Around 50 tourists strolled up to the Pullman National Historical Park Wednesday afternoon only to be halted by a locked front door and a sign reading, “Closed.”
“Bad news, bad news,” one of the tour leaders announced to the group, which consisted of National Association of Evangelical members from across the country. “Looks like we’re all experiencing the government shutdown.”
The U.S. government shut down after the Senate failed to approve a short-term funding bill Tuesday night, jeopardizing the pay and employment of thousands of workers across Illinois and the country, and scaling back operations at federal facilities, such as national parks.
“There’s a lot of disappointment,” said the Rev. James Meeks, who led the group through a tour of historic Pullman sites.
“It hadn’t dawned on us until he pulled on the door,” Meeks said of the park’s closure, adding that had he realized the park would likely be closed, “we might’ve saved them the walk.”
While most government shutdowns mean nonessential workers are furloughed until a government spending bill has been approved, President Donald Trump has said the shutdown may mean layoffs instead, adding to the mass cuts to the federal workforce made during his presidency.
The longest government shutdown lasted 34 days from late 2018 into early 2019 — fueled by an impasse over Trump’s request for a $5.7 billion border wall.
More than 153,000 federal workers lived in Illinois last year, according to the 2024 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey.
News of the latest shutdown came to many workers with minimal information, causing confusion over whether they’re expected to show up for work, uncertainties about the length of the shutdown, and anxiety over their ability to pay for groceries, rent, childcare, transportation and other essential costs as the money stops coming in, according to union leaders.
“They [workers] didn’t have much time in advance of the shut down, I think they assumed the parties would do their job, come together and figure it out, get a budget in place,” said Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which covers 38 departments and agencies. “They didn’t have time to try to set aside funds. And when you live paycheck to paycheck, there’s no funds to set aside.”
A scene similar to the one in Pullman unfolded Wednesday morning in downstate Springfield, where north suburban Huntley High School A.P. U.S. Government teacher Jason Monson and his group of 56 students arrived after a three-and-a-half hour bus ride for a tour of the capital city’s historical sites.
Among them was Abraham Lincoln’s home, which was closed Wednesday because of the government shutdown. Monson said he got the call right before they left Huntley.
“Luckily, I have done this trip enough times to be able to walk the kids through some of these sites,” Monson said. “Obviously, it’s really disappointing not being able to go in.”
Shutdown’s impact on ICE in Chicago area
Federal workers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been increasingly visible in the Chicago area as the Trump administration ramps up raids, patrols and detentions, were on the job at a suburban Broadview facility Wednesday.
When asked if they were getting paid Wednesday, one agent shook his head. He didn’t share his thoughts on the shutdown when asked, but said it “happens all the time.”
Court employees at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse are expected to report to work during the shutdown. Officials there say they have money to pay staff and jurors through Oct. 17. But a prolonged shutdown could eventually mean missed paychecks and a halt to jury trials and grand jury hearings.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Chief Judge Virginia Kendall entered a general order Wednesday suspending all civil litigation involving the United States as a party. That led to the cancellation of a Friday hearing over allegations of warrantless arrests during the “Operation Midway Blitz” deportation campaign.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings wrote in his own order that he would rule in that case “in the coming days.” His ruling could be based on claims that predate “Midway Blitz.” But Justice Department lawyers argued that if the judge insists on taking more recent allegations into account, he should hold off and let them file a response two weeks after the shutdown ends.
‘Morale is down, they’re just disillusioned’
Employees with the Environmental Protection Agency received an email Tuesday night saying employees were exempted from the shutdown because there was available funding to continue, but other details were unclear and the communication was “haphazard,” according to Loreen Targos, executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, the union that represents 1,000 EPA workers in the Great Lakes region.
“There’s no guidance on who else is working,” she said. “Are the folks in headquarters working? Am I allowed to direct my contractor right now? … But there’s no understanding of whose funding that is and how long they’re gonna be going on that.”
Darrell English, a Transportation Security Administration officer at Midway International Airport and president of the AFGE Local 777, which represents more than 1,400 TSA employees, said TSA has sent out “information on letters we can send out to creditors, whether it’s your rent or your mortgage, to let them know that we are furloughed.” But he worried that creditors would react indifferently.
If the furlough continues, it will cause “ripple effects” for workers as well as for the TSA, English said. In the last government shutdown, experienced TSA workers retired or moved onto other opportunities, he added, leaving the agency with not enough experienced workers.
“Once an individual [with] five to 10 years [of experience] leaves, it’s hard to get somebody [new] up to speed. It takes years to build up that library knowledge of screening,” English said. He added that this year’s shutdown is more concerning than the last “because this political atmosphere that we’re currently in is different than before.”
Targos echoed that, saying some people who have left the job due to previous shutdowns or the threat of further cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency this year aren’t able to pass their historical knowledge on to other employees still at the agency. For the EPA in the Midwest, that means some of the country’s heavy hitters in fighting pollution are gone.
“We’re losing the people that are most effective in finding polluters that are betraying the public trust, and we’re losing the people that are most capable of that,” Targos said. “The institutional knowledge is not being passed along. It’s easier to destroy than to create.”
The second Trump presidency has come with mounting uncertainty for federal workers as the DOGE has made sweeping job cuts across government entities. For Targos and her peers, that means being beaten down and frustrated by the president’s impacts on their day-to-day life, she said.
“Morale is down, they’re just disillusioned,” Targos said. “These are people who want to make our community stronger by protecting clean air and clean water … In every step, the public trust is just being spit upon.”
Greenwald said federal employees have faced threats of losing their jobs, funding and livelihood all year, but they still show up to work.
“It’s incredibly difficult because what we’ve seen is the work has not gone away,” she said. “Even through all this stress, federal employees continue to show up.”
Contributing: Mawa Iqbal.