The federal government shut down continues.
On Wednesday, several of North Carolina’s Democratic members of Congress stuck to the party line in blaming the shutdown on Republicans, who control both houses of Congress but need a few Democratic senators to approve a funding bill.
“It’s truly shameful,” said Wake County representative Deborah Ross. “Donald Trump and Republicans are the direct cause of this. They bear 100 percent of the responsibility and they deserve 100 percent of the blame.” (Meanwhile, Trump is blaming “the radical left.”)
Federal workers will bear the most apparent impact of the cuts, as many will be furloughed or asked to work without pay. Research Triangle Park is home to the Environmental Protection Agency’s largest facility, and Durham, Orange, and Wake counties are home to about 13,000 federal employees, not including military personnel (though that’s per a state count before this year’s dramatic layoffs and buyouts). If the government stays unfunded, those employees will have to figure out how to pay their bills without receiving a paycheck.
But what about government services? We asked around about how the shutdown may impact life in the Triangle.
Municipal government and local school systems will be OK, for now.
Municipalities tend to receive money through grants, which means there is some delay if federal funding stops. That does mean, though, that local governments become more vulnerable as the shutdown stretches on.
Alex Carrasquillo, the communications manager for Chapel Hill, tells INDY that in the short term, a federal shutdown will not impact the town.
“The Town receives a majority of federal funding through grants focused on transit, housing, and public safety,” says Carrasquillo. “If this ends up going on longer, we’d have to learn more about any specific impacts and evaluate a variety of funding solutions to address them. It’s too early to know more right now.”
Local school districts also rely on federal grant funding. Durham Public Schools, for instance, in 2024–25, received about $43 million, or 6 percent of its overall funding, from the federal government. At a recent school board meeting, DPS CFO Jeremy Teetor described “a little bit of fatigue” with the federal government as he’s dealt with a few shutdowns before.
Teetor described that most grants are “forward funded,” and pass through the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction before getting to DPS. “In past sequestrations we have maintained our ability to access those major grants.”
That lines up with a recent memo from North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green, in which he told local districts that “while it is not possible to provide certainty, it appears that most of the major formula funding streams to our public school units will continue during this shutdown and that federal support services and new initiatives will be severely limited.”
Districts are generally reimbursed for childhood nutrition programs. Both Green and Teetor noted that those reimbursements may be delayed if the shutdown stretches on. The larger risk to funding, per DPS board of education chair Bettina Umstead, may come in the legislative agenda at the state and federal levels.
“There’s a lot of questions around, shutdown or not, what funds might be released to schools in relation to the big beautiful bill,” Umstead said at last week’s board meeting, referring to Trump’s sweeping policy bill.
Local EPA employees may be at risk, again.
The shutdown is particularly high-stakes for employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency has already faced steep staffing cuts, and 90 percent of remaining staff are expected to be furloughed. Inside Climate News reports the shutdown could provide an opportunity for the Trump administration to turn furloughs into more layoffs.
The EPA has previously indicated intent to dismantle the agency’s research arm, which is based in Research Triangle Park, the EPA’s largest campus.
As North Carolina Health News previously reported, critics of the Trump administration warn that closing the Triangle facility could “jeopardize public health, hinder critical climate research, undermine environmental safeguards and harm the economy of the Research Triangle and North Carolina as a whole.
Nutrition programs are currently continuing, but have been frozen in past shutdowns.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) is a 50-year-old federal program that provides food and support to pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding women, infants, and children up to age 5. Across the country, around 7 million individuals rely on WIC, implemented through local agencies, to help meet basic nutrition needs.
Wake County’s monthly caseload for WIC, per a representative, is 21,114 individuals. The representative tells INDY that so far, the WIC program continues to operate as normal and “families can keep using their WIC benefits without interruption.”
Similarly, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, helps some 700,000 North Carolinians buy food, including about 34,000 kids in Wake County. SNAP benefits are issued a month in advance, so October benefits have already been allocated. It’s unclear at this point whether the program could tap into reserve funds if the shutdown continues longer than a month.
At the state level, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) tells INDY that in a 2013 shutdown, programs like WIC were impacted. The federal government has not yet announced which programs are exempt from a shutdown.
“NCDHHS may not be impacted immediately, but that could change depending on the length of the shutdown,” said the representative. “NCDHHS will need to wait for final clarity from federal partners to know the exact impact to our programs. NCDHHS is committed to communicating quickly and clearly to everyone in North Carolina who will need to navigate the consequences of the federal shutdown.”
In Wednesday’s press call, congresswoman Ross said that more than 1 million people across the state rely on nutrition assistance programs.
“A prolonged shutdown could leave them truly without the meals they need to feed their families,” said Ross.
RDU does not anticipate any delays.
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents will continue to work without pay through the shutdown. But shutdowns also see higher levels of employees calling out sick—which is hard to argue with when bills and mortgages don’t shut down just because the federal government does. In 2019, when the government shut down for more than a month, as many as 10 percent of TSA agents called out sick.
RDU, the Raleigh-Durham airport located in neither Raleigh nor Durham (hello, Morrisville!), has experienced record-breaking traffic over several recent years of growth. Despite the shutdown, the airport has not issued any advisories, and a spokesperson tells INDY that the airport “is in close communication with its federal agency partners and anticipates minimal impact on airport operations.”
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated mail carriers would work without pay during the shutdown; they will be paid.