Warning: Only read if you need something to keep you awake at night.

100 pound package of marijuana launched over Mexico border fence

30 Mexican and Chinese nationals found in a tunnel under the Otay Mesa border crossing

Don’t pay your contractors, don’t pay your employees, bankrupt the organization. Gosh, where have we seen this pattern before?

I’m not quite sure how Trump could actually bring about a government shutdown, unless he simply vetoes a budget bill, or pocket vetoes long enough to run out the clock. But I think if Congress manages to get its act together to put something together, they’d be mightily-pissed, to a veto-overriding degree, to be cockblocked so outrageously.

Could be that Trump’s infantile bluster is the biggest thing working against him, in the case of a government shutdown. Or anything else that requires the collusion of Congress.

And there is NO guarantee they will EVER be paid the paychecks stopped by the shutdown- there were many in congress in 2013 that fought against paying out the paychecks stopped during the shutdown.

What outrages me is the cavalier way this president approaches the possibility of a shutdown- ” Our country needs a good “shutdown” in September” …

He has ZERO understanding what that entails, and the chaos it creates- the very real harm it does to people trying to do their jobs.

Nor does he care.

That said, it sounds like you’ve been a government employee for a long time. In most states, employment is exactly as arbitrary and capricious as you describe. What to you is an outrage of violated norms is everyday life in the private sector, where employment is “at will”.

Every employee is entitled by law to be paid…if possible. One big advantage you have is that you will get paid, eventually, because the Federal government will still be around after the shutdown. In the private sector, employees of failing companies are usually left holding the bag, when the company folds or goes bankrupt. In bankruptcy, while unpaid wages have a high priority, everything else–retirement, health insurance you didn’t have, etc., has the lowest priority after making the capitalists “whole”.

This is ugly, RL, and I’m not minimizing your concerns, only pointing out a silver lining. It must be especially galling that Trump is willing to put you and millions of others through hell for nothing more than a childish temper tantrum. That asshole has to go.