The Brief

At 12:01 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, the federal government will shut down unless Congress can pass a short-term funding measure, something that currently looks unlikely to happen.

Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled House passed a continuing resolution that funds the government through Nov. 21 at current spending levels, while putting some extra money into a few specific areas, like security for the executive and judicial branches, as well as for members of Congress.

On Sept. 19, the House passed its bill, but that same day the bill failed in the Senate, as did a Democratic counter-offer, before that chamber left for the recess during the Jewish high holidays.

For a brief moment, it looked like the White House would get involved. Democratic Leaders wrote to President Donald Trump, demanding a meeting to discuss government funding. Trump agreed Wednesday only to reverse course the next day and cancel the meeting.

House Republican leaders also have cancelled votes for Sept. 29 and 30, effectively keeping members out of town in the run-up to the shutdown. The move puts pressure on the Senate to pass the House version or get the blame for the shutdown. (House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is bringing Democrats back Monday night to show they’d be willing to negotiate and ready to vote on a revised funding measure.)

Instead of meeting, Republicans and Democrats are trading blame for who’s responsible, even as the clock continues to tick down.

Republicans have said they’re doing what Democrats have done in the past — passing a clean seven-week CR to allow negotiations to take place.

Democrats respond that they’re willing to work with the president but want to use this as an opportunity to protect health care coverage. They’re seeking continuation of the enhanced ACA tax credit, something some moderate Republicans support. Democrats also want to reverse the Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill, a change that’s extremely unlikely given that Republicans put so much effort this summer into passing Trump’s signature bill.

Unlike past shutdowns, this could be very different.

The administration will have the authority to determine what functions are considered “essential” or not. Those employees will still work without getting paid. But this is also the first shutdown since Trump started slashing the federal workforce, and his administration is threatening more layoffs if a shutdown happens.

The Office of Management and Budget, led by Russ Vought, sent a memo to department and agency heads saying that for any programs where funding lapses or is not deemed essential that they “are directed to use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force (RIF) notices.”

That could mean that when the federal government does eventually reopen, it would return with an even smaller permanent workforce.

The longest government shutdown happened in 2018, during Trump’s first term. It started around the winter holidays and lasted 35 days, costing the economy approximately $11 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But that was considered only a partial shutdown because some appropriations bills had been signed into law, so not all parts of the federal government were closed. That would not be the case this time around.

Another shutdown happened in 2013, at the start of the new federal fiscal year and lasted 16 days. It reduced GDP by $20 billion, per Moody’s.

A shutdown impacts discretionary spending, which is set by the budget bills that Congress is required to pass and the president must sign into law. Things like Medicare and Medicaid payments, veterans' benefits, and Social Security are not funded through an appropriations bill and should continue uninterrupted.

Still, a shutdown could have impacts in large and small ways across the state, and around the country, especially if it were not quickly resolved.

If you’re flying soon …

Air traffic controllers and most TSA employees are considered “essential workers” and have to stay on the job, even if it means working without pay while the rest of the federal government shuts down.

If a shutdown drags on, travelers could see more “sick outs” of key personnel. That happened during the 2018-19 government shutdown as workers showed their anger over missing paychecks.

Lastly, if you’re planning on any international travel in the new year, you may need to build in even more time for passport renewals. The U.S. Passport agency will remain open, but it could take longer to process applications with some employees furloughed.

What about the mail?

The Postal Service will keep the mail moving as usual in the event of a shutdown. The USPS. is primarily self-funded and doesn’t depend on the appropriations process to continue running as usual.

Benefit and Safety Net Programs

Social Security, VA and other benefits will continue, but there could be some delay in services, such as processing applications.

In a shutdown, the first to feel the pinch could be the mothers and young children who rely on the WIC food program. That benefit cuts off almost immediately. According to Colorado’s WIC dashboard, just over 100,000 clients were enrolled in the program in August 2025.

SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, will last longer but could also run out if a shutdown drags on. Typically continuing resolutions authorize USDA to send out benefits for 30 days after a shutdown starts. Stores that accept the benefit would not be able to renew their license during that time.

There could be missed paychecks and lost jobs

Perhaps the biggest impacts in Colorado will be felt by the state’s approximately 41,000 federal employees and 36,000 active duty military service members, who do not get a paycheck during a government shutdown. The White House also is threatening mass layoffs (RIF) of federal employees, in addition to furlough notices, if a shutdown happens.

A shutdown would happen toward the end of a pay period, so the first full paycheck missed for federal employees would be Oct. 24, while for the military it would be Oct. 15.

The only salaries the federal government continues to pay during a shutdown will be members of Congress and the president, according to the Constitution. However, elected officials can request that their paychecks be deferred while a shutdown is ongoing.

Federal employees and military will get back pay once the shutdown is over.

Earlier this year, tens of thousands of federal employees accepted deferred resignations, leaving their positions while still collecting their pay through the end of September. That program will end before the shutdown takes hold.

