FCC Open, For Now, Amid Partial Government Shutdown
The agency would furlough 80 percent of its employees in the event of an extended lapse.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2, 2026 – Funding for several government agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission lapsed on Saturday. The agency said it’s still operating as normal for now, thanks to carryover funds.
“The Commission will continue normal operations until further notice. The Commission’s public facing filing systems and databases will remain available, and normal filing deadlines under the Commission’s rules will apply,” the agency said in a Friday public notice. “If the Commission ceases normal operations, further guidance will be provided by a subsequent Public Notice.”
The FCC was still open on Monday morning, according to its website.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that he believed he had enough votes in the chamber’s slim Republican majority to end the shutdown by Tuesday.
The Senate passed a spending package Friday that included planned funding for agencies like the Defense, Treasury, and Transportation Departments, but changed the Department of Homeland Security’s funding to a two-week stopgap measure. The package, passed 71-29, was a reaction to federal agents killing two protestors in Minneapolis last month and will have to be cleared by the House.
If the FCC does have to shut down, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said at the agency’s January meeting that the process would be similar to the recent shutdown last year. The agency would furlough 969 of its 1,212 employees, according to a shutdown plan posted Friday.
“My hope and expectations is that it does not get there,” Carr said at the meeting Thursday. He said the agency planned to “continue to operate, at least to some degree for some period of time, but we’re still working through all that and hopefully don’t have to pull the ripcord on that plan.”
The agency would keep on 243 employees, about the same as the 244 kept on last year. The 1,212 total headcount is down from the 1,288 the agency reported in its September 2025 shutdown plan.
Like last year’s shutdown, the agency would continue its work on spectrum auctions and the Rip and Replace program, as those are not funded by the lapsed appropriations. Some employees would also be retained to work on “FCC Chairman priorities related to regulatory and rulemaking activities” and on “strategic transactions” in the event of a February shutdown, something not described in the previous plan.
Device authorizations would be on pause, as would licensing services and other activities “not immediately necessary for the protection of life or property” or funded by money other than appropriations. During the last shutdown, the agency also extended filing deadlines for many of its rulemaking dockets.
While the FCC is funded by regulatory fees, it borrows its operating funds from the government and pays the debt back at the end of each fiscal year. The agency typically collects more than it spends, which is what allows the agency to weather short shutdowns and stay open, Pillsbury attorneys explained in a blog post.
Last year, when the government shut down from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, 2025, the longest shutdown ever at 43 days, the agency did not stay open and closed down immediately. The FCC stayed open for nearly two weeks during the 2018-2019 shutdown.
The legislation the Senate passed, and the House now has to pass as part of the updated package, would give the FCC a more than $416 million budget for fiscal year 2026. That’s in line with what the agency had requested and up from its $390 million FY2025 budget.
The Department of Commerce, which handles the $42.45 billion broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, was funded by a previous package and won’t be affected by the shutdown.
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