Politics and views in the United States.

The federal government reopens after a lengthy shutdown. Questions linger on the Farm Bill extension and funding and lawmakers explain support for keeping the shutdown going.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2025 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

Whether it is men and women who work at the Air Force Base in Omaha that live in our state on the western part, folks who live and work in Iowa who work at the Rock Island Arsenal or our VA facilities around the state.

Iowa AFL-CIO President Charlie Wishman is grateful federal employees are going back to work now that the government is reopening.

The record 43-day shutdown has been resolved with funding approved for most agencies until January 30th.

Some federal employees will see benefits from sticking out the shutdown.

Most staff will get back pay in a few days, but Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says TSA agents will get a $10,000 bonus for working when the government was closed.

We are going to not only continue their paychecks like they should have received all along, but also they're going to get a bonus check for stepping up, taking on extra shifts, for showing up each and every day, for serving the American people.

Air travel disruptions grew during the shutdown's final days, with TSA agents and air traffic controllers missing paychecks and calling in sick.

Democrats are objecting to a provision added to the funding deal to let Republican senators sue over having their phones searched after January 6th.

Only one of the eight who might legally collect hundreds of thousands of dollars has expressed any interest in suing over phone record investigations by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Agriculture is one federal department getting full-year appropriations, but Congress reauthorized the 2018 Farm Bill with some important cuts.

Mike Lavender with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition says programs for things like soil health have been cut and restructured, giving corporate farms more access to those funds shutting out smaller family farms.

And he says communities will not be helped by programs designed and funded at levels from almost a decade ago.

We all know issues in rural communities, farm country, urban communities.

We have to have those conversations in the context of a full Farm Bill because that's how important they are.

We have to give them that time, and these year extensions do not give us the space to do that.

The deal to end the shutdown is sparking Democratic infighting.

Maryland Democratic Representative Johnny Olszewski says he voted against it because it lacked a firm commitment to extend ACA subsidies that had lowered the cost of health insurance on the exchange.

We're talking about a $4,700 tax increase for the average family of four in Maryland.

That is devastating for a working family.

Health care workers are urging private hospitals to step up funding for patient care in light of ACA changes and federal healthcare cuts.

Some private hospitals have announced they're cutting staff to blunt the impact of Medicare and Medicaid reductions, despite many of them having robust budget reserves and making sizable investments in big tech.

Dinesh Forbes is a registered nurse in Mount Sinai's intensive care unit.

She says there is a risk in using technology to replace nursing staff.

Staffing issues have always been ongoing, but now we're seeing they do wanna use other machinery to watch patients, to care for their safety, which is not working because we still need to be there.

I'm Edwin J. Viera for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

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