By Thomas Gallatin

President Donald Trump signed legislation Wednesday ensuring that the roughly 380,000 furloughed federal workers currently not receiving pay will be paid once the partial government shutdown ends. By taking this action, Trump eased the impact of the shutdown on federal employees while at the same time encouraging continued stability for labor-market statistics. As The Wall Street Journal explains, “Had that not occurred, the loss of more than 300,000 employees from the government’s payroll would have most likely overwhelmed any private-sector job creation. That in turn would have caused total nonfarm payrolls to decrease for the first time since October 2010, snapping a streak of 99 straight months of job growth. The streak is the longest on record dating to 1939.”

Even with Trump’s action guaranteeing that there is light at the end of the shutdown tunnel, hundreds of thousands of federal workers — many of them essential and still on the job — are feeling the immediate financial hit from missed paychecks. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats are content to play political games by refusing to even meet with Trump and Republicans in negotiation efforts and by requesting that Trump postpone the annual State of the Union Address over bogus security concerns. In truth, Pelosi doesn’t want Trump to have that much unfiltered access to the American people, where he can make a strong compelling case for the need for a border wall and can expose the Democrats for being opposed to enforcing the nation’s sovereign right to secure our borders. She’d rather continue the pain and theater of her shutdown so she can better represent people who aren’t even citizens of the nation.

Importantly, though, despite the partial government shutdown, the vast majority of Americans are getting along just fine. In fact, if it wasn’t for the media constantly covering it, would many Americans even know there was a shutdown?