Month: October 2025

If you’ve been planning a national park trip, the government shutdown likely won’t keep you from hitting the trails—at least for the time being. But with thousands of National Parks Service (NPS) employees expected to be furloughed, a number of park buildings and indoor attractions are set to close and former officials have warned that leaving other sites open will pose serious risks to the public, the parks themselves, and the wildlife living within them.

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According to a contingency plan posted by the Department of the Interior Tuesday night, “park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors”—but “as a general rule, if a facility or area is locked or secured during non-business hours (buildings, gated parking lots, etc.) it should be locked or secured for the duration of the shutdown.”

That means buildings that require staffing—including visitor centers or sites like the Washington Monument—will be shuttered. Updates to park websites and social media accounts will also be put on pause with the exception of emergency communications.

If the shutdown persists, NPS may adjust the plans.

Read more: The Federal Government Has Shut Down. Here’s How It Could Affect Your Life

It’s unclear how long the situation will last, as Republicans and Democrats appeared to remain deadlocked in their showdown over government spending on Wednesday after failing to reach a deal to fund the government by the midnight deadline. 

The last shutdown went on for 34 days and left behind damage to national parks that lasted much longer, fueling concerns over how the parks would fare in a similar situation nearly seven years later.

In a letter last week, a coalition of more than 35 former park superintendents pleaded for President Donald Trump to close all national parks in the event of a government shutdown to protect both the sites and visitors’ safety.

“Past shutdowns in which gates remained open with limited staff have hurt our parks: Iconic symbols cut down and vandalized, trash piled up, habitats destroyed, and visitor safety jeopardized,” they wrote. “If you don’t act now, history is not just doomed to repeat itself, the damage could in fact be much worse.”

How will the shutdown affect National Parks workers?

Under the contingency plan, 9,296 NPS employees out of a total of 14,500 who work at the agency  are expected to be furloughed.

Among those who are set to remain on the job, 2,700 fall under the category of “excepted activity” that is “necessary to protect life and property.” These groups of workers include those involved in law enforcement and emergency response, border and coastal protection, fire suppression, and public health and safety, among other categories.

Also retaining their positions are 2,500 “exempted activity” workers whose “compensation is financed by a resource other than annual appropriations”—though NPS added that is “subject to the continued availability of funds.” The plan notes an unspecified amount of overlap between the two categories of workers, and that certain exempted employees may transition to an excepted or furloughed status.

Read more: Vance Warns Federal Layoffs Could Come Soon If Shutdown Drags On

The NPS Washington Support Office, the agency’s headquarters, will retain “no more than” 25 employees responsible for financing, budgeting, communication and human resources. Meanwhile, no more than five to ten staffers will remain working at each regional office. 

Concerns about damage to parks

Former park officials and advocates have expressed fear that protected land will be damaged by visitors if sites are left partially open while thousands of workers are furloughed or fired, and therefore absent from supervising lands. 

During the last government shutdown, which went on for more than a month between December 2018 and January 2019, national parks were vandalized and trash and human waste overflowed. At Joshua Tree National Park in California, multiple Joshua trees, which can be more than a century old, were chopped down. Also in California—the state with the most national parks—Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks were forced to close as a result of human waste and trash accumulation.  

The former parks superintendents noted that national parks have already been impacted by the Trump Administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal budget and workforce in recent months as well.

“This summer, our parks were pushed to the brink by budget cuts and staff reductions,” they wrote, pointing to an August New York Times article that reported on strain and understaffing at more than 90 parks amid the cuts. 

“If national parks are to be open to visitors when National Park employees are furloughed, these nascent issues from the summer season are sure to erupt. Leaving parks even partially open to the public during a shutdown with minimal—or no—park staffing is reckless and puts both visitors and park resources at risk.”

Read more: Who the Trump Administration Says Is ‘Essential’ in a Shutdown Is Raising Eyebrows

Theresa Pierno, President of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), raised similar concerns in a press release on Wednesday.

