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Next Interior Memos weekly digest, 2025-11-13

The shutdown has ended. What comes next?

Jacob Malcom

• 5 min read
View from a rocky outcrop overlooking a rocky river below, with wooded mountains around, and mostly clear blue skies with a few distant clouds.
On Veterans Day this week, I had the chance to enjoy a cold, windy ride up the C&O Canal Towpath to the Appalachian Trail for a trail run & hike to get a cold, windy, and lovely overlook of the Potomac River. Thanks Interior and the National Parks Service for making that possible! Photo CC-BY-SA Next Interior.

The big news late this week is, of course, that the shutdown has ended. It means our parks, wildlife, and public lands will have the people of Interior—those who are still left after the slash-and-burn tactics of this administration—coming back to carry forth the mission and get paid to do it. Some energy, minerals, and water work continued during the shutdown, perhaps more slowly, but more staff will be back at it now. Science, always in the crosshairs of this administration, and the work of building knowledge about the resources managed for the country, will be resuming. And while some of the work of Indian Country continued without interruption—like in Bureau of Indian Education schools because of their two-year appropriations—more can get back underway now. 

But as the NPR headline linked above notes, not everything is back to normal…in so many ways. As noted on Monday, society still has to reckon with an Executive Branch that is happy to flout the law if they want to. The civil servants at Interior now have to brace for the potential of reductions in force in February, or being taken hostage again. But we shouldn’t get down about it, we should get active…there’s a lot of work to be done! Here are a few news items that matter now and will matter ever more for the Department: