President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats arrived at a short-term agreement late on Friday, reopening the government after 35 days and the longest government shutdown in history. Lawmakers have until Feb. 15 to reach a compromise on the Republican request for billions of dollars to be allocated for a border wall — a wall Democrats have refused to fund.
Referring to the odds that a deal could be struck over that time, Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, “I personally think it’s less than 50-50.” Trump said he would use emergency powers to fund the wall if an agreement could not be reached.
In a stark reminder that federal employees were returning to work with the knowledge that they might be forced to go without a paycheck once again next month, one federal agency, the Department of Agriculture, updated its employee information website and said, “We will also leave some of the shutdown-related material up for a period time, should you need to refer back to it.”
Richard Nagle, a lawyer with the Environmental Protection Agency in Chicago, said returning to work after a mandatory furlough required some digging out.
“It’s triage,” he said, eyeing his email inbox. “I’m going to go through the ones that are screaming for attention. I haven’t been on voice mail yet, but I’m sure that’s capped out at 32 messages.”
In the first hour of his day, one question seemed to be echoing through the halls: What did you do?
Colleagues were sharing stories of how they passed the time while they were furloughed. Pretty much everyone confessed to sleeping a little later than usual. Basements were cleaned out, digital photos were organized, hardwood floors were scrubbed until they were gleaming.
Some employees took road trips, visiting extended family in Michigan or driving down to Memphis, eight hours away. Anything to stave off the boredom and anxiety of being home, unpaid, during a Chicago winter.
As employees streamed into the office, managers stood in the lobby, handing out informational papers on things to know: how to apply for back pay, what to do if you forgot your passwords.
The morning commute on Monday in the Washington area was once again bustling after an eerily quiet month of little road traffic during peak travel hours and open seats on trains and buses. The ambience at a Starbucks at a Metro station in Northern Virginia, home to many federal workers, had returned to its usual bedlam.
At a Metro station near the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in Washington, a small group of environmental activists with the nonprofit group Mom’s Clean Air Force welcomed EPA employees back to work with cinnamon rolls.
“Welcome back! Cinnamon roll?” Eileen Brandt, a field organizer for the group chirped as employees rode up the Metro escalator. Brandt, holding her daughters, Valencia, 5, and Natalia, 3, said that having grown up next to a toxic cleanup site in Tacoma, Washington, it was important to her to make sure the agency’s workers knew their work was valued.
“I don’t often get a chance to thank people who do that work the way I thank our pediatrician and the people who give my kids shots,” she said.
EPA employees said they were relieved to be back to work yet anxious that the reprieve from the partial government shutdown could be short-lived.
“Most of us cannot afford to be without pay for a month,” said Denise Walker, an agency lawyer. “It’s very stressful for people.”
The National Park Service reopened on Sunday, but prospective visitors were encouraged to check with individual parks to make sure they were receiving visitors. Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo were set to reopen Tuesday.
Federal workers who had turned to food banks to feed their families continued to struggle to make ends meet as they returned to work Monday. Some federal employees have been working without pay for weeks. And many federal contractors are not expected to be paid at all for the days the government was closed.
The president promised the 800,000 employees who had been furloughed or forced to work that they would be paid “very quickly or as soon as possible,” without providing a specific date. The White House Office of Management and Budget directed agencies to prioritize pay and benefits after reopening.
Some federal agencies worked through the weekend in an effort to get paychecks to their workers as soon as possible. The Department of Agriculture instructed its employees to file their time sheets by noon on Monday and pledged to resume direct deposits into bank accounts by Thursday. On Sunday, the commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection agency, Kevin K. McAleenan, addressed employees on Twitter to say that the agency had already approved a majority of the timecards and pledged to work to makes sure everyone is paid soon.
Aware of the looming Feb. 15 deadline, some lawmakers are trying to pass a law that would outlaw future government shutdowns.
“Shutting down the government should be as off limits in budget negotiations as chemical warfare is in real warfare,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Friday.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.