The government shutdown is putting health, safety, and wellbeing at risk.

• Native American tribes are experiencing sharp cutbacks to health services, education, housing, child welfare, maintenance of tribal lands, and economic development.
• Domestic violence shelters across the country are cutting services for survivors because they can’t access the funding they would normally receive from the Department of Justice.
• Over 800,000 federal workers are going without pay and are being forced to make difficult choices to cover their basic needs, unsure when they will receive their next paychecks.
• Routine food safety inspections have been cut back.
• Hundreds of inspections of water systems, chemical factories, power plants, oil refineries, and other industrial sites have been cancelled.
• More than 40,000 immigrants, many of whom have been waiting years to have their cases heard in immigration court,  have had their hearings cancelled.
• More than 2,500 food retailers (and counting) are no longer able to accept food assistance benefits because their licenses were not renewed before the government shutdown.
• As government housing contracts expire, hundreds of thousands of tenants with low incomes are at risk of eviction.
• Other impacts range from delayed disaster relief to interrupted data collection on climate change and other health issues.

Over the coming weeks, the situation will only get worse. And at every step of the way, the hardship and uncertainty this shutdown entails undermine mental health and wellbeing.

We can't accept the senselessness of this situation. Please call your senators and representatives and urge them to reopen the government immediately.

For more information, read this statement about the shutdown from eleven health advocacy and civil rights organizations.