Which federal agencies experienced full closures during the 2025 shutdown?

1. Why the question of “full closures” is harder to answer than it sounds

The supplied analyses explain that a federal shutdown typically distinguishes between “excepted” functions that continue” and “furloughed” staff whose work stops, meaning agencies rarely flip between fully open and fully closed across all lines of business. The sources report the 2025 funding gap produced broad furloughs and operational curtailments, but they do not present a uniform list of agencies that were entirely closed with zero operations; instead, agencies such as Agriculture, Education, Energy, EPA, and HHS are cited as halting non‑essential operations while keeping emergency services active ^{[2] [3]}. This nuance matters because a department can be described as “closed” for routine services while still sustaining mission‑critical activities like law enforcement, disaster response, or benefits processing, complicating any attempt to mark it as completely shuttered ^[1].

2. What multiple sources say about large agencies and essential services

Across the analyses, there is consensus that major safety‑net and national‑security functions continued: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Department of Defense and Veterans Health Administration services, and the U.S. Postal Service continued operating in some form, while other programs and regional offices experienced interruptions. The sources explicitly state that Social Security and Medicare were expected to continue and that the Department of Defense and VA sustained core operations, while agencies like the National Park Service and Small Business Administration experienced visible disruptions ^{[2] [3] [4]}. These recurring mentions indicate that the practical impact was highly program‑specific within agencies, reinforcing that “full agency closure” was not a simple binary outcome across the federal government ^[4].

3. Discrepancies and gaps across the supplied reports

The three batches of analysis diverge on specifics and include gaps: one emphasizes the start date and scale of furloughs but lists no agency closures, another names a handful of departments that halted non‑essential work without claiming total shutdowns, and a third highlights impacts on programs, loans, and services while noting continued operations for critical functions ^{[1] [2] [3]}. These inconsistencies reflect different reporting priorities — some sources focus on employee counts and economic consequences, others on programmatic impacts, and none present an authoritative, comprehensive list of agencies that were fully closed. The absence of a single cataloged list in these analyses means any claim that a named agency experienced a “full closure” would require corroboration beyond the provided materials ^{[5] [6]}.

4. How agencies are typically categorized during a shutdown — and why that matters here

The sources describe the legal and administrative process by which the Administration determines which employees are “excepted” (allowed to work) and which are furloughed, and they note that those decisions can change as a shutdown lengthens. This mechanism often results in fluctuating operational patterns: some initially furloughed staff may be recalled, others remain excepted, and agencies may scale back or restore services episodically ^{[6] [7]}. Because the supplied analyses document this procedural flexibility and report that entities like the IRS planned temporary continuance using prior funding, they underscore that a static list of fully closed agencies would be both unusual and ephemeral without time‑stamped corroboration ^{[4] [6]}.

5. Bottom line: what you can reliably say, and what remains unverified

Based on the available analyses, the reliable conclusion is that the 2025 shutdown produced widespread furloughs and partial closures across many departments, with core social‑safety, national‑security, and emergency functions largely preserved; however, the materials do not provide a definitive roster of agencies that experienced complete, full closures. To produce such a list would require contemporaneous agency notices, OMB guidance, or daily shutdown‑status reports not contained in these sources. The provided analyses therefore support a cautious statement about broad operational impacts and specific program interruptions, but they do not substantiate claims naming particular agencies as entirely shut down for the duration ^{[1] [2] [7]}.