“The administration is once again putting our national parks and visitors at risk, effectively directing staff to open park gates and walk away,” said Pierno, whose organization seeks to defend the country’s national parks. “It’s not just irresponsible, it’s dangerous.”

“The damage that occurred in our national parks took months to recover from. And in some cases, the damage was irreparable. Unfortunately, Americans should expect much of the same this time around if this shutdown drags on,” the release said. 

What happens if the shutdown goes on for a long time?

An extended government shutdown would have a “cascading effect” on national parks, Kym Hall, a former regional director at NPS, tells TIME. 

Her primary concern in such a situation, she says, would be the safety risks posed to visitors going to parks that are not supervised as a result of staff being furloughed. 

“I can’t even begin to imagine the safety risks this time of year in, say, Glacier National Park,” says Hall, who managed the park when she worked for NPS. “This is Bear hyperphasia season, which means they are more aggressive, they’re more in search of food as they prepare for the winter. That is the most dangerous time of year for visitors to be engaging with wildlife unmanaged.”

Americans, she says, won’t feel the impact of the situation “until they feel it, right, until somebody has an interaction with wildlife that could have been prevented. Somebody falls and there’s nobody to help them.”

Read more: Will Social Security Be Affected by the Government Shutdown?

Hall also stressed that the agency will be unable to provide services in locations it oversees that are not national parks, such as cultural sites like those in Washington, D.C., stretches of nationally protected seashore, and museum collections.

“It’s not just lakes and forests,” she says.

NPCA Senior Vice President Kristen Brengel tells TIME that the timing of the government shutdown is particularly bad for parks due to their popularity during the fall season.

“The ripple effects of a shutdown are great when it comes to parks, and it really always depends on the time of year,” she says.

In places like Acadia National Park in Maine or Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, she notes, it’s “leaf peeping season.” The NPCA has warned that the shutdown could carry significant costs in terms of lost revenue from park visitors, estimating that parks could lose $1 million a day and nearby communities as much as $80 million.

The last government shutdown occurred in the winter, typically a season that sees lower visitation than the fall. That’s why much of the damage to parks was seen in California, where in the winter it is quite popular to visit national parks sites, Brengel noted.

“It will take a much bigger toll on the local economies this time of year than it would if it were later in the year,” Brengel says.

It’s also hunting season this time of year in many parts of the country, she notes, which means there may be instances of unintentional or intentional poaching on protected lands, many of which border legal hunting territories. 

“If someone in the hunting community doesn’t mean to cross the border into the parks, there will be fewer staff people at both agencies to monitor what’s going on this hunting season,” Brengel tells time. 

“This is just a terrible time for parks.”

As a child growing up in a Spanish-speaking, immigrant household, I had limited resources available to teach me English. My parents came to this country out of necessity in the 1980s from war-torn Nicaragua. My father worked in construction and only picked up enough English words to get by. Being a former teacher, my mother did her best to teach me to read and write in Spanish. And while my older brother picked up more of the language from playing with neighborhood kids, it wasn’t exactly enough to fully teach me. Fortunately, we had a TV set with plenty of English-language programming, including our local PBS station. 

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Through this, I watched English-language children’s shows like Sesame Street, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and Reading Rainbow. These wonderful programs helped plant the seeds of respect, kindness, a love of learning, and the English language in my mind. But it was also bilingual programs like Saludos (featuring puppets alongside people, similar to Sesame Street) and ¿Qué Pasa, USA? (a sitcom about a Cuban-American immigrant family living in Miami) that not only taught me English, but also offered some representation of households like mine. By the time I began kindergarten, I was already fully bilingual as a result. And thanks to these shows, I felt less alone in my bilingual, bicultural existence.

My story isn’t so rare. There are countless immigrant families that have learned English thanks to the programming on their local PBS channels. Ana Regalado, a popular Mexican food content creator who goes by the handle @SaltyCocina, came to the U.S. at the age of six and says she and her sister would watch PBS throughout the day, especially when it was too hot to play outside. 

“Programs like Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, and Villa Allegre taught us basic math and English words,” says Regalado. “We did not understand at first, but I feel it was a big help.”

