All White House staff at the most senior level of Assistant to the President will be allowed to work. | Al Drago/Pool/Getty Images Who's in and who's out as the West Wing grapples with shutdown 'There is no support staff, limited food and there are no assistants,' says one Obama veteran of the 2013 government closure.

The press wranglers have gone home. The in-house White House makeup artist isn't expecting to report to work on Monday. Assistants to senior White House staffers are getting an unplanned, unpaid vacation from work.

But for the most part, work life in the West Wing will continue as usual, even as much of the federal government shut down Saturday, furloughing thousands of workers. In fact, with President Donald Trump being forced to spend a rare winter weekend in Washington rather than at Mar-a-Lago, the West Wing work load is expected to be heavier than usual.


All White House staff at the most senior level of Assistant to the President will be allowed to work. That group includes about 20 advisers like Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, legislative affairs director Marc Short, policy adviser Stephen Miller, communications director Hope Hicks, economic adviser Gary Cohn, press adviser Mercedes Schlapp, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and counselor Kellyanne Conway.

The West Wing staffers two rungs down the command chain are also permitted to show up. All deputy assistants to the president — that includes people like adviser Josh Raffel and deputy press secretary Raj Shah — are expected to continue reporting to work, as are the Special Assistants to the President, such as deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters.

That's because all of those government jobs are, by definition, commissioned officers, who are not affected by the government shutdown because their duties are considered essential, White House officials said. The National Security Council is also unaffected by the shutdown, and its members continue reporting to work.

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But many lower-level White House aides — there were a total of 377 White House personnel on the payroll as of July 1, 2017 — will be sitting at home indefinitely.

Some senior White House officials said they were hoping for an excuse to turn off their government phones and stop replying to emails for a few days, expressing some resignation upon learning that their work day burdens will likely to increase while the government is closed.

But shutdown protocol is one area where Trump is not upending government norms. During the 2013 government shutdown, President Barack Obama's former press secretary Josh Earnest recalled, all commissioned officers reported to work. “Select other White House staffers, depending on their duty, were classified as essential, too,” he said. “But only a few.”

Former Obama administration officials recalled the 2013 shutdown as a trying time for essential West Wing staff. “There is no support staff, limited food and there are no assistants,” recalled Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former White House deputy chief of staff. “At certain points throughout the shutdown, I found myself emptying trash cans and refilling toilet paper in the women’s bathroom. But the hardest part of shutdown are the incoming stories about how it was impacting the outside world - so emptying trash cans didn’t seem like a big sacrifice.”