6,792 on Monday.

A shortage of air traffic controllers helped play a role in ending the 2019 government shutdown, which lasted 35 days, after thousands of commercial flights were ground to a halt. 

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan speaks with furloughed federal workers on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. Pocan, a Democrat, brought pizza for the group and discussed the current federal shutdown. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Ellie Lazarcik worked in a few different industry jobs after moving to Madison in 2017. None of them really fit, she says. Then she learned that the U.S. Forest Service Forest Products Lab in Madison was hiring.

Coincidentally, she knew of the lab from a visit she made “way back when I was in college, for a wood sculpture class of all things,” Lazarcik said Wednesday.

“Over a decade had passed since then, and I saw a job opening come up in the lab and thought, ‘Why not? That place was really amazing when I visited. They had really cool stuff going on then, and they probably still have really cool stuff going on,’” she recalled.

She applied and got the job.

That was five years ago. Her job title is physical science technician in the lab’s building and fire science program. Her work supports other members of the research team — setting up lab tests, preparing samples and then running them through the testing or analysis process and sorting through the data afterward.

“And I love what I do,” Lazarcik said.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, “there have been a lot of really sort of rapid-fire changes,” she said. “We’re on our toes a lot trying to figure out what we can or can’t pursue in terms of research.”

Still, she has continued to find the job engaging. “We’ve been able to keep doing cool projects,” Lazarcik said. “I’ve been involved in some interesting stuff in the lab — but it has been challenging.”

Since Oct. 1, however, Lazarcik has been furloughed along with hundreds of thousands of federal workers on account of the federal government shutdown.

“This is my first furlough and I’m not particularly enjoying it,” she said. Missing a paycheck is one reason, but it’s not the only one.

“It is pretty uncomfortable not knowing when I will get paid next, when I can go back into the lab and continue working on projects that got stopped abruptly,” Lazarcik said, “It’s stressful.”

Lazarcik is married and  her husband “has a job and a paycheck, which definitely helps,” she said. “But going from a two-paycheck household to one has been a pretty stark difference.”

On Wednesday, Lazarcik brought her toddler in his stroller over to the Social Security Administration office on Madison’s far West Side. U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) and members of his staff stopped by a little after noon with boxes of pizza as a token of appreciation for some of the furloughed federal workers.

About 18,000 federal employees live in Wisconsin, and about 8,000 are expected to be out of work currently due to the shutdown, the state labor secretary, Amy Pechacek, said at a virtual news conference on Thursday, Oct. 18.

“We’re seeing you and we very much appreciate what you’re doing,” Pocan told the group of just over a dozen federal employees who turned out. “We understand the sacrifice you and your families are making.”

Even before the shutdown, the Trump administration fired about 200,000 federal workers, Pocan said.

“These actions are illegal,” he said, but added that they are likely to drive some people out of the federal workforce. “We’re going to lose a lot of good, qualified people with experience.”

Pocan said communication in Washington, D.C., between the Republican majority in both the House and the Senate and Democrats has been at a standstill.

“I’d prefer we were there now, negotiating to get things done. But we’re not,” Pocan told the group. “We’re seeing a lot of things happen this session that aren’t normal.”

In September the Republicans sought to pass a continuing resolution on spending that if enacted would have averted the shutdown. A majority voted for the measure in the House, but in the U.S. Senate there were not enough votes to clear the 60 needed to advance most bills in the upper chamber.

Democratic support is necessary to meet that threshold, but Democratic lawmakers argued that in return for their votes they should have an opportunity to have some input into the continuing resolution.

Their demands have included extending enhanced subsidies for health insurance premiums sold through the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace and reversing cuts to Medicaid that Republicans included in their big tax cut and spending cut bill enacted in July.

In previous spending standoffs, Pocan said, leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress have been able to hash out agreements, usually avoiding a shutdown altogether or else managing to resolve one before it drags on.

“This time, though, so much has changed,” Pocan said.

A bipartisan deal failed in December after Trump and Elon Musk opposed it. Congress managed to approve another stopgap spending bill two days later that carried the federal government to March 2025.

“Then we had to start over in March,” Pocan said. That measure was unpopular with Democrats, he said, but enough Senate Democrats voted for it to pass,  funding the federal government through Sept. 30.

“And immediately we saw recissions — illegal again — and more illegal actions by the Trump administration taking funds away,” Pocan said. That history over the last 10 months has made Democrats wary of a deal that doesn’t address their priorities, he added.

