The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal workers union in the U.S., has called for an end to the ongoing government shutdown. The shutdown, now the second-longest in U.S. history, has left hundreds of thousands of employees unpaid for over four weeks. Everett Kelley, the head of AFGE, urged lawmakers to stop politicizing the issue and to pass a stopgap funding measure to reopen the government. While he did not assign blame to either political party, Kelley emphasized the urgency of resolving the situation.