Among other administration priorities, the government shutdown is hampering efforts by agencies such as EPA and the Interior department to unwind Obama-era energy regulations. | Brennan Linsley, File/AP Photo Government Shutdown Newest shutdown casualty: Trump’s own policies From energy to opioids to trade, proposals championed by the president and his supporters are snarled in the D.C. impasse.

The government shutdown is threatening important pieces of President Donald Trump’s agenda, escalating the political stakes as he and Congress vie to see who blinks first.

At EPA and the Interior Department, furloughs have frozen efforts to roll back Obama-era regulations and open new water to oil and gas drilling. The White House has sent home key staff coordinating its response to the opioid crisis. And if the partial shutdown drags on long enough, it could force Trump to cancel a late-January trip to Davos, Switzerland, and delay congressional action on the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal.


Trump shows no signs of backing off, telling reporters that the shutdown — triggered by his demands that Congress fund a border wall — has “a higher purpose than next week’s pay.” But the potential blowback to his own policy priorities shows that the closure is likely to inflict cascading harm as it continues, beyond its initial impact on parks, museums and federal workers’ paychecks.

The prospect of a long shutdown is already worrying people in some industries, who fear it could burn valuable time for agencies trying to unwind the Obama administration’s regulations. A lengthy enough delay could even push the inevitable legal fights into the next presidency.

“There is no question that an extended shutdown will harm the administration’s regulatory reform agenda," Dan Byers, vice president for policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, said in a statement. "They faced a challenging clock to begin with, so a delay of even just a few weeks could significantly impact their ability to advance rulemakings in a timely manner."

To some Trump critics, those delays are the shutdown’s bright silver lining.

"Since most of the regulatory activity that EPA is doing is of the deregulatory nature, to me, that’s great for the health and the environment," said Mike Mikulka, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Chapter 704, which represents EPA employees in the Midwest. He is also a spokesperson for a union-backed campaign called Save the EPA.

Some of the administration’s efforts are still moving ahead, of course: Trade talks with China are proceeding as scheduled this week, and the Interior Department said it’s continuing to process permit applications for oil and gas drilling. The White House also took one of the most politically sensitive issues off the table Monday when acting budget director Russell Vought said the IRS can still issue tax refunds — defusing the threat of a public backlash that would have stepped on the GOP's victory in enacting a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul.

But new casualties keep cropping up. On Monday, for instance, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao canceled an appearance this week in Las Vegas where she had been expected to announce a rule allowing drones to fly over people.

These are the Trump-supported initiatives that are already feeling the shutdown’s bite:



1. Stalled rule rollbacks



The shutdown is hampering one of Trump’s proudest achievements, the effort by agencies such as EPA and Interior to unwind regulations and champion U.S. energy “dominance.” That includes a push by EPA to ease the Obama administration’s limits on toxic pollution from power plants and greenhouse gas emissions from cars’ and trucks’ tailpipes, as well as sweeping protections for wetlands and waterways.

EPA has been especially aggressive in unwinding Obama-era rules, but much of its work is in the proposal stage — and the employees in charge of holding hearings, reading comments and revising the text are on furlough.



The agency used its final leftover funds on Dec. 28 to release one last major air pollution proposal — an easing of limits on mercury and other toxic chemicals from power plants — then promptly shut down. But it can’t begin taking public comment on the proposal until the rule is published in the Federal Register, and the work of formatting, copy editing and tweaking will be a challenge without career staff on the job.

EPA has also been taking comments on a proposal to delay the effective date of Obama-era rules on wood-burning heaters, a major issue in rural states like Alaska and Maine. But now it has no staff to take meetings or answer industries’ questions on the issue.

"The shutdown doesn’t necessarily slow this piece of the administration’s work, but it doesn’t improve the quality of the policymaking," said Miles Keogh, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents state-level regulators.

Similarly, Interior has long been expected to issue an offshore drilling plan this month that many expect will make wide stretches of Atlantic and Pacific waters available for oil and gas rigs. But the shutdown will delay that release, three people knowledgeable about the rulemaking process told POLITICO.

“My contacts at DOI are not going into the office for much,” one person in the oil and gas industry said.

The Justice Department has also furloughed many of the lawyers who would represent the administration in court. They include lawyers fighting off legal challenges to Trump’s approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project that environmental groups have spent the past decade opposing.

“We have a shoestring staff here (3) filing motions in our 100’s of cases and we are trying not to let anything ‘fall through the cracks,’” wrote Doris Coles-Huff, deputy chief of the Civil Division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., in a Friday email obtained by POLITICO.

Environmentalists cannot bring themselves to cheer the delays, saying the shutdown is also blocking routine environmental and conservation work. EPA has canceled hearings on Superfund sites and stopped cleanups and inspections, while accidents, trash pileups and other damage are occurring at national parks that Interior has allowed to remain open without supervision.

"Trump is endangering the public with his dangerous shutdown," Sierra Club Legislative Director Melinda Pierce said in a statement.





2. Opioid strategy



Furloughs are slowing momentum on projects at the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, including the anti-drug campaign that Trump has touted as one of his main strategies to tackle the opioid addiction crisis.

Addressing the drug epidemic that's killing 115 Americans a day has been a top priority for the president, but Democrats have criticized him for a lack of action. The Senate last week confirmed his first appointed drug czar, Jim Carroll — but the work of Carroll’s office is likely to remain on hold until the government reopens and its employees return.

If the government remains shuttered until the end of the month, funding for critical grant programs involving law enforcement and prevention activities could also be in jeopardy, some people involved in the effort worry. The drug policy office is expected to announce awards of money at the end of January for prevention programs and efforts to help law enforcement catch traffickers.



3. Trade paralysis



The Commerce Department has stopped processing companies’ requests to be excluded from Trump’s aluminum and steel tariffs. It also has eliminated staffing for ongoing investigations into whether to impose trade penalties on foreign companies found to be selling their products in the United States at unfairly low or subsidized prices.

In addition, the U.S. International Trade Commission will remain shuttered for the length of the shutdown. That could jeopardize its March 15 deadline for submitting a report on the economic impact of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — possibly delaying Congress’ action on the trade pact, because many lawmakers will look to the report to inform their positions on the deal.

The shutdown is also delaying the release of key Commerce Department economic data reports, such as one due Tuesday on the monthly trade deficit. And it could prompt Trump to cancel his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos from Jan. 22-25, which was supposed to include his economic team as well as his daughter Ivanka Trump and and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The shutdown has also complicated the Agriculture Department’s efforts to assist farmers and ranchers burned by Trump’s retaliatory tariffs. Agricultural producers who haven’t yet certified their 2018 production must wait until local Farm Service Agency offices reopen before moving ahead with their applications for trade aid.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue was considering extending the Jan. 15 deadline to apply for the program, Undersecretary Bill Northey said last week.



4. Stock offerings slowed



Trump’s Treasury Department raised concerns in 2017 about the declining number of companies making initial public offerings, which often serve as a springboard for growth and jobs. Promoting these deals is a major priority for SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, a lawyer and Trump nominee best known for working on Chinese giant Alibaba’s IPO.

But now the SEC is shuttered, and companies preparing to go public cannot get the necessary registration statements approved by the agency.

At least a half-dozen companies had been expected to launch public offerings in January, according to Renaissance Capital, a Greenwich, Conn.-based firm that provides research to institutional investors. The impasse could also affect Lyft and other firms looking to go public in the first half of the year, lawyers working on the deals said.

Adam Behsudi, Doug Palmer, Ryan McCrimmon, Ben Lefebvre, Patrick Temple-West, Toby Eckert and Brianna Gurciullo contributed to this report.