As hope for a last-minute resolution to the political standoff that has triggered the government shutdown all but evaporates, Smithsonian officials announced Thursday that all of its museums, as well as the National Zoo, will be shuttered on Jan. 2 unless a deal is reached.
“There’s no getting around it,” Linda St. Thomas, chief spokeswoman for the Smithsonian, told NPR.
Approximately two-thirds of Smithsonian staff are federal employees, which means, come Wednesday, they’ll have to join the roughly 380,000 furloughed workers who were forced to stop doing their jobs as of Saturday — the day federal funding lapsed.
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