Marisel Salazar, author of Latin-Ish: More Than 100 Recipes Celebrating American Latino Cuisines, says she also quickly learned English thanks in part to PBS programming.

“The pacing, framework, and structure of Sesame Street, plus the adorable characters, made it very easy for me as a child to engage in learning a second language,” says Salazar.

And Paulette Erato, Founder of Latinas in Podcasting, says she doesn’t recall a time when PBS wasn’t on the TV for her and her brother. So much so, in fact, that when her mother (who spoke little English) went to check in with her kindergarten teacher to see if Paulette was getting on alright, “the teacher laughed and said I spoke English just fine and understood everything perfectly!”

Educational programming, including bilingual programming, continues to exist on PBS stations around the country. Young immigrant children are still being supported in learning English via shows like Rosie’s Rules and Maya & Miguel. In the same vein, young English-speaking children are getting to learn Spanish and embrace multiculturalism. They are the same shows I share with my own bicultural son. Sadly, our country’s leaders appear to be wholly uninterested in raising more generations of empathetic children, much less helping immigrant children and families to feel safe and welcomed in their new homeland.

Read more: What the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Shutting Down Means for PBS And NPR

In recent months, the president signed a bill cancelling a whopping $1.1 billion in funding for the Center for Public Broadcasting. In it, he claimed government funding of news media today is “outdated” and “unnecessary.” As a direct result, the CPB later announced they would need to shut down their operations. 

While PBS itself won’t shut down anytime soon, they have now lost their largest source of financial support. This loss more directly impacts the local stations that viewers turn to. Not only does PBS reach more than half of all U.S. household televisions, their stations also reach more children and families than any other children’s TV networks. 

These are households like the one I grew up in. Channels like Disney and Nickelodeon were a rare treat as I got older, but it was PBS that was always there, always available, free for all. PBS programming on my local station brought me the educational shows I needed and loved. And there’s no doubt the ripple effects of local PBS station shutdowns that will be long felt among lower-income immigrant communities. This is especially true for the young Latine children and families who are striving to learn the local language and customs of a country that’s already waging war against them.

Fortunately, there are some efforts underway to help ease the financial burden these PBS stations are now facing. Philanthropic organizations like the Knight Foundation and others are banding together for this purpose.

“While PBS as a national institution is not going away, we are deeply concerned about local access, especially in rural communities where a local station may be the only source for trusted news, emergency information, and educational programming,” says Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, President & CEO, Knight Foundation. “That access is now under threat as many stations face potential closure or severe cutbacks.”

Pérez Wadsworth says the Knight Foundation hopes the bridge fund will help stabilize the system and ensure continuity of service. She also says the foundation is still seeking additional funders who recognize what’s at stake.

While it’s entirely possible I would have learned English once I finally began school, I was fortunate to have PBS programming at my disposal that helped kickstart my education. The puppets on Saludos and Sesame Street offered lessons in reading, writing, and counting in English. The characters of Luis and Maria gave me a glimpse of what two happy, thriving Latinos looked like living in a neighborhood where kindness was always in high supply. And that was at a time when kids that looked like me didn’t have to worry about ICE Agents coming to take them or their families away; Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not created until 2003. 

So many of us are still so grateful to PBS for giving us a place to turn to for learning and acceptance. Continuing to offer immigrant children and families at least this one source of education and comfort is the least we can do.

Perhaps few other cities have experienced the consequences of a fracturing American consensus as sharply as Portland, Oregon. Our city has the largest perception gap between men and women (a staggering 30 points), vastly disparate coverage by news outlets favored by the political right and left, and, too often, a yawning chasm between national coverage and how we see ourselves. 

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As mayor of Portland, I see an even more intractable and frustrating gap between what the president has said and what I see every day. He has called Portland “a hellhole,” “war ravaged,” a controversial federal facility facing predominantly peaceful protests is “under siege,” and that he’ll “do a number” on our city with “Full Force.” There is no squaring these words with the Portland I see every day, a Portland of creativity and natural beauty, of kindness and compassion, and of community principles and purpose. 