National Parks are a big question mark

During the 2018-19 shutdown, the Trump administration kept National Parks accessible to the public, even as many Park Service employees had to stay home.

At the time, there were reports of damage and trash in the unattended parks. And a GAO opinion in September 2019 found the Trump administration violated federal law when it used entrance fees to keep the parks accessible.

In 2013, the Obama administration closed national parks, but some states, including Colorado, paid to keep theirs open.

Gov. Jared Polis said Colorado is evaluating its options and would be a “willing partner if needed to use limited state funds to keep our biggest park fully operational if necessary.” Rocky Mountain National Park was the fifth-most-visited national park last year.

“We would certainly ask the Federal government to keep the parks open and staffed, or create avenues for the state to assist in keeping parks open and protected,” Polis said in a statement. “If Congress does not fund the federal government, I urge the Administration to prioritize the operations of the national parks that so many people love and are a huge economic driver for our rural communities, especially during leaf peeping season.”

The weather forecasts will keep coming

Ahead of past possible shutdowns, the National Weather Service has said it would continue to provide routine forecasts, as well as extreme weather watch and warning information through its forecasting offices.

Many other day-to-day weather operations also will continue uninterrupted, including urgent repairs to radars and other key equipment. But a shutdown could delay routine maintenance, upgrades and long-term projects for less-critical services, according to NWS.

Previous government shutdowns have delayed the processing of long-term weather and climate data at other federal agencies.

The shutdown in October 2013, for example, prevented the U.S. Geological Survey from gathering and analyzing information on damage caused by catastrophic flooding that occurred across the Front Range just a few weeks prior, according to an assessment from the Obama administration.

The data loss prevented scientists and first responders from fully assessing the effects of the $4 billion disaster and likely hurt the federal government’s ability to share timely information with state officials about possible pollution caused by the flooding in the South Platte River Basin, the assessment found.

Twenty years ago, a Los Angeles DJ put out an album that asked a question nobody had quite answered yet: Could the turntable be a lead instrument?

Not just a tool, but the thing carrying the whole record?

Lucas McFadden, also known as Cut Chemist, said “yes.”

His debut solo album, The Audience’s Listening, dropped in 2006 after years of work, sample clearances and a clean break from the group that made him famous. He was a founding member of Jurassic 5, and before that, Ozomatli.

Two decades later, he's been revisiting that record in a series called Expert of None. It’s an intimate show at Only the Wild Ones in Venice, where he traces the records that shaped him right up to this album. The final installment of the series is scheduled for August 2.

“It's a record that I periodically revisit throughout my life just to kind of see where I've been and to know where I need to go next,” McFadden said. “I always like to do something different from what I've done before. This is the year where I really go back and trace the steps of the building blocks that made that record and who I was as an artist leading up to that.”

The art of mixing

Few fans know the behind-the-scenes work it takes for DJs and producers to track down sounds and then get the permission to use them. McFadden said finding and presenting music are two very different processes.

“I feel like a matchmaker, so to speak, because no one else would take things which are from completely opposite ends of the globe and put them together in the same composition,” McFadden said. “Then, you have to track down the artist to ask their permission. It's very interesting and rewarding when they say yes.”

McFadden walked away from the success of Jurassic 5 to devote his time to a solo career. He said the change gave him increased freedom but also increased pressure.

“It was very scary to leave something so successful and really at its peak to do something where I was responsible for both the failures and the successes on my own,” McFadden said. “I couldn't share that blame with anybody. It was all on me. So, I remember putting a lot of pressure on myself, because I was the one in the spotlight. Then the successes were twice as sweet in that regard as well.”

The result was his debut, The Audience’s Listening, which McFadden says is very much an L.A. record.

“I was raised on L.A. radio,” McFadden said.  "Being from here and being in groups like Ozomatli and Jurassic 5, I feel like those two groups couldn't exist anywhere else. They are such a byproduct of the city, coming from places like The Good Life in South Central. L.A. is such a melting pot, and I feel like my life in music is the same reflection of that as well.”

Revisiting the past to create the present

McFadden has been tracing the records that led to The Audience’s Listening during his "Expert of None" events at Only the Wild Ones in Venice. The immersive listening residency explores musical discovery and crate digging culture, revealing the records and influences that shaped the album.

“It's been incredible,” McFadden said. “There's so many things about my life that I didn't realize until I sat down and thought about them in the context of discovering music.”

McFadden says his younger self would be very pleased with the legacy of The Audience’s Listening.

“People still regard it as an album that’s important to them for the DJ culture,” McFadden said. “When it came out in the mid-2000s, DJs were kind of fading away, at least turntablists were. Another type of DJ was emerging, which was a laptop DJ. That opened the door for a lot of people that in some cases probably shouldn't be DJs, but wouldn't if this technology didn't exist. So, it was a very confusing time to put out a DJ turntablist record. I feel like I did well, and after 20 years of thinking about it and living in that world, I'm happy where it stands.”

