On Wednesday night, President Trump signed a bill passed by Congress to end the longest government shutdown in United States history.
Lasting 43 days, the shutdown has had a severe impact on the economy, affecting millions of federal workers who were forced to work without pay.
Government services, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, had funding slashed, affecting over 41 million people nationwide who rely on this service to put food on the table. This reduction has hit California especially hard. According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report, nearly 5.5 million Californians rely on SNAP, the highest number of any state.
Additionally, the Federal Aviation Administration announced a 10 percent reduction in flights for 40 major airports across the United States and Canada last week, causing mass cancellations and delays for millions of people.
“Typically, it’s a pretty quick restarting [the government] when it shuts down,” Diego Andrades, Assistant Director for the USC Center for the Political Future, said. “Once that bill is signed, the government can turn back on. But it’s easier said than done, though, because it’s been so long that they are going to need to make sure that federal workers return to work.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her team completed the administrative work necessary late on Wednesday, allowing TSA workers to quickly receive back pay for paychecks missed during the government shutdown, according to CNN Politics.
Additionally, flight cancellations are expected to decrease in the coming days, as U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duphy says that more air traffic controllers are beginning to return to work.
“A lot of the issues that we’ve seen with TSA [and] with the other agencies with SNAP, those could all be resolved really soon within the next few days, so we will see the government return to its back-to-normal state really soon — definitely in time for Thanksgiving break and Thanksgiving holiday travel,” Andrades said.
The USDA wrote in a message to state agencies on Wednesday night, following President Trump’s signature, that full SNAP benefits should resume immediately.
“State agencies must take immediate steps to ensure households receive their full November allotments promptly. The reduction in maximum allotments for November is no longer in effect,” the USDA said.
It is now a matter of when, not if, individual states will issue these full benefits.
Dora Kingsley Vertenten, a Faculty Director for the Master’s in Public Administration at USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, has two children who work for the federal government.
Her daughter, a nurse at Fort Campbell, worked through the shutdown while “hoping that she would get paid because she’s a nurse” and “was working really hard to keep things together,” according to Vertenten.
As USC students prepare to fly home for Thanksgiving — or further their studies in policy — Vertenten said, “This administration is not typical for any other administration. … For students who are in public administration and public policy, it’s demoralizing to see the government in disarray. … It’s a very different teaching experience than 10 years ago.”
The apathy can also be felt within government officials, according to Andrades.
“There’s a demoralization that has occurred that the federal government really has to grapple with. … The problem with funding the government using the typical process of appropriation bills [is that] there’s so much animosity and partisanship that’s happening right now.”
The bill will extend funding for most agencies until January 30, with some programs, like SNAP, receiving funding until September 2026. States “should proceed with their transmission of their full December 2025 to state full electronic benefit transfer vendors.”