The USDA said each Farm Service Agency office will have two workers who will be paid even though the government remains shutdown. Thousands of other federal employees like air traffic controllers are working without pay during the shutdown.

The federal government has been without a budget since Oct.1, making virtually no progress in negotiations over health care issues causing the stalemate.

President Donald Trump has seized on the government shutdown as an opportunity to reshape the federal workforce and punish detractors, meeting with budget director Russ Vought on Thursday to talk through “temporary or permanent” spending cuts.

Washington is bracing for what could be a prolonged federal shutdown after lawmakers deadlocked and missed the deadline for funding the government. Neither side shows any signs of budging.

If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and nonexempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy.

In a lengthy Tuesday social media post, Trump rejected the sit-down that the White House had agreed to a day before. It would have been the first time the Republican president met with the Democratic Party’s leaders, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, since his return to the White House.

Describing extraordinary turmoil inside the nation’s health agencies, Monarez and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Chief Debra Houry described exchanges in which Kennedy or political advisers rebuffed data supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

FBI Director Kash Patel clashed with skeptical Democrats at a contentious Senate oversight hearing Tuesday, defending his record amid criticism that he has politicized the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency and pursued retribution against perceived adversaries of President Donald Trump.

A recent strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat is raising stark questions about just how far President Donald Trump intends to wield his power over the U.S. military without a robust check.

Medical groups and several Democrats in Congress have called for Kennedy to be fired, and his exchanges with Democratic senators on the panel repeatedly devolved into shouting, from both sides. But some Republican senators also expressed unease with his changes to COVID-19 policies.

There promises to be nothing boring about the Illinois race to replace U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who will retire in 2027 after 30 years in office.

A letter led by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to six of Trump’s cabinet secretaries asks administration officials to explain why they are cutting programs to help Americans pay for high energy costs, while passing a tax cut bill that eliminated incentives for cheaper forms of energy like wind and solar.

Senate Democrats are using an arcane procedural tool to try to force the Department of Justice to release additional files from the Jeffrey Epstein case — the latest gambit to keep the issue front-and-center as lawmakers prepare for their month-long August recess.

The finger-pointing with more than two months to go in the fiscal year indicates the threat of a stoppage is more serious than usual as a Republican-controlled Congress seeks to make good on its policy priorities, often with no support from the other political party.

The vote marked the first time in decades that a president has successfully submitted such a rescissions request to Congress, and the White House suggested it won’t be the last. Some Republicans were uncomfortable with the cuts, yet supported them anyway.

Public television stations will be “forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead,” PBS CEO Paula Kerger said Thursday, after the Senate voted in the middle of the night to approve a bill that cancels all the federal funding for the network and for NPR.