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Act of United States Congress
Federal agencies decide who must work during a lapse in appropriations by applying Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and agency contingency guidance that distinguishes “excepted” (commonly called e...
Two recurring claims appear in the source material: that the United States has experienced between since 1976, and that attribution of those events to because definitions and institutional control (Wh...
The President gains over which federal employees continue working and which are furloughed during a lapse in appropriations, but lacks unilateral power to reallocate funds or make permanent workforce ...
legally freezes most funding actions at prior-year levels and constrains agencies from creating “new starts,” which in practice limits the initiation of and and delays modifications to existing instru...
The Antideficiency Act bars federal agencies from obligating or spending funds absent congressional appropriations, forcing agencies to suspend non‑authorized activities and either furlough employees ...
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) defines “excepted” work under the Antideficiency Act as a narrow set of activities that may continue when an appropriation lapses: functions expr...
Active-duty military members are not absolutely guaranteed immediate pay during a federal government shutdown; federal law and past practice have produced a mix of automatic retroactive-pay rules and ...
A position is designated during a federal shutdown when the work it performs is legally permitted to continue despite a lapse in annual appropriations—most commonly tasks that involve the , or other s...
Government shutdowns have repeatedly arisen from —notably disputes over spending levels, health care, and immigration/border security—backed by the Antideficiency Act’s prohibition on spending without...
Past federal shutdowns have not produced a consistent, government‑wide practice of creating special enrollment periods (SEPs) for benefit changes, but they have repeatedly forced agencies to use ad ho...
Multiple reputable trackers, watchdogs and news outlets report that the second Trump administration has faced hundreds of lawsuits, multiple injunctions, and findings by legal analysts and lawmakers t...
Federal government shutdowns that produce furloughs are triggered when Congress does not enact the annual appropriations bills or a continuing resolution before funding lapses, creating a that forces ...
Congress causes a U.S. government shutdown when it fails to enact either the regular appropriations bills or a temporary continuing resolution before the fiscal-year deadline, producing a lapse in leg...
The governing legal distinction between a federal and a federal is established primarily in Title 5 of the U.S. Code and implementing regulations: is a temporary nonduty, nonpay status while is an inv...
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) consistently framed shutdowns in 2013 and 2019 as legally driven “shutdown furloughs” that occur when annual appropriations lapse, requiring agencies to curtai...
The supplied materials identify a long history of U.S. federal funding gaps with recurring causes in congressional impasses and the Antideficiency Act, culminating in a record-length shutdown beginnin...
The government is forced to restore funding and pass budgets when make inaction untenable. Recent evidence shows courts ordering partial restorations (SNAP in November 2025), looming fiscal expiration...
The Department of Defense justified continuing military operations without pay during December 2018–January 2019 mainly by invoking two legal authorities: the Antideficiency Act’s exception for activi...
The main cause of government shutdowns during Barack Obama’s presidency was a partisan impasse over annual appropriations that crystallized in 2013 when House Republicans sought to delay, defund, or c...
Active-duty service members were paid during the 2018–2019 federal government shutdown, but the path to that pay was political and exceptional: Congress passed legislation guaranteeing back pay for fu...