Lazarcik hopes Congress acts soon to pass legislation that ends the shutdown. In the meantime, she gets by, tapping into savings, “looking at where you can squeeze a little bit tighter,” and skimping on putting aside funds for retirement — “which is really hard.”

Not everyone understands, however.

“I hear a lot  of people talk about, ‘Oh, man, that must be cool.’ It’s really not,” she said. “It’s pretty stressful having to try to plan when you can’t know when your next paycheck is coming.”

She is grateful for a support network of close friends and family members. “[They] do understand furlough is not just some crazy vacation you get to go on,” Lazarcik said.

The forest products lab has had a strong feeling of community that Lazarcik has always enjoyed. That has persisted during furlough, “even in this time when we’re not all going to the same building every day.”

Coworkers have stayed connected, reaching out to each other to meet up, talk and “de-stress,” Lazarcik said. “Even though we’re not all working on a regular schedule and we’re not getting paychecks, we still are supporting each other, and that’s been really great.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• The number of seasonal workers hired by Wisconsin farmers through the H-2A program has increased six-fold over the past decade.

• Although the surge began before President Donald Trump returned to office, farmers now consider the program even more critical during Trump’s crackdown on immigrants without legal status.

• The Trump administration has introduced adjustments to program rules, including cuts to minimum wages and a pending $250 per-visa fee.

• Mexican nationals made up over 90% of the H-2A workforce last year, but South Africans make up a growing share of workers as well.

• The program does not offer visa holders a pathway to legal permanent residency in the United States.

By the time Monty Lilford received a call from the American consulate in Cape Town in February, he had only days to get from his home in South Africa’s Western Cape to Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. If all went according to plan, the 35-year-old mechanic would spend the next nine months as a do-it-all farmhand, joining the thousands of seasonal agricultural workers seeking better wages in Wisconsin through the H-2A visa program.

Lilford could not afford a last-minute flight halfway across the world. There’s a market for lending to H-2A workers crunched for time, he said — one dominated by “people doing scams to get your banking details.” 

Lilford turned to his father-in-law for help. “I begged him,” he said. “I needed to go.”

The temporary visa program offers Lilford a chance to build a middle-class life back home, albeit one that requires spending much of the year sharing a modest ranch house with seven fellow farmworkers near Fountain City. His visa does not offer him a pathway to legal permanent residency in the United States, and he will be barred from the program if he overstays.

Mike Bushman, Lilford’s employer and the owner of B&B Agri Sales in Buffalo County, considers the program the only legal and reliable source of labor for his farm. While he could hire workers who lack legal status, Bushman is wary of the legal risks. 

“You work your whole life to put something together and then take the risk of losing it all,” he said. 

The H-2A program comes with higher up-front costs, he explained, but he considers it essential  to keep his farm afloat amid a labor shortage.

Bushman is not alone. The number of seasonal workers hired by Wisconsin farmers through the H-2A program has increased six-fold over the past decade, according to 2024 state Department of Workforce Development data. The surge began long before President Donald Trump returned to office in January. Amid the White House’s ongoing immigration crackdown, however, some farmers now consider the program an even more critical alternative to workers without legal status.

The program is far from a flawless solution to the agricultural sector’s labor crisis. 

For farmers, the H-2A application process is often an expensive, slow-moving headache – one they must relive year after year.

Workers, meanwhile, frequently report wage theft and other mistreatment, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division routinely uncovers violations of H-2A rules on Wisconsin farms. With inspectors stretched thin, patterns of abuse and fraud can go unpunished for years. Workers who walk away from a dishonest employer or dangerous workplace risk losing their visa.

The Trump administration has introduced a litany of adjustments to the program’s rules in recent months, including cuts to minimum wages and a yet-to-be-implemented $250 fee per visa. With some details still hazy, farmers and workers are awaiting clarity on what lies ahead. 

Application process is ‘constant battle’

Farmers argue the program is rife with inefficiencies. Program staff are often difficult, if not impossible, to reach, the application process relies almost entirely on physical mail, and farmers regularly spend thousands of dollars on attorneys to help navigate the labyrinth of paperwork. Keeping an application moving on schedule is a “constant battle,” Bushman said. 

