Name: Coast Guard Mutual Assistance helps federal employees during shutdown
Uploaded: 2026-04-02T07:35:01.661Z
Duration: 5 min
Description: Coast Guard Mutual Assistance, the official relief organization for the Coast Guard, is stepping in to help civilian employees survive a funding gap due to the partial government shutdown.

Coast Guard Mutual Assistance, the official relief organization for the Coast Guard, is stepping in to help civilian employees survive a funding gap due to the partial government shutdown.

Washington

The ongoing partial government shutdown, now in its 46th day, has left thousands of federal employees unpaid, including many within the Department of Homeland Security. Among those affected are civilian workers in the Coast Guard, the only military branch under DHS, who have turned to Coast Guard Mutual Assistance for financial support. The relief organization has received over 600 requests for aid, totaling more than $1.8 million during this shutdown period.

While active duty Coast Guard members are still receiving paychecks, uncertainty remains about future payments. Civilian employees, who perform critical roles such as intelligence analysis and vessel traffic control, are experiencing financial hardship, leading some to leave their positions. This attrition is impacting Coast Guard operations, particularly in specialized areas that require significant training.

Coast Guard Mutual Assistance helps federal employees during shutdown

46 days and counting, that's how long the government has been partially shut down, and we've heard a lot about the TSA agents who've missed paychecks, sparking chaos at airports, but there are thousands of other government workers who have also gone unpaid. Scripps News Washington correspondent Stephanie Liebergen joins us live from our DC newsroom, and Steph, you've been following the latest surrounding the shutdown. Who else is affected here? So TSA, arguably one of the more public-facing jobs that fall underneath the Department of Homeland Security, but it is just one of 16 different agencies. Most of DHS, around 90-95%, is deemed an essential employee and expected to continue working during a shutdown, but there are 16 different agencies, Citizen and Immigration Services, the Coast Guard, Border Protection, they're a bit of a caveat, they're continuing to get paid thanks to the one big beautiful bill, but there's also CISA, the Cyber Security Agency for the United States, FEMA, also impacted by the shutdown, and the list continues and goes on. But the Coast Guard is the only branch of the military that is part of the Department of Homeland Security and therefore impacted by this shutdown. The Coast Guard has its own official relief organization called Coast Guard Mutual Aid, and it has been helping hundreds of civilian employees survive this funding gap. During just this specific shutdown, so over the last, I'd say, six weeks or so, over 600 requests for financial assistance have come in to Coast Guard Mutual Assistance, those requests totaling over 1.8 million dollars. I caught up with a Coast Guard veteran who now works for the Mutual Assistance Organization, and he said these employees, they just feel like forgotten, and the impact of these repeated government shutdowns are really negatively hurting the workforce. Take a listen. If you showed up and you didn't get paid for five weeks, and then less than a year later you didn't get paid for six weeks, and you had skills that are in high demand, such as engineering, legal education, or law degree, or something along those lines, even doctors and nurse practitioners and physician's assistants, they'll go other places. And then we have gaps, and those gaps continue to exist because the federal government doesn't seem like such a safe place for employment anymore. Active duty members of the Coast Guard are continuing to get their regular paychecks on the 1st and the 15th. I did confirm that they did get their paychecks today, but even for the active duty that are receiving their paychecks still, there's still a little anxiety and a little concern because they're not funded by regular appropriations, so there's no guarantee that that money is going to be there to pay their paychecks. You might remember, Holly, from the fall 2025 shutdown when then Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced that they were going to use the one big beautiful bill to pay the Coast Guard active duty during the fall shutdown. Last year we reached out to DHS to see if they're using kind of that same funding process for this shutdown for the active duty, but we haven't heard back from DHS yet, Holly. All right, and Steph, a question for you about the Coast Guard. I mean, a lot of people may be surprised that it's not under the Department of Defense, but even though there are military members, what do the civilian employees of the Coast Guard do? Well, as it was explained to me, civilian employees do everything from intelligence analysts to IT support. They also staff nine child care centers, child care development centers. Those are really focused in regions where either commercial daycare is too expensive for Coast Guard employees or it's too hard to find. Think about remote places like Kodiak, Alaska, and these civilian workers impact every single Coast Guard mission. Take a listen. They do everything from intelligence analysts to operate our vessel tracking centers at strategic ports throughout the nation. They serve as search and rescue controllers. They help keep our IT systems up so that we can communicate and coordinate. They are a vital part of our team, and without them, our organization is really hindered. So those vessel traffic centers that he mentioned, those are sprinkled around the U.S. coastline, and he described them like air traffic controllers for the water, so making sure that all the cargo ships, the cruise ships, anything else doesn't run into each other, there aren't any crashes in the waters just off the coast. And they say that work takes really significant specialized training, and they're starting to hear that some of the civilian workers and those vessel traffic centers are starting to quit their jobs because of the impact, the financial impact on their families, of being stuck in these repeated government shutdowns, Holly. All right, Scripps News, Washington correspondent Stephanie Liebergen live for us. Thank you for your reporting.

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