The Shutdown and the Spies

For the intelligence agencies' frontline personnel, it'll be business as usual—but only for a short while.

Not that you were fretting much about it, but secret operations at the CIA and other U.S. government intelligence agencies will mostly carry per usual (whatever that means) should Congress fail to come to a budget agreement and turn off the lights in many other offices at midnight Wednesday.

Of more immediate concern is the posture of worldwide U.S. combat forces this week with hundreds of their commanders en route from far flung posts to an all-flags-on-deck command meeting at Quantico ordered up by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which President Trump later invited himself to, creating yet another level of security concerns.