When Tyler Ekeledo tugged on the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park’s visitor center doors Saturday morning, needing to use the restroom, they were locked.
It was one small and inconvenient sign of how the political fight in Washington is affecting people in Georgia.
“It’s definitely frustrating,” the 41-year-old from Snellville said.
No signs on the door notified visitors that the center was closed Saturday morning. People throughout the morning tugged on the doors, but the doors never budged. The bathrooms were open at 7:30 a.m. according to signage on the windows.
For visitors at the park Saturday, it was the small things they noticed, like using the restroom at the park’s visitor center or the parking lot closure that forced longer walks to the trailhead, that showed how the shutdown was impacting their lives.
Damon Denzin said little had changed at the park since the shutdown, but he said he’s concerned that litter will accumulate at the park if the shutdown drags on for weeks.
“I’d hate to see that happen,” said Denzin, 56, who is in the U.S. Air Force.
The last — and longest — government shutdown began during Trump’s first term in late 2018 and ended in 2019. It lasted 35 days.
Park staff at Kennesaw Mountain did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday, the fourth day of the shutdown.
Nathan Crimm, a 20-year-old student studying mechatronics at Kennesaw State University, sitting on a bench with a few friends after a roughly 6-mile hike, said he was surprised by the number of people who visited the closed park.
Cars nearly filled the overflow parking lot to capacity by late morning.
“Seems pretty chipper still,” Crimm said.
In Washington, the Senate adjourned without advancing a House-passed stopgap to reopen the federal government on Friday and is now out of session until Monday.
Republicans, who control Congress, say they aren’t committing to Democrats’ concessions on health care spending until the government is reopened. And the White House is keeping the pressure on Democrats to make that happen.
President Donald Trump has threatened mass layoffs of federal employees. The White House is also freezing or canceling previously approved funds in largely Democratic states.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought announced Friday that the administration had paused $2.1 billion for a Chicago transit project. It comes days after the administration announced it’s freezing billions for an infrastructure project in New York.
Democrats are demanding Congress extend more than $1 trillion in Obamacare subsidies set to expire on Dec. 31 and the reversal of cuts enacted as part of Trump’s tax and spending law. The government shutdown began on Wednesday after Democrats refused to support the GOP-backed proposal that didn’t include the health care concessions.
When government funding ground to a halt, it put federal employees in Georgia and across the country in limbo.
Tens of thousands of federal workers in Georgia were told to stay home. Just under 110,000 military and civilian federal employees work in Georgia, according to preliminary August data from the Georgia Department of Labor.
Other workers deemed essential for protecting life and property are clocked in to work without pay during the shutdown.
Nearly 9,300 of the National Park Service’s approximately 14,500 employees were expected to be furloughed during the shutdown, according to the agency’s contingency plan.
Other parks operated by the agency locked up bathrooms and information centers too. That included the Hewlett Lodge Visitor Center at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area.
With no one on hand to enforce parking fees, motorists parked near Hewlett Lodge visited the park cost-free on Saturday afternoon.
“National parks remain as accessible as possible during the federal government shutdown,” an alert on the National Park Service website read. “However, some services may be limited or unavailable.”
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