The application requires approval from multiple federal and state agencies, often resulting in delays during handoffs from one agency to another. Those hurdles and screening interview backlogs at American consulates and embassies can leave workers stuck in their home countries past the planned start of their contract.

“Last year, the workers came almost three days late,” said Adam Lauer, co-owner of a pickling cucumber farm in Waushara County. “At three days late, you’re throwing a lot of pickles away.”

Bushman said such delays were responsible for Lilford’s last-minute rush to secure a plane ticket – a systemic flaw loan sharks exploit by charging desperate workers extortionate interest rates, he added. 

Earlier this month, the Trump administration took steps to address some delays, allowing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to begin reviewing workers’ applications while the Department of Labor considers applications from employers. That could buy more time for workers to schedule screening interviews at consulates and embassies, said Tom Bortnyk, senior vice president and general counsel for Virginia-based másLabor, which provides H-2A recruitment and application services for farmers nationwide, including in Wisconsin.

Other hurdles are tougher to fix. Federal regulators can be slow to send crucial paperwork, said Ethan Olson, a labor contractor who works with Lauer. That can leave farmers without documentation required – at least in theory – to prove they comply with H-2A rules. “You’re at the government’s mercy,” he said.

The Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment during an ongoing government shutdown. 

Remaking the workforce

Wisconsin’s H-2A workforce is smaller than those of its neighbors, in part because the seasonal visa program is largely off-limits to the year-round dairy industry, which plays an outsized role in state agriculture. Michigan farmers hired roughly 15,000 H-2A workers in 2024, compared to fewer than 3,000 in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin’s H-2A workers spent the summer picking celery near Janesville, driving farm equipment in Fond du Lac County and tending pheasants outside of Marshfield. Lilford spent an October afternoon bundling equipment in Bushman’s fabrication shop while another farmhand moved feed corn into storage.

In years past, at least some of those jobs went to workers without legal status. “We went down to Florida to recruit,” said Lauer. Between 2021 and 2022 – the most recent years for which Department of Labor survey data are available — roughly 42% of crop workers surveyed lacked work authorization.

Lauer noted practical reasons to switch to an H-2A workforce. “We were so short on people,” he said. “Multiple years, 20 to 30 people short.” By the time his farm needed workers in mid-summer, many undocumented farmworkers had already found jobs elsewhere. 

Hiring undocumented workers also comes with legal risks. If caught, employers face fines of up to $3,000 per worker. Amid a nationwide immigration enforcement crackdown, Lauer said, “I wouldn’t take that chance.”

Elsewhere in Wisconsin, some farmers turned to the program as local alternatives slipped away. 

Before 2019, Dan Hanauer largely hired in and around Shawano for seasonal jobs on his Christmas tree farm. Some local workers were out of high school; others arrived through a county jail employment program.

By law, employers must offer seasonal jobs to “qualified, eligible U.S. workers,” including past employees, before hiring H-2A workers. In the past six months, prosecutors in Mississippi and Washington state have scrutinized employers who allegedly prioritized H-2A workers over U.S. workers.

Hanauer argues he was forced to switch. His local workforce, he said, was dwindling and prone to missing shifts. 

“The job description says you miss three days and you’re gone,” he added. 

On a recent weekday morning, several H-2A workers cut boughs from the bases of fir trees to be sold as Christmas wreaths — a new product for his business made possible by a more reliable team of seasonal workers from Mexico, Hanauer said.

Most of the roughly 20 H-2A workers who spoke to Wisconsin Watch — all employed by either Bushman, Lauer or Hanauer — were from Mexico. 

Upon returning to Mexico, “I take a week off to rest, and then it’s back to work,” said Israel Cruz, a construction worker who spent much of the summer picking cucumbers on Lauer’s farm in Waushara County.

Mexican nationals made up over 90% of the H-2A workforce last year, often traveling by van to and from farms in rural communities like Shawano. This year, a handful of Hanauer’s workers flew to Appleton instead. 

South Africans make up the second-largest nationality in the H-2A workforce, as they have for much of the past two decades. They outnumbered Jamaican workers, the next-largest cohort, more than 3-to-1 last year. 

Lilford, like the other members of Bushman’s crew, is an Afrikaner – a descendant of early Dutch, French and German settlers. Data on the nationalities of visa recipients does not specify ethnicity, but labor contractors who recruit in South Africa say most H-2A workers from the country are white. 

