during my career, I experienced multiple furloughs due to a lapse in funding and they usually "exempt" those involved in "health and safety" functions (and even in that case, not "all", but a handful were kept working and the rest were furloughed). It also meant that all government contracts were supposed to be issued a STOP WORK order. Those contractors do NOT get paid when funding resumes (with some exceptions where the Prime contractor might eat that cost and pay their staff).
During those furloughs when we had (finally) had our own laptops, we were told NOT to even open the lids and turn them on during that time, otherwise we would be violating the law that 45 is violating EVERY SINGLE DAY - the "Antideficiency Act".
The media circus during these furloughs often revolved around standing in front one of the national park entrances and taking pics of a sign at a gate saying "CLOSED" while claiming people were whining about that. But in this day and age, the national parks have been completely chain-sawed of staff by the chainsaw monkey, so they have already been operating in near-furlough mode.
We would be told to "monitor the media" and had call trees set up for when we were "good to go".
Over the years, the threats increased regarding whether to give employees who were furloughed, "back pay", until one of the last furloughs finally resulted in a law being passed requiring back pay (they had previously rolled the back pay into the final funding bill before then after much shaming).
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