United States federal agencies started notifying 1.8 million workers of their temporary furlough with the impending shutdown of the government due to a congressional impasse on the budget.

Funding for much of the federal government will expire at midnight on Saturday but lawmakers are mired in perennial deadlock on a new funding bill.

A small group of hardline Republicans are demanding deep spending cuts on the budget but Democrats disagree.

The American Federation of Government Employees said federal workers would go unpaid for the duration that there is no legislated funding but their salary will be retroactively paid when the new budget law is passed.

"If there is a shutdown in just a few days, our service members would be required to continue working but would be doing so without pay, and hundreds and thousands of their civilian colleagues would be furloughed," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Thursday.

The Treasury Department added that among other implications, "most core tax administration functions will stop" and more than half of the Internal Revenue Service staff will be furloughed.

Anti-McCarthy protest

Dozens of American teenagers occupied the office of the top Republican lawmaker on Thursday to protest against a looming government shutdown that they say will exacerbate the climate crisis.

The Sunrise Movement, a nationwide youth environmental campaign, said around 30 of its members flooded inside House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's office while over a hundred more crowded the hallway outside.

The group says 18 protesters were detained by police after refusing to disperse.

McCarthy was not present during the protest at the Rayburn House Office Building, across the road from the US Capitol.

The Sunrise Movement has voiced concerns over funding for emergency disaster relief and pro-climate provisions in Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act.

"In my state, in Oregon, people are dying from wildfire smoke and extreme heat in the summers. People are dying in hurricanes across the country and climate disasters everywhere," activist Adah Crandall, 17, from Portland, told Agence France-Presse.

"The GOP has blood on its hands, and if it shuts down the government… and fails to continue providing the support that people need to literally stay alive, they should be ashamed of themselves," she said.

WITH AFP