Labor costs and pay cuts

To theoretically avoid undercutting U.S. farmworker wages, the Department of Labor sets a minimum wage for H-2A workers. This year, Wisconsin H-2A employers must pay at least $18.15 an hour, up from $14.40 in 2020. The program also requires employers to pay for housing and transportation and to reimburse travel to and from workers’ home countries, none of which is required when hiring local farmworkers.

The Department of Labor announced cuts to the program’s minimum wage in early October, responding to farmers’ complaints about rising labor costs.

In a preamble to the new rule, the agency argued that the cost of participating in the H-2A program has become “increasingly burdensome” — surpassing the cost of hiring U.S. workers if they were available. The agency also noted that a decline in the number of undocumented agricultural workers will “deprive growers of a relatively cheaper labor supply,” pushing more farmers to the H-2A program.

The new rules reverse a 2023 Biden administration decision requiring farmers to pay H-2A workers based on the specific duties they perform. Some roles, like veterinary medicine and truck driving, required higher wages than standard field work, and farmers were obligated to pay according to the highest-earning role employees performed, even if it was not their primary role.  

That standard prompted legal challenges from H-2A employers, including Bushman, who joined a federal class action lawsuit challenging the rule earlier this year. A federal judge in Louisiana vacated the rule in August after a sugar cane growers’ association brought a separate lawsuit.

Instead, the Department of Labor’s new rule divides H-2A workers into two “skill levels” based on the experience and training required for their job. It does not guarantee that workers who have spent previous seasons in roles deemed “entry-level” will be paid at the higher end of the scale.

The department will also now allow employers to deduct a portion of workers’ hourly wages to reflect housing costs, which the agency argues will even the playing field for domestic farmworkers.

Wisconsin workers classified as less-skilled could receive as little as $12 per hour next year under the new standards — a reduction of 34% from the current H-2A minimum wage.

“In the countries where they’re recruiting, people are desperate enough to take a job for less than the prevailing wage,” said Jose Oliva, campaign director with HEAL Food Alliance, a national group that organizes and advocates for food supply chain workers.

New H-2A minimum wages are higher in every state neighboring Wisconsin. In Michigan and Illinois, H-2A workers will be paid at least the state minimum wages, exceeding the federal program minimum.

Program wages have always varied from state to state, said Bortnyk of másLabor. The latest changes, however, create a “meaningful enough difference” to fuel steeper recruiting competition for Wisconsin farmers. 

For Bushman, that competition is reason enough not to cut wages. The lower minimum “won’t save us anything,” he said, because retaining experienced crew members makes more business sense than training new hires.

Room for abuse

The minimum wage changes follow the Trump administration’s decision in June to suspend enforcement of Biden-era rules intended to crack down on H-2A abuses. 

Among other protections, those rules previously guaranteed that workers could invite guests like legal aid providers and clergy into employer-provided housing. In Wisconsin, H-2A workers retain that right through the state’s migrant labor law.

Wisconsin farmers are well aware of the opportunities for exploitation. 

Lauer recalled discovering that a recruiter in Mexico had charged job seekers hundreds of dollars to apply for openings on his farm — a violation of program rules.

“It all happened in Mexico, so we never saw the money,” he added. Lauer says his business cut ties with the recruiter after consular officials in Mexico alerted him of the recruiter’s practices.

None of the workers who spoke with Wisconsin Watch shared firsthand accounts of violations or mistreatment at their current workplaces. However, the Department of Labor has fined 23 Wisconsin H-2A employers for program violations in the past decade.

Auditors cited one labor contractor, Adams County-based J&P Harvest, for more than 650 violations of H-2A program rules between 2019 and 2023. The department approved J&P Harvest’s most recent application in March of this year. The company, which lists a Florida phone number in its contact information, did not respond to a request for comment.

In some cases, the Department of Labor can temporarily ban, or “debar,” farmers and contractors from participating in the program. J&P Harvest does not appear on the agency’s current list of debarred businesses, but Jan Enterprises, a flower-growing business near Green Bay, is currently banned from participating in the program for allegedly hiring H-2A workers in place of an American applicant. A related greenhouse is also on the department’s debarment list. 

According to a 2015 review by the federal Government Accountability Office and 2023 reporting by Investigate Midwest, loose enforcement of debarments has enabled some businesses to continue hiring through the H-2A program by operating under a new name. 