To those who are most aggrieved by Portland, I would ask this: If you visited our schools, would you fund teachers or would you send troops? If you drove our bridges, would you send engineers or would you send troops? If you saw our hospitals, would you support Medicaid, or would you send troops? If you worked with our homeless, would you send outreach workers and addiction specialists or would you send troops? If you met with the daughters whose immigrant fathers were ripped away on their way to school drop-off, would you still send men in masks to further traumatize our neighborhoods?  

The federal government is retreating from its longstanding housing and economic  responsibility to cities across the nation. This has left a leadership vacuum in place of a partnership for the future of Oregon’s prosperity and freedom. Anyone willing to lend a hand to Portland has a seat at the table, including the federal government. We want them back at that table, the sooner the better.

We must recognize that the American consensus on Portland was purposefully broken, and it’s hurting our city. That perception was shattered by the 24-hour ecosystem of divisive clips, some new, most from a half decade ago, all intended to feed anger and division. This ugly ecosystem cannot build togetherness, and it cannot serve the shared interests of our nation; it can only hold us back.

Read more: Trump Sends Troops to Portland, Authorizes ‘Full Force, If Necessary’

Portland, which now faces a moment of profound fear and uncertainty, needs clear answers. What is the role of domestic peace officers, including federal agents, and what now falls under the grip of national security and the Department of War? What is the mission of this deployment, and how will we know whether it has succeeded or failed? Will that mission weigh the needs of our community as equal to national political expedience, or is the safety of our people less important than fleeting political optics?  

We do not ask, but demand to know, what the authorization of “Full Force” means to  Portlanders. As Mayor, should I tell our teachers to teach, and our workers to work, and our parents to parent like any other day, or should I tell our hospitals and morgues to prepare for the unthinkable?  

We know the National Guard troops who will come to our city. They are us, fellow Oregonians. They work in our stores and offices. They are the moms and dads and teachers we wave to in the halls of our schools. They are also the ones who come to our aid in our darkest times. They are here when wildfires rage, or floods destroy, or overseas conflicts demand their service. When these citizen soldiers answered this call, they made a solemn promise to their communities and our nation that I believe the federal administration is now dishonoring.

Portland is having a moment of clarity. We have learned that reforming our public safety system and halving our homicide rate in a single year is not enough to stop troops from coming. We have learned that focusing on our economy and caring for our most vulnerable is not enough to stop troops from coming. Perhaps most troubling of all, we have learned that avoiding national conflict, listening, de-escalating, and focusing foremost on our responsibility to our community has not stopped troops from coming.  

I cannot express the sadness and disappointment I feel when I hear the leader of our  country call for the militarization of a situation that does not exist, with murky, unknown, and potentially deadly rules, and no clear definition of success or failure. There is no military strength without moral strength, no good outcome when summoning tempers alongside uncertainty and rifles, and no margin for error in what may come next.  

As Mayor, I support our community’s desire to repair our fractured portrait. I support  Portland’s long tradition of large-scale, peaceful protests. Our city has a proud track record of being at the forefront of positive social change, and the entire nation has benefited from that passion and moral clarity. 

The fight the federal administration seeks is not in our city, and I call on our national leaders to chart a course that leads to our future, and not to further fear and division.

• A millennial mom secretly worked two full-time jobs for 18 months, earning $250,000 annually,
• Burnout and return-to-office pressures led her to give up “overemployment.”
• She shared how she’s navigated financial and childcare changes — and avoided her company’s five-day in-office policy.

Editor’s note: In June 2024, Business Insider wrote about a supply-chain professional named “Lisa,” in Wisconsin, who was secretly working multiple full-time jobs. (Lisa is a pseudonym, but Business Insider has confirmed her identity.) Read our story here. In a recent interview, Lisa shared how she has adapted to life with one job and managed to maintain a similar standard of living.

Secretly working two full-time jobs was a game changer for Lisa and her family. That chapter is closed, but she’s still clinging to the lifestyle it made possible.

