Shutdown watch is a genre now

A government shutdown is a real thing for the people who miss a check and the parks that chain a gate. It is also a TV format: countdown clocks, hallway ambushes, a senator who has said the same sentence for a decade.

We will cover the actual consequences — who is not paid, what does not open, which services quietly continue — and skip the hallway as much as possible. Process is the story. The hallway is the show.