Federal inspectors do not catch every violation. The Wage and Hour Division employed just over 720 investigators to enforce labor laws nationwide last year, according to the Department of Labor’s fiscal year 2025 budget. The agency audited 659 agricultural workplaces last year — less than half the number of audits conducted a decade ago. 

Inspectors have recorded H-2A violations by more than half of the 42 Wisconsin agricultural employers audited since 2015, not all of which employ H-2A workers.

“There are other places where you’ll work 10 hours and they’ll pay you for nine,” said Salvador Gonzalez Mosqueda, a veteran member of Hanauer’s crew, recalling warnings about dishonest employers from fellow seasonal workers during an earlier stint in Kentucky. 

Some citations were for technical reasons. Lauer Farms, for instance, says it was fined in 2019 for missing date information on pay stubs.

Trump’s law brings new fees 

The Trump administration’s signature “big beautiful” bill-turned law adds another potential hurdle for workers and employers: a new $250 fee for all nonimmigrant visas, including H-2A. 

If federal rulemakers decide workers must pay the fee before entering the country, employers would likely be required to reimburse them. But Oliva warned that enforcement could be weak. “$250 is not chump change” for already vulnerable workers, he added.

It remains unclear whether employers will be eligible for reimbursement from the federal government once their workers return home.

“We’ll just eat another $30,000,” said Lauer, who often hires 120 or more H-2A workers over the course of the year – Wisconsin’s largest crew. While that expense alone won’t bankrupt him, Lauer considers the rising overall costs of participation unsustainable. 

“They’ll eventually push us out of business,” he said.

Workers keep returning  

Most H-2A workers who spoke with Wisconsin Watch worked on the same farms last season. 

Gonzalez, the veteran member of Hanauer’s team, said that he has returned to Shawano for the past six years, turning down offers from other farms. At Lauer Farms, roughly 90% of last year’s crew returned for the most recent harvest season. 

Some workers say they would prefer to settle in the U.S. rather than traveling back and forth from their home countries. 

“Things in Mexico are very hard,” said Jesus Hernandez Robles, another member of Hanauer’s crew. Hanauer says he has researched sponsoring seasonal employees for green cards, but without a full-time job to offer, that option is out of reach.

But Robles considers the H-2A program preferable to entering the country without a visa. 

“You can enter and leave, spend time with your family,” he said. “If you come here illegally, you have to work for a few years to pay off a coyote.” 

South African workers may have a clearer path to legal residency through the Trump administration’s new refugee program for Afrikaners. 

None of the members of Bushman’s crew who spoke to Wisconsin Watch had applied for refugee status as of early October. Anyone who did secure refugee status, Bushman said, “won’t be working in agriculture. There are just better opportunities.”

International workers continue to show interest in H-2A jobs, Bushman added. But when the federal government entered a shutdown earlier this month, the Department of Labor furloughed staff responsible for reviewing H-2A applications. If the shutdown continues into December and January — the busiest season for applications — Wisconsin farmers could be left high and dry next spring.

Farmers turn to flawed visa program in search for legal labor. Now the rules — and costs — are changing. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

South Central Federation of Labor President Kevin Gundlach addresses a rally in support of Group Health workers seeking union representation on Monday, Oct. 13. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

On Oct. 13, Group Health Cooperative held what appeared to be its largest membership meeting in at least a decade. Scores of GHC patients filed into the Alliant Energy Center’s Exhibition Hall, packing the meeting room until there were no seats left. They voted unanimously to direct their cooperative to change course and voluntarily recognize GHC workers’ chosen union. 

This win was a long time coming for GHC workers like me. We are unionizing for many reasons. Personally, I started working as a family medicine physician at GHC 22 years ago, and was excited about working for a primary care-based, member-owned cooperative that valued clinical staff voices. But GHC has changed. Through my union involvement I’ve come to see that many of my coworkers also face struggles with high turnover and understaffing, unfair pay and discipline and racial inequities. These struggles collectively hurt our ability to provide excellent patient care.

By supporting each other and working together through a union, we can better advocate for ourselves and improve our ability to provide the best patient care. Our input as employees is not only useful, but critical, to making GHC the best it can be.

But since we announced our intention to unionize in December, GHC has waged a relentless union-busting campaign. Following the legal counsel of antiunion law firm Husch Blackwell, administrators have engaged in surveillance and other intimidation tactics, and even used union activity as a factor in discipline. Their actions are under investigation by the National Labor Relations Board. GHC has also consistently parroted legal arguments straight from the Trump administration’s attacks on workers’ rights. 