In 2020, Lisa was earning roughly $110,000 a year in a remote, corporate manufacturing role when she received an offer for a hybrid job that paid about $150,000. After talking it over with her husband, she landed on an unconventional solution: Take the new job — and keep the old one, too.

For 18 months, Lisa secretly worked two full-time roles, earning roughly $250,000 in 2021 and averaging 40 to 50 hours a week across both jobs. On days she had to go into the office for her hybrid role, she’d bring both laptops — which conveniently looked identical — and juggle her responsibilities from a cubicle or private room.

Lisa said the extra income has put her and her husband in a strong position to afford their three children’s college educations. It also allowed her husband to take a much-needed break from the workforce and focus on caring for their kids.

“It’s given us a financial cushion that would have been impossible otherwise,” Lisa, who’s in her 40s and lives in Wisconsin, told Business Insider last year.

However, in recent years, Lisa said return-to-office pressures and burnout made job juggling unsustainable. In 2022, she gave up her $250,000 income from two jobs for a new position as a supply chain manager with a hybrid schedule that paid $175,000 annually. Nearly two years later, Lisa faced another challenge to the lifestyle she’d grown used to: Her company announced a five-day-a-week in-office policy.

But just as she turned to job juggling in 2020, Lisa has continued to find ways to carve out a work situation that’s best for her and her family. Her first step? Finding a way to quietly skirt her company’s five-day office policy.

Lisa is among the Americans who have secretly juggled multiple full-time jobs to double their incomes. Over the past three years, Business Insider has interviewed 30 overemployed workers who’ve put their extra earnings toward things like luxurious vacations, expensive weight-loss drugs, and their children’s college tuition.

However, in recent years, job juggling has become more difficult amid a white-collar hiring slowdown and return-to-office mandates. Still, some workers have found ways to hold on to parts of their overemployed lifestyles, even as their work situations evolve.

Dodging a 5-day in-office mandate

After switching from two jobs to one in 2022, Lisa said her remaining employer encouraged office attendance, but in-person work initially remained optional due to pandemic-related concerns. She typically went in once a week — making a commute of just over an hour each way — a routine her manager was fine with.

Over time, though, in-person attendance a few days a week became expected. Then, in late 2023, the company formally announced a five-day-a-week office requirement. Lisa began thinking about finding a new job, but first, she spoke with her manager to gauge how strictly the new rules would be enforced. Her manager told her that employees could request approval to work from home one day a week, but it would require a sign-off from a higher-level manager at the company. They said they’d support her request.

But the conversation didn’t end there. Lisa said they then had an “off the record” conversation about how much remote work she could get away with. She explained how working five days a week in the office would pose challenges for her family, given her long commute and childcare responsibilities.

Lisa said her manager was understanding and told her to “be here as much as you can.” As long as she was in the office a few days a week — especially on days with key in-person meetings — they wouldn’t stand in her way.

“My manager and I have kind of worked out that if I need to work from home for whatever reason, whether it’s work or personal reasons, then that’s OK,” she said. “At the end of the day, I kind of have a hybrid schedule.”

Lisa, who typically works from the office three days a week, said one reason her manager has been accommodating is that her job involves a lot of virtual meetings, making in-person attendance less essential. As far as she knows, everyone who has formally asked to work from home one day a week has received approval, but she’s not sure if others have come to similar informal arrangements. Either way, she prefers to keep hers quiet.

“I don’t necessarily advertise what I do,” she said. “But there is a quiet understanding in our working group that flexibility is critical for us to be productive.”

Lisa said her biggest concern is that her company will start tracking how often people are working from the office — as some other companies have done — but she hasn’t heard anything about this yet.

“If they start letting people go because they’re not badging in for eight hours a day, four days a week, then yeah, I would definitely be on the list of people they could let go,” she said.

Turning to her husband for childcare while looking for a new role

Given that she’s spending more time in the office, Lisa said her husband has spent more time caring for their children, the youngest of whom is under 10. After taking a break from the workforce, he now works remotely part-time, giving him the flexibility to be there for their kids. When her husband used to work from an office, Lisa said they relied on pre- and after-school programs. But now that he works from home, he’s able to handle school drop-offs and pickups himself.

