He keeps his team working no matter what, since it is essentially a countintelligence probe with national security implications.

That's good news.

They have to be SO involved in the details and SO furious over what they are seeing, it would be like ripping away the most fascinating and involved book you've ever read before you get to the final 2 chapters.

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/16/politics/justice-department-special-counsel-shutdown/index.html
Mueller probe would continue during a government shutdown
By Eli Watkins, CNN
Updated 7:58 PM ET, Tue January 16, 2018

Should Congress and the White House fail to achieve a spending agreement, much of the government will shut down, and federal operations will lapse until a spending plan is passed. During the lapse in funding, however, all employees whose work is not funded by the regular appropriations process are "exempt" from the mandatory furlough that other federal employees have during a shutdown.

The special counsel probe is not part of the annual funding process Congress approves for the Justice Department, and therefore its employees are exempt from the potential shutdown.

The Justice Department said in December that investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election had cost about $7 million from May to September, and the announcement noted that funding for the probe comes from "the permanent, indefinite appropriation for independent counsels."

Outside of protection from a shutdown, the funding mechanism also makes it somewhat difficult for Congress to target the special counsel through the regular appropriations process at all -- a fact that made a few headlines last fall as President Donald Trump tweeted about the "costly" investigations and some House Republicans expressed opposition to Mueller's funding.

That's great information. Thank you, dalton99a!

the only thing impacted is BA funds (budget authority). Anything that is permanent funding, multi-year, or no-year (e.g. user fees) is not impacted - at least in terms of "funding". Those who utilize those funding mechanisms can still work.

There may be those designated as "essential" who must work but who are not funded unless/until Congress passes and the President signs, some type of appropriation that covers them retroactively.

I doubt that Trump understands what you've explained, BumRushDaShow. If I recall from my civics class, (actually, "The West Wing" episode, "Shutdown&quot , many of the mid- to lower-level staffers are furloughed.

What a mess our government has become! Modern Republicans have shown over and over that they cannot govern.

ETA: I hate emojis. Is there a way to turn them off? The winky smile above was meant to be a close parenthesis but when coupled with the quotes, I guess it becomes a stupid emoji.

after 30+ years. Pretty much all of us that have gone through shutdowns (or even had to take training like appropriations law) had to know about this. Otherwise working during a shutdown when furloughed meant you were an "unauthorized procurement".

The only way I have been able to deal with those emoticons in the text is to put a space between the last quote and the closing parenthesis like this --> ("quoted stuff" ). I think when elad was fixing the site after the great hijack, they had to re-do the code and how it handled some of those characters.