Good evening, I'm John Yang.

Tonight, day 33 of the government shutdown is drawing to a close with no end in sight, and Americans are beginning to feel the effects.

Payments for federal food programs are in doubt despite court orders.

Delays are likely for federal payments to help low income Americans heat and cool their homes, and the air traffic control system is beginning to show signs of strain as the holiday travel season approaches.

Meanwhile this weekend, the approximately 650,000 furloughed federal workers are getting fresh notices telling them to stay home without working and without pay.

Many are beginning to feel the pinch.

This is my first time visiting a food bank in my entire life.

I've never had the need to do so in the past, um, but times change.

Anthony's fate is just one of the hundreds of thousands of federal employees nationwide who have been furloughed for more than 4 weeks.

In Washington DC and elsewhere, federal workers both furloughed and fired are lining up at food banks for assistance.

I have a master's degree.

I have 25 years of experience in my job.

I didn't see this ever coming.

It never should have.

Amy Ucello was one of tens of thousands of USAID workers fired earlier this year when the administration eliminated the agency.

It's finding ways to make ends meet, grateful for any sort of assistance programs.

I'm showing up to food banks when I can.

We're applying to jobs constantly.

Our unemployment just ran out, so now we have no income coming in.

Furloughed IRS lawyer Isaac Stein turned a side hustle selling hot dogs into a temporary full-time gig.

It was a happy coincidence in the sense that I have something to do while I'm furloughed but I really do want to emphasize that I and every co-worker I know, we just want to go back to work, so I'm very much looking forward to when the shutdown is over just resuming my job and having this be a fun weekend thing like it was intended to be.

World Central Kitchen is known for providing food aid in the aftermath of disasters around the world.

One of their latest distribution sites downtown Washington DC don't like to know that SNAP benefits are being cut off, other programs are being cut off.

The work is being delayed.

Our country can't kind of run the way that it should effectively and efficiently because we have a lapse in appropriation and Congress is not coming to the table like they should.

And as the government shutdown closes in on becoming the longest ever federal workers want Congress to hear their pleas.

I still have bills that are due.

I have a family that I have to take care of, so it's a lot of uncertainty that comes along with this.

I'm grateful for these opportunities to receive assistance, but there is a lot of uncertainty that comes along with it, and it causes a lot of stress as well.

Um, all I can do is just continue to pray and hope that something is done to resolve the issue with the federal government shutdown.

barring some dramatic unforeseen development.

It appears likely that this week the shutdown will become the longest on record.

Jeremy Mayer is the director of the political science master's program at George Mason University's Shar School of Policy and Government.

Jeremy, this this shutdown is about to have a distinction of being the the longest on record.

Are there other things distinctive about this shutdown compared with others from the recent past.

Yes, the biggest difference is the lack of negotiations.

Every other shutdown that focus has been on what is the president's negotiating position?

What is his opposition in Congress?

What is their position?

And they were shifting sands and here has just been nothing.

The Democrats set their line in the sand, and the Republicans have their position, no negotiation until the government opens, and we're still where we were at the start.

Why do you think that is?

Well, it's a symbol of how polarized we are.

The Republicans are answerable to a megaba and Donald Trump, and they are not interested in compromising because they increasingly see the Democrats as evil, and the Democrats are moving towards that polarization as well.

There's not a lot of moderates in the Democratic Party pressuring Schumer to make a deal at the base of the Democratic Party doesn't want a deal.

We're also seeing this administration picking and choosing, making winners and losers over what programs they're going to favor and what programs they're going to pay people to work.

Is that unusual?

It is very unusual, and it's a questionable legality, but you know this administration has been doing that since they were inaugurated.

They shut down as your package had USAID.

They've effectively shut down the Department of Education.

No prior president in the history of the republic has ever asserted the ability to shut down entire agencies.

The president is continuing his push to get rid of the Senate legislative filibuster.

He says that's the way to reopen the government.

On Truth Social this weekend, he urged Republicans, Don't be weak and stupid.

Fight, fight, fight, win, win, win.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says that he wants to keep the filibuster.

He says that it's a bulwark against a lot of really bad things happening with the country.

Explain what he means by that or why he would say that.

So there has been this debate traditionalists in the Senate of both parties have been against ending the filibuster.

They treasure the filibuster.

What's one of the things that makes the Senate different from the House, and it's old.

It's not in the Constitution, but it's since 1802.

But on both sides, the more radical members of the Democratic and Republican caucus have wanted to get rid of the filibuster because it's the only thing that allows you to get big change through the Congress.

The Democrats say they won't vote to reopen the government until the Republicans agree to restore some cuts to Me di ca id and also agreed to extend the subsidies for ECA insurance premiums.

In the recent past of these shutdowns, has anyone ever won a policy change by using the government government shutdown as leverage?

Well, somewhat, you know, Clinton's big victory was in the politics of the 95 shutdown.

He just showed himself to be the adult and made Gingrich look small, but the Republicans did win action on Workfare and on a balanced budget.

So the 95 is kind of the shut d ow n that everybody looks to, but the more common outcome is the 2018 shutdown with Trump.

He said, I won't open the government until you build me a border wall, and after 35 days, he crumbled like a cheap suit, and the rain and then there there was no border wall.

Our shutdown's becoming a common tactic or tool in these negotiations or disagreements between the two parties.

Unfortunately they are, and they are terrible for government.

It's the suffering of the workers, but think about the morale of the agency even when we do reopen.

I tell my students that a government shutdown is like an induced coma for a medical patient.

It's the only thing worse is actual death, and it'll still be hurting our government's efficiency, 6 months and 9 months from now, because all the things that they wanted to do, their budgets are truncated.

The planning is truncated, and their workers are going to be dispirited, and even if they do get their back pay, they're going to have had this awful experience of being told your work isn't essential.

Given all that, given all you've said, what do you think it's going to take to sort of break this stalemate.

Well, I think President Trump is going to win this stalemate.

I think he can easily get the end of the shutdown simply by saying my Justice Department is reinterpreted the 100 year old law and now I can declare an end to the shutdown.

This is what happened when the Congress failed to pass bills on time from 1884 to 1980.

We just had a continuing resolution automatically in effect.

But in 1980, Carter's Attorney General reinterpreted a law, and that's where modern shutdowns come from, and they have been terrible.

Trump will look like a hero.

He's the one that reopened the government all by himself.

He didn't have to negotiate with the weak Democrats.

And so he's likely to achieve at least a short term political victory very soon.

Jeremy Mayer of George Mason University, thank you very much.

My pleasure.