GHC’s most fundamental attack, however, has been on our ability to choose for ourselves what our union looks like. We are creating a union of providers and nursing staff in primary and urgent care and closely related units – basically, the generalists you first see when you get care – since we all share issues in common and would benefit from bargaining together.

But GHC administrators are seeking to forcibly add on workers in specialty care units like optometry and radiology who haven’t even sought collective bargaining. Why? They hope to dilute our Yes votes and make it impossible for us to win a union election. They like to claim that the National Labor Relations Board sides with them, and that these specialty care workers must join with us – but don’t believe it. While the NLRB has said that the employer’s version of our union was feasible, they also said they weren’t offering an opinion on the appropriateness of a primary and urgent care union. GHC is still free to recognize the union we chose. 

GHC has also been confused, or is misleading, about what it is we’re asking for. Speaking with Wisconsin Examiner’s Erik Gunn, GHC representative Marty Anderson said “voluntary recognition” wasn’t likely, because they’d want “an NLRB sanctioned and overseen vote.” But voluntary recognition is an NLRB-sanctioned process: all GHC needs to do is tell the NLRB that they recognize our chosen union, either with or without an NLRB-sanctioned card check or secret-ballot demonstration of majority support. That’s voluntary recognition. It would save everyone further time and expense, not to mention cultivate a positive relationship between both parties going forward. We look forward to a collaborative relationship with GHC as we move forward as a union. 

Attending the meeting on Oct. 13 and seeing the support from our patients and community was truly heartwarming. It reinforced my decision to become active in our union movement – both for ourselves and for the care that we provide to our dedicated patients. Excellent patient care is at the heart of our union movement.

And GHC patients have made it clear, with a unanimous vote, that they stand shoulder to shoulder with their caregivers. As a cooperative where members stand “at the top of the leadership chart,” GHC’s Board should respect membership’s vote by voluntarily recognizing our union, effective immediately. To do anything else is unthinkable in any cooperative that claims to be democratically run.

To show your support, please send an email to the GHC Board telling them to respect the will of the membership and recognize our union: https://act.seiu.org/a/ghc-board-1.

Nisha Rajagopalan, MD is a family medicine physician at GHC’s Hatchery Hill Clinic.

South Central Federation of Labor President Kevin Gundlach addresses a rally in support of Group Health workers seeking union representation on Monday, Oct. 13. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A stalemate between Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin and employees who have been seeking union representation for the last 10 months shows little sign of breaking soon.

At a mass meeting Monday at the Alliant Center in Madison, members of Group Health, sometimes called GHC for short, passed a motion directing the co-op to voluntarily recognize the union as the employees originally petitioned in December — covering three departments and a series of health care professionals.

The motion set a deadline of Friday, Oct. 17. Marty Anderson, Group Health’s chief strategy and business development officer, said Thursday that action on all the motions would likely be deferred, probably until November.

“We communicated clearly ahead of the meeting that all motions are advisory in nature,” Anderson said. “Any deadlines that would be in any of the motions would also be advisory in nature.”

Monday’s mass meeting was the first of its kind for Group Health members to ask questions of the co-op administration and express their opinions about the union drive. About 172 people attended, according to a Group Health spokesperson. Group Health has more than 50,000 Class A and Founding members — the two groups that were considered eligible to attend, according to the co-op.

In the spring, a volunteer committee met with the board to argue in favor of recognizing the union. 

People attending the Monday meeting described the crowd as strongly supportive of the union, and the voice votes in favor of recognizing the union and other motions favored by union supporters were unanimous, according to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin. 

Growing dissatisfaction 

At a rally outside the Alliant Center before the meeting, South Central Labor Federation President Kevin Gundlach, a Group Health member, charged that the co-op “has lost its way” in its response to the union organizing drive.

“We want GHC to listen to the workers,” Gundlach said. “And these workers know, and it says on my shirt here” — he pointed to his chest — “it’s better in a union.”

Group Health has rejected charges that it’s trying to thwart the union drive, contending that it simply wants health care employees in all departments to take part in the union representation vote — not just those from departments and job classifications that were included in the original union petition.

Union supporters say that claim is disingenuous and a ploy to “dilute the vote,” in the words of several workers interviewed — racking up votes against the union from employees in departments that don’t have the same concerns.

