People take photos with a sign announcing that the Library of Congress is closed, on the first day of a partial government shutdown, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson) Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Aside from the routinely expiring debt ceiling, the practice of government shutdowns may be the most dramatic, unique and objectively silly quirks of how Washington, DC, works.

Shutdowns cost the government billions of dollars, they interrupt the productivity of federal workers, and it’s just plain a bad look for the most powerful democracy on earth to see its government literally sputter.

The concept of a shutdown is essentially unheard-of in much of the rest of the world. In most forms of democratic government, a failure to keep the government function

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