Tickets for Cut Chemist’s Aug. 2 event at Only the Wild Ones are currently sold out, but fans can join a waiting list.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge ruled Monday that there is enough evidence to put singer D4vd on trial in the killing and dismemberment of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez after, authorities said, she had threatened to expose their relationship and crater his career.

Los Angeles Judge Charlaine Olmedo decided the evidence prosecutors presented at a preliminary hearing that spanned five days provided probable cause for a trial on charges of murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains.

“The people have met their burden on all counts,” Olmedo said. She ordered that Burke continue to be held without bail.

D4vd, the 21-year-old singer born David Burke whose career was steeply rising before the allegations emerged, has pleaded not guilty. He showed no emotion when the judge issued her ruling. Defense lawyers declined to comment outside court after the ruling.

Olmedo emphasized that the probable cause standard for a preliminary hearing like this is much lower than the threshold at trial. However, prosecutors asserted the evidence was overwhelming.

“Based on the mountains of evidence presented,” Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said, “all of the allegations have been proved way beyond the standard required.”

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman said outside court that prosecutors are still weighing whether to seek the death penalty. Burke is to be arraigned Aug. 31.

Prosecutors on Monday wrapped up their case by giving a moment-by-moment account of Rivas Hernandez’s last night, showing that after a stream of text messages with Burke, her phone went permanently silent when she arrived at his home.

As she neared his Hollywood home shortly after 10 a.m. on April 23, 2025, in an Uber he had sent to pick her up, she sent her final text: “girly pop i’m almost there open ur door if ur home.”

Prosecutors allege Burke stabbed her to death when she came through the door.

The night before, the two argued via text about his relationship with a woman. She sent him an angry and profane text saying she will tell her dad so many lies about him and “i will end ur career and ur life.”

Prosecutors said that Burke met Rivas Hernandez when she was 11, began sexually abusing her when she was 13 and he was 18, stabbed her to death when she threatened to report him and ruin his career, and cut up her body in his garage with chain saws.

Prosecutors said they have records showing Burke ordered chain saws and wading pools that he used to dismember her body in his garage, and that her DNA was found there on blood stains discovered when police served a search warrant.

They said he then drove around for weeks and even months with the body in the trunk. Her decomposing body was found in the Tesla registered to Burke that was towed from the Hollywood Hills in September, a little more than four months later.

Prosecutors said the car was parked around the corner from his house, and surveillance video will show he was the last person to drive it.

Defense argues there’s insufficient evidence for murder

After the final witness on Monday, the defense argued that the evidence was insufficient and the murder charge should be dismissed.

“There’s no evidence that Mr. Burke harbored a deliberate intent to kill Miss Hernandez,” said Burke’s attorney, Marilyn Bednarski.

She said the communications between Burke and Rivas Hernandez showed “no threat, no evidence of a history of violence” and that he had “the opposite of homicidal malice” toward her.

She argued that a medical examiner ruling that her death was a homicide from two puncture wounds was too vague and inconclusive to be evidence of murder. The defense did not directly give an alternative theory on how she died and isn’t required to.

The defense showed several other texts from Rivas Hernandez threatening him about their relationship, and saying she would go to Burke’s mother, talk to his friends and “leak” information about them.

Under questioning from defense attorney Blair Berk, Farrell said he saw no indication that she ever threatened to go to police or pursue any legal action against him.

The defense also established that she had asked seven times to come to see him in the days before her death, and he reluctantly agreed only after she demanded it, and that she had threatened to kill Burke and to mutilate him.

The defense argued that all of the malice had come from her.

Silverman told the judge that “the defense tried numerous times throughout these proceedings to dirty up the victim” despite her being a child.

The detective also said under questioning from Berk that the parents of both Burke and Rivas Hernandez knew about their relationship, that he had attended church with members of her family and that her parents had given their consent for her to go to London with him for a week.

Prosecution alleges D4vd immediately began covering up the killing

After her phone went silent, Burke sent her several other messages that night asking where she was, and expressing concern. Prosecutors allege those messages were sent as cover after he had killed her.

Prosecutors allege Burke dismembered the body in his garage. A police analyst testified earlier in the hearing that samples pulled from apparent blood stains there matched her DNA.

Her body was found in a Tesla registered to him nearly five months later.

Detective documents sexual abuse

In earlier testimony, Farrell recounted dozens of sexually explicit photos of Burke and Rivas Hernandez and years of text messages that described the same things, along with conversations that indicated she had gotten an abortion in 2024 at 13 after he got her pregnant.

Farrell described the photos that could not be shown in court, material so graphic that it left Rivas Hernandez’s mother in tears and prompted both parents to leave the courtroom on Friday. They were back in court Monday.

D4vd’s career was reaching new heights at time of killing

D4vd (pronounced “David”) became an online musical phenomenon as a teen with a blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He had huge followings on TikTok, Soundcloud and Spotify, where his top songs, including his 2022 breakthrough “Romantic Homicide,” have more than a billion plays.

In 2024 he played the Coachella music festival and released his first full-length album, “Withered,” two days after authorities say Rivas Hernandez was killed.