Anderson denied the charge. “We don’t know” what the votes will be, he said.

According to workers involved in the union drive, the Group Health union campaign grew out of increasing dissatisfaction in specific co-op departments with working conditions and what they contend was a lack of input into the co-op’s practices.

“I feel like we can improve the patient care that we provide through unionization and through increased involvement in decision-making,” Dr. Nisha Rajagopalan, a family physician who has worked at Group Health for 22 years, said Thursday.

Pay practices, employee turnover and a voice at the table are all reasons employees have cited for supporting the union.

“GHC leadership stopped collaborating with us and despite our many patient care concerns and our many meeting requests,” said Julie Vander Werff, a physician assistant, the lead speaker at the Monday rally.

Who should be in the union?

Complicating the organizing campaign is the conflict over exactly who among Group Health’s workers should be included in the union.

Union supporters involved in the organizing drive originally proposed that the union represent a bargaining unit of about 220 people. They were doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nursing staff in three departments: primary care, urgent care and dermatology. Their petition also included physical therapists, occupational therapists and health educators.

The petition was filed Dec. 12, 2024. Group Health filed a brief asserting that the unit the employees sought “was an inappropriate unit,” said Anderson, the Group Health executive.

To resolve the differences, a National Labor Relations Board staffer held a meeting on Dec. 30 in Madison, where he moved between separate rooms, one housing Group Health executives and the co-op’s lawyer, the other housing SEIU Wisconsin staff and Group Health employees leading the union drive.

The NLRB staffer suggested to the union group that they narrow their petition to a single clinic, Group Health employees wrote in a letter to the Group Health board of directors Feb. 10, 2025. Hoping to get an agreement, they took the suggestion.

Group Health opposed the single-clinic unit, however. In subsequent hearings the co-op management’s lawyer argued the vote should include all direct care employees, including in departments that weren’t part of the union’s original petition.

After reviewing briefs from both sides, the NLRB regional director in Minneapolis who heard the case ruled that the single clinic unit that the union had proposed would not be an appropriate bargaining unit. The decision issued by Regional Director Jennifer Hadsall stated that the unit proposed by the employer, Group Health, was appropriate and set an election among all the co-op’s health care employees.

SEIU Wisconsin, however, moved to block the election. A raft of pending unfair labor practice charges against the employer could scare employees from voting for the union, SEIU charged. Hadsall agreed to block the vote until the charges are resolved.  

As a result, the vote is on hold. The NLRB investigation of the charges is on hold as well, because of the federal government shutdown.

Shared concerns, conflicting concerns

In her order, Hadsall also included a footnote that states she did not address the unit that the employees had originally asked for because it had not been formally litigated.

“We had always argued that we are a clinically integrated organization,” Anderson said. “Our staff floats between various parts of the organization and different clinics. And the bargaining unit was established [consisting of] all of our clinical sites and all of our direct care employees.”

But pro-union employees say there are concrete differences between employees who are in the groups that they had originally included in the union petition and the rest of the Group Health staff — including direct care providers.

“Initially our bargaining unit included employees who were in primary care and urgent care,” said Rajagopalan, the family doctor. “We practice similarly and we share the same concerns. There are other departments within GHC that don’t share the same concerns [and] practice very differently than we do. That’s why our initial bargaining unit is an appropriate unit.”

Pat Raes, president of SEIU Wisconsin and a nurse at UnityPoint-Meriter hospital in Madison, said that throughout her health care career she’s seen many workplaces where only some groups of workers are unionized.

“At the bedside or at the side of the patient, it doesn’t make a difference because the priority is patient care,” Raes said. “It’s not whether you’re unionized or not.”

Addressing the rally before Monday night’s meeting, Steve Rankin said it was “entirely normal” for workers in a single workplace to be represented by different unions or no union depending on their department or position.

“There is no reason that everyone at Group Health has to be in the same union,” said Rankin, who joined Group Health when it was founded in 1976 and has been active in marshalling Group Health patients to support the union effort. “We call on GHC to recognize the bargaining unit chosen by the workers themselves and to commit to bargaining in good faith toward the contract.”

While the board has yet to consider the motion that was passed at Monday night’s meeting, Anderson said Thursday that voluntary recognition was unlikely. 

“We want an NLRB sanctioned and overseen vote,” he said. “That’s always going to be our criteria.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE