Friday, September 30th, is the last day of the fiscal year. So far, no agreement has been reached between Democrats and Republicans about keeping the government open.
Of course, the devil is in the details, but having served in the federal government for about 15 years, I often find this exercise silly. Some Members of Congress seem to regularly forget that this exercise is merely an extension of spending for things that Congress has already agreed upon and been signed into law.
Of course, this time, we seem to have a fair number of Republicans who do not support anything, so maybe this shutdown possibility will be more difficult than usual. During the last big one, when I worked for the federal government as shutdown continued, I spent the time painting my kitchen and my hallway; as I did, I reported how much work I had done each day. Then when we went back to work at USDA, we faced a backlog of work that we still had to do. It would have been better to do the work in a timely way.