From a financial perspective, Lisa said they’ve been able to maintain their lifestyle despite his part-time hours for three main reasons. First, her husband is earning more per hour than he did in his previous full-time job, which made the transition to part-time a bit less of a sacrifice. Second, her salary has risen over the past three years — from $175,000 to $195,000 — helping to offset some of the lost income from her second job. Third, the savings boost from her job-juggling days gave them a cushion — one that has helped them absorb income changes without major cutbacks.

“I think we would be OK financially,” she said, “but we wouldn’t be great if it hadn’t been for that two-job situation.”

While working three days from the office has been manageable, Lisa said she’s applied for many jobs over the past year in the hopes of finding a role with some combination of a shorter commute, a more flexible in-office requirement, and comparable pay.

She said she interviewed for one job with an office just 15 minutes from home, but the salary was about half of what she earns now. While the shorter commute was appealing, the pay cut wasn’t worth it — and she said it’s been difficult to find other managerial roles that have the compensation and flexibility she’s looking for.

“It’s hard to find another position at this level,” she said. “There’s just fewer of them, but I’m still looking.”

• Connecting with an employer can help you be ready when the organization later has an opening.
• This approach can help you sidestep the application “cattle call,” a career coach told Business Insider.
• A warm introduction to a hiring manager can triple your shot of getting hired, LinkedIn reports.

You might call it pre-applying.

Talking with an employer before the company posts a job, not after, could help you land a role there, veteran career coach Laura Labovich told Business Insider.

She recommends that job seekers identify where they want to work, examine their network for any ties to the organization, and start building relationships inside prior to a job post even going up.

“The way to win is to not apply. Get in before they have the opening. Make connections. Become an insider,” Labovich said.

If you wait until you see a job posting before contacting an employer, she said, you might already be too late. That’s because once a role is posted, recruiters or HR staffers will often feel compelled to tell you to apply online in order to ensure all candidates get equal consideration, Labovich said.

Getting in line with everybody else can make the process seem “more like a cattle call,” she said.

‘Worth its weight in gold’

Aside from generally feeling lousy, the take-a-number approach is also rarely the best path to landing a role, as almost anyone seeking a desk job can attest.

The typical corporate job posting draws 250 applicants, Glassdoor reported in early 2025. Among those, only four to six candidates typically advance to the interview round. And, of course, only one person ultimately gets the offer letter.

Having someone who can flag your résumé to a recruiter or hiring manager and help you stand out is “worth its weight in gold” when there are so many people looking for jobs, said Rick Wargo, managing partner of the global technology practice at the recruitment firm Boyden.

“A warm introduction is always the best way to go about a job search,” he told Business Insider.

Knowing what to ask

It’s obvious that if you don’t know about a forthcoming job, you can’t make a pitch for it. What you can do is consider whether the employer has hired for the types of things you might like to do.

That’s why, Wargo said, it’s important to start networking and making connections inside key companies before you need a job.

“You don’t go to fix the roof when it’s raining,” he said.

To beat the rush that often occurs when an employer lists an opening, you can contact people who might be at your level within an organization and ask questions such as, “How do you like your job?” “How do you like the organization?” and “How did you get to where you did?” said Labovich, who runs Career Strategy Group, an outplacement firm in the Washington, DC, area.

If it’s someone higher up the food chain — potentially someone who might be the hiring manager for a future job — the ask should be smaller.

“You don’t want to say, ‘I want a job,’ because if you’re getting to them early, there’s no job yet,” she said. Instead, Labovich recommends that job seekers seek advice, insight, recommendations, and referrals.

That contact can pay off: Messaging a hiring manager nearly triples your chance of getting hired, LinkedIn reports.

Ultimately, she said, making connections inside an organization is one of the best ways to navigate a hiring process that often feels “totally broken.”

That’s left many job seekers applying to as many roles as they can, even though many career coaches, including Labovich, urge that people prioritize networking instead.

“The way to apply for a job these days is to not apply for